Profile - Jim and Jer
MY STAR - ABOUT JIM
Welcome to My Star Collector Car. I am part of an identical twin act that will do the heavy lifting for the written word on this website.
Jerry and I both did significant time in university as English majors where the bulk of the assignments involved singing the praises of dead guys with a flair for creative writing. The trick was to stay awake long enough to plow through an overdose of Shakespeare and his buddies without sliding uncontrollably into a boredom- induced coma.
Then I had to write long papers about these clowns; an exercise which was more pointless than one might think.
The upside was the exercise made it easier to write about things that actually interested me.I have spent the last 24 years as a freelance columnist for a daily newspaper in which I have discussed a wide variety of subjects which cover my actual interests, none of which included topics from my university assignments.
One of my favorite subjects has always been cars and I have touched on this topic many times over the years in my columns. It is always easier to write about something that you really like, so this online car magazine is a very good fit for me.
Jerry and I share a similar affection about the cars from our baby boomer past, but you don't have to be a twin to love the vehicles from yesteryear. Car guys and girls understand the game and the common bond that brings all of us into these old iron Woodstock moments at countless car shows every year.
We plan to cover as many of the car stories as we can at My Star Collector Car because these are the stories that need to be told, and we're the messengers for car people because we are car people. I share Jerry's obsession with cars because we grew up in a household where the automotive world was an important element of our late father's interests.
We lived on an acreage where he would shuffle in Model A trucks and cars which were reminders to him of his own youth. He subscribed to every available publication in the 50s and 60s including Popular Science, Mechanix Illustrated, Popular Mechanics and Science & Mechanics . We absorbed all of the information including the car tests and the new car previews in an era when cosmetic surgery was an annual ritual for Detroit. It was an exciting time every autumn when the local dealerships brought in the new talent that finally jumped off the pages onto the local car lots.
The funny thing is that I still get excited about the same cars and I get why my dad brought home all of those old cars from his days as a kid. It really is a no-brainer for any car guy to want the cars from his past, whether or not he owned one or merely salivated over the prospect as a ten year old who had yet to discover girls.
I look forward to the opportunity to tell your story because I believe that every old car and truck has an owner with a story to tell.
We're just the guys to make that happen here at My Star Collector Car because we get it when it comes to four wheels and unconditional love.
It's kind of like writing about Romeo and Juliet, only interesting and with a steering wheel and a big block. 
Cheers Jim Sutherland.
MY STAR - ABOUT JER
I've had a fascination with cars since the age of five-I'm guessing that's not really a startling or remotely interesting statement because this isn't after all, a Barbie Doll Appreciation website.
But it does speak to the kind of guy who would be a regular at mystarcollectorcar.com.At 5 years old my first automotive references were the giant excesses of 1959-from the bat-winged 59 Chevy to the incredible Virgil Exner Chrysler products and finally the legendary Cadillac with Himalayan-sized fins.No need for a 5 year old's imagination-Detroit did all the work for you.
Those cars were incredibly fast and as the 60s wore on they reached insane horsepower levels. I like to think of the mid 50s to the early 70s as the golden era in automotive history-every generation does but in my humble opinion, the evolution of the car in that time frame was unsurpassed.
From fins to spoilers to wings-I saw it all from 5 years old on and the one thing that really stood the test of time was that those cars left a lasting huge impression-then and now.
I spent my kid-hood watching cars go from the raw straight-ahead top end power of '59 to the multi carbureted under- braked, under performance-tired, under-suspensioned hideously over-powered suicide machines of 1970.
That rampant automotive insanity inevitably left a permanent mark.
Life in the 70s steered me to higher education so I took the standard university route where I spent far too many tedious years as an English major "learnin' to talk good" as the legendary Jed Clampett used to say. Also, because my dad bought every magazine from Popular Science to Science and Mechanics to Popular Mechanics to Mechanix Illustrated I was able to read every story about every car that was ever made on this side of both oceans and some from the other side-that to me was a dream job.
Reality was another thing-instead of writing about the legendary GTOs, GTXs, GTAs, like they did in the 60s I was forced to write safety manuals, company profiles, a monthly newspaper for seniors and more advertising copy than General Motors did in their succcesful, good years
That kind of writing is real and it's fun but it's not real fun-I'm as big a fan as the next guy when it comes to senior's lawn bowling but it just doesn't give me the adrenaline rush that it used to.
Same thing with writing copy about mediocre products or technical reports on scaffold safety. Sooner or later the thrill is gone.
Not with cars-especially with yesterday's cars. Old cars are something that I'll never get tired of seeing, owning or writing about.
I know-I've paid my dues.
I invested a decade and far more money than I actually had restoring a car from; you guessed it, the late 50's. I instinctively knew even at 5 years old that I would eventually own a piece of that crazy jet-finned, chromed-up era. In reality the car I chose should have been floated out on a barge and buried at sea but that's not what this site is about.
Sure the magazine is partly about saving cars like that but it's far more about why we do it-the saga of you and your car.
I just want the privilege of telling that story.
js
