‘Garage Life’ Means You Never Go Hungry!
I am a lucky soul to have been able to make a living writing about car audio. The world of car audio was already shrinking when I joined in, back in the early Nineties. Then, a dealer incentive trip would be not to, say Brands Hatch for a car thing and a product launch. No, it would be the Jazz Festival sponsored by the brand that took you to St. Lucia! They even had a special palm tree-emblazoned letterhead printed to send the glad tidings out to dealers. I saw it once. I do not think that anyone now at JVCKenwood will recall that.
But while I never got flown to the tropics, I did get flown to Japan and to Las Vegas. One year, at the peak of international activity of the IASCA sound off organisation, a fabulous Audi A4 was transported from Finland to the USA to be seen on the DLS stand. Their car was the most winning car in Europe, was exquisitely well installed and sounded breath-taking.
But the real secret was that the car had not just a mad single bloke with friends working on it but rather was the product of a ‘˜folie a deux’ madness obsession, shared by a COUPLE!
I am on record as long adoring the lunacy of the coupled-nutters. Rob & Sue Hammond are names that I recall, as well as the sadly recently-retired from dB Drag racing contests, Helen and Darren Hircock. Complete stars, each. And these two Finnish youngsters in the North hall of the LVCC were just fabulous. I recall them being not too bad at all with English, (while I cannot even say Hello in Finnish) and that they were both offensively good looking kids. I sat and listened to their car while they told me how they basically lived, ate, slept and made love in their garage, while they worked like nutters on this artwork of a car. I can even hear his voice, saying, with a chuckle, ‘AH yes! Garage life! Haha!’
And we have a company called Car Audio Motions, run by Mark and Jodie, who come to all the shows and are creating a stir with their work, as well as a sweet little e-retailing side with a website. And their work is excellent and delightfully influenced in general attitude by Ian ;Iceman; Pinder, who has always been mates with them. Lots of speakers in just about everywhere you can put them.
And the image shows to the imaginative, just why and how Jodie and mark can stay happy in their garage Life, with most every human need catered for with the whole thing.
Here is their website, go look; link
Adam Rayner On Line Editor!