Matt Hranek - A Man & His Car

A Man & His Car

Iconic Cars and Stories
from the Men Who love Them

Matt Hranek

This book is dedicated to my favorite passenger and navigator,
who not only shares my passion for cars but also indulges me
with my own collection: my wife, Yolanda.

Photographing a 1912 Hudson Speedster (see page ) at the Hilton Head Concours dElegance

My love for cars starts with my father. Its fair to say he was obsessed with them. We went to car shows on the weekends, and hed point out certain cars whenever we were driving. He loved English carshe owned a 1959 Triumph TR3Aand also Chevy pickups. He was a professional sign painter and illustrator who gravitated to the old-school arts, and he used to letter drag racers and pinstripe antique cars. He would also be persuaded by my cousins to monogram their Camaros. Wed go to Five Mile Point Speedway, which was a dirt track, watch the cars race around, and admire all the vehicles in its parking lots.

Ive always loved European sports cars, probably because of my dad. My first car was a 71 BMW I bought from my uncle Junie. I nearly drove it into the groundand then my brother really drove it into the ground. All my cousins loved American muscle cars: Trans Ams, GTOs, Firebirds, Camaros. They would buy the cars and then soup up the engines to make them their own. When people ask me, Whats your dream car? I tell them I already own it. Its my . That was the car I had a poster of on my wall in high school. (Though, actually, that one probably had the whale tail.)

It was a real challenge to put this book together. For my previous book, A Man & His Watch, many of the contributors shipped their watches to me, and the photographer and I shot each one in the studio. It was obviously more complicated to photograph carsthey are, simply, big machines. So I had a 30-by-30-foot black backdrop made, and I schlepped that thing all over the world: on trains, on airplanes, in taxicabs, in the back of my Land Rover. The owners and I didnt wash the cars, didnt alter them or refresh them. Against the black, all the detail could be seen, and we wanted to celebrate the patina, the wearthe storytelling inherent in the object. It was a real labor of love. I also photographed the cars the way designers expect them to be seen: in daylight, with front, side, and back views. Thats how cars are conceived. You see them coming toward you, passing you in profile, then moving away from you.

Owning a car can be a benchmark of success or a way to become the version of yourself youve always wanted to be. It can remind you of the important people in your life or bring you closer to them.

Matt Hranek

With my 1971 BMW Bavaria in the backyard of my childhood home in Binghamton, New York

This edit is very personal to methere are countless car stories out there, but the ones youll find here are about cars that I love, the types of vehicles that have shaped my own love affair with the automobile. In talking to so many men about their cars, I noticed that nobody had to think about what his meant to him or why. Every time I said, Hey, tell me about this car. Whats the significance? Whats your emotional connection? the guy would launch into the story without hesitation, as if hed been thinking about it for a very long time. Which, of course, he surely had.

Cars do that. You create a bond with them. Owning a car can be a benchmark of success or a way to become the version of yourself youve always wanted to be. It can remind you of the important people in your life or bring you closer to them. This was never going to be a book about priceless, expensive automobiles (though there are more than a few of those in here, too). This is a book about the stories we tell about our carsintimate, emotional, thoughtful, and sometimes funny stories about these amazing machinesand, more important, about the stories our cars tell about us.

Matt Hranek

1955 Buick Roadmaster

I was born in New York but grew up in a rural area of New England. It was an era when you could buy old cars for twenty bucks, fifty buckspeople just abandoned them. My friends and I got an old Renault 4CV running. We were twelve, just driving around the field, our moms watching us through kitchen windows. Now Child Protective Services would be called.

It was a more mechanical age. It was before Netflix, so youd find stuff to do. People would take things apart and put them back togetherwatches, crystal radios. Car magazines were black-and-white. I remember those old issues of Road & Track, the images of Carroll Shelby standing with a Cobra, the GT40, the Mustang. Those were iconic imagescars you had to see in a magazine because youd never see them in person. Youd hang out outside a McDonalds all night and go home at 11:00 and hear later that a Corvette came through at 11:30 and youd think, I missed it! I missed the Corvette! I remember we had a Lamborghini Espada go through town when I was a kid. It was a huge deal. Now you just go on the internet, see whatever you want.

My dad wasnt a car guy. To this day, he doesnt understand why an old car would cost more than a new one. In 1966, we went to Shawsheen Motors and my dad says to the salesman, Where are the full-size cars? Hed just buy what was on the showroom floor. Give me that one. The salesman says, Mr. Leno, you can order a big car, but it will take four to six weeks. My dads grumbling, but he orders the car. I ask if I can pick the engine, and my mother says, Let the boy pick the engine. What difference does it make? So Im sixteen years old, and I know Im going to be driving the thing. I pull the salesman aside and say: I want the big Galaxie, 428 engine, CCX heavy-duty automatic, 370 gears. Police-pursuit package with the muffler-delete option.

Six weeks later, the car arrives at the dealer. My dad walks in and goes, Its got bucket seats! Then he turns the key and the car goes RUHHMMMRUMRUMM and my dad says, Theres a hole in the goddamn muffler! Its a brand-new car and theres a hole in the goddamn muffler! The salesman keeps showing him the paperwork, saying, No, Mr. Leno, this is what you ordered, the muffler-delete option. Now my dad is ripshit. What the hell do you mean, police pursuit ? What did you have me buy? Hes screaming at me, screaming at the salesman. We get in the car, he starts it up, puts it in gear, and then: This thing, its a goddamn rocket ship! He didnt speak to me for a week. But a month or two later, Im in my parents room looking for something, and I see he got a ticket for going 110. He was the coolest guy in the insurance sales office.