If you want to really understand Rob Siegel, start with something like his opposite: the Singer Porsche 911. As this GQ article explains, it involves buying an early-1990s Porsche ($20k or so), then dumping an additional three hundred thousand dollars into it, transforming it into a high-tech carbon-fiber supercar that looks like a 1960s supercar.

Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic is about the reasons you might want an old car for its own sake, and how it might bring you joy as it is, without crushing you financially. It’s the garage version of a cookbook for the ambitious home chef, really. You might not do all this car maintenance stuff yourself, but someone with a garage and a spare weekend could. Our buddy Patrick, who is in fact an ambitious home mechanic in the way that Bookdwarf is an ambitious home chef, thinks it’s great. And he should know: thanks at least in part to Siegel’s advice, he reports that his early-1990s BMW just passed inspection on the first try.