Auto Restoration

Read how a hobby became a stable business career. You can make it happen!

CHILDHOODS

Brian Smith (BS) and Sage Binder (SB) grew up – not knowing each other until their adulthoods – in south (New) ‘Jersey’.

Each of their neighborhoods featured older model cars, later called ‘classics’ if the car survived for 10 years. Separately, they attended car shows and appreciated the older model cars which reminded them of the hometowns of their youth. 

In SB’s own words, “The happiest time of my life was going to car shows with my dad. That was my jam as soon as I could walk.”

EDUCATION

Both BS and SB are high school graduates, though not from the same school. Neither thought about extending their formal education but instead, landing a full-time, stable job.

EARLY JOBS

The first line of work for BS – auto mechanic – became the basis for his eventual career as a restorer of old vehicles. Evidence of the seriousness of BS about performing well his trade are the firing order numbers for a small block Chevy engine, tattooed on his hands’ knuckles.

SB never worked under the hoods of any cars, preferring clerical work in offices while retaining her passion to hang around vintage cars when off-duty. 

COMBINING BUSINESS, ROMANCE AND A PASSION FOR BOTH

BS and SB, who have been dating for two years (as of mid-2024), first met several years ago at the old Hot Rod Hoedown and Rock-N-Roll Rumble, which no longer exists. Starting in 1999, the show was a celebration of mid-century custom cars culture and the self-proclaimed ‘oddballs’ who were attracted to those machines. 

The cars at the Hoedowns weren’t the kind of gleaming muscle cars that collectors spend thousands on; they were modeled after the kind of DIY (do-it-yourself) inventiveness that a ‘50s greaser might exhibit, cobbling together their own car in the backyard.

That’s the kind of cars BS, SB and other friends were drawn to. After a few years of attending Hoedowns, they started the Deadbeaters Car Club with a handful of other friends. “A drinking club with a car problem,” they called it, jokingly.

The Deadbeaters came together out of a sense of shared enthusiasm for simpler cars of an older generation. No one in the club was particularly interested in shiny paint jobs or impeccable chrome. “We don’t do show cars,” noted SB. 

At first the Deadbeaters Car Club was a hobby. Then it became BS’s entire life. “Everyone went their separate ways, but I kept rolling with it,” he said. Eight years ago, BS opened the No Kill Car Shelter business in Philadelphia to restore certain vintage automobiles. SB offered to help out. Soon, their shared love of restoring ‘rust buckets’ developed into romance.

“I never met anyone else with the same level of passion for cool old cars,” said SB. Their shared passion caught on with others. People started buying the cars they were building. 

Working in an auto restoration business carries on a family tradition for SB, whose father, a co-founder of the Hoedown shows, occasionally helps out as a mechanic in the No Kill shop.

Recently, Roberto Perez, a 28-year-old auto mechanic and classic car enthusiast from Lancaster, PA, bought a 1960 Chevy Bel Air that BS had resurrected. Perez now drives the vintage car, which in an earlier life made a brief cameo in the film, A Bronx Tale to work, the grocery store, and his 9-year-old son’s Little League games. He had fallen in love with the vintage cruiser – and the No Kill Car Shelter – the instant he saw them on Instagram.

BS brings in new cars each week, bought from Facebook Marketplace, traded for other cars or found by friends. Each one has a story, and each one becomes a new obsession. There’s the 1929 Ford Model A Pickup the crew got working one Saturday night, and call “Scrappy” because they use it for trips to the local scrapyard. “Sometimes it breaks down, sometimes it runs hot,” BS said. “It gets a hoot every time I pull into the scrapyard, and they ask if it’s getting scrapped with everything else.” The answer is always, “No!”

The shop’s motto is “Keeping Old Iron Alive.” But it could just as easily be “saving old cars, getting greasy and being weird,” said SB, who runs the shop’s burgeoning social media accounts, a job in itself. 

CAREER(S) SATISFACTION

Recently, the No Kill Car Shelter’s crew was working on a 1955 Pontiac that will be more like a 1960s supercharged Street Freak gasser when it’s restored. A nearby 1959 Thunderbird was showed proudly by SB, who commented it was “Just like the one Elvira had. It’s a bit of a rot bucket and it needs our love. But that’s what we’re here for.”

BS and SB love the prospect of taking cars at the end of their roads and getting them running again – rusted finishes, patchy interiors and all. Any parts they could salvage from a car to keep using on that car, they did. The results are a series of cars that look like they shouldn’t be running at all, roaring happily through the city and suburbs. 

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These career stories were based on a news article written by Mike Newall, published by The Philadelphia Inquirer on July 7, 2024.