Mike Yager

VR: How did you first get started with cars? I assume it was probably at a young age. 

MY: The long story and the short story, all in one, is I’m the youngest of nine kids. I grew up in a small town in Central Illinois and had older brothers in the ’50s and ’60s who were into cars, everything from restoration to making street rods. As a young impressionable nine-year-old kid, I hung out in the garage with these cars and in 1962, one of my older brothers showed me a picture of a Corvette that he bought, a 1960 Corvette. Gosh, I could end the story there. I fell emphatically in love with Corvettes and fast forward 40 plus years and here I am. So, it all started with older brothers. By nine I was helping restore a ’40 Mercury, a ’28 Dodge, a ’36 Hudson Terraplane. On the other side of the garage I had a brother chopping and channeling a ’32 Ford pickup truck. And if you can kind of read between the lines, of two brothers, one into restoration and one into chopping and channeling, there was always a little bit of finger pointing of who was doing the right thing.