Kevin Perry at 14 with his first car

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“My dad actually got me into cars,” said Kevin Perry, assistant manager at Century Air Conditioning Supply in San Antonio.  “I always tell people my first involvement in cars was when I was 10 years old and my dad was restoring this ’66 Corvette.  I was helping him by hiding his tools.

“Then he brought home a 1939 Chevrolet and we started working on that, and he saw how interested I was in cars.  When I was 14 he ended up buying me a 1967 GTO that we restored that pretty much kept me off the street.  We developed a good father-son bond between him and I.

“He is my role model.  He is who I look up to.  His name is Harold Perry.  Everybody else has these sports figures they look up to.  Not me.  I look up to my dad.  I want to be like him.”

As an adult, Perry always had one or two cars to “toy” around with.  But in 2002 he became a single father with two children, and finances caused him to put his hobby on hold.

“I had to give up something, and I am not going to give up my kids.  My daughter, Tiffany, is 10, and my son, Timothy, is 11,” Perry said.  “He is just like I am.  He is into cars.

“In 2006, when I learned you could get the tax credit on daycare, and I had the money to get another toy for me, well, I gave the kids the option.”

Perry said they had already been to Disneyworld, but he told the kids they could take another big trip or buy a car with the money saved. 

“They came back and said I had given up so much for them that I should buy the car. So I bought a ’94 Mustang GT, which I have now.  And that’s a car I will probably have for a long time, because I say my kids bought it for me.” 

Recently, Perry bought a new toy – a ’95 Mustang GT body in rough shape that he is planning to restore from the ground up. He also has a future car in mind.

“My boy is 11 and when he is 13 or 14 we will start looking for him a car, but I already told him it won’t be a fast car.”

Although Perry has had his Mustang on the drag strip several times, he is not an advocate of street racing that was popular during his teenage years.  He says your life and others is at risk.

Perry tried to locate his first car, the ’67 GTO.   “I tracked it down to the last person who owned it and he sold it to a restoration guy that went out of business.  The tracks went cold.  I was trying to find it to see if I could buy it back.”

Perry’s life has a new focus in the last year.  He got married to his wife, Sherry, in June of ’09.  But he still dreams of future cars. When asked if he could have any car what would he have, Perry answered:  “A 1967 Shelby GT 500 – or if I won the lottery I would buy a top fuel dragster!”  –kf

©2010 Construction News, Ltd