Helping fuel young imaginations

MOORESVILLE – George Henry hopes to open a few young minds at the Goodguys Southeastern Nationals car show Friday through Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The 18th annual event features at least 2,000 pre-1972 hot rods, custom cars, classics, muscle cars, trucks and specialty vehicles on display. Owners come from 32 states and Canada.

With help from friends and his wife, Teresa, Henry organizes the “Make-N-Take” model building area in the Nationwide Series garage, where several hundred children show up each year for free Revell- and Monogram-sponsored model car kits.

As director of model cars for the event, Henry answers questions from the children and their parents. Visit the couple’s home in Mooresville and you know why he’s the main guy.

Henry displays at least 600 model vehicles and keeps another 7,500 in storage. He’s built many of them from his imagination, while others are rare old collectibles, including model kits that Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford gave as Christmas presents in the 1960s. He’ll have some of the ones he’s built on display at this weekend’s show.

Henry, 47, has won about 300 hundred awards at national and international car model shows in at least eight states for his meticulously built models. He’s also taught his wife the craft. Teresa, who works in cosmetics at Belk in Mooresville, has won several awards at shows.

Henry creates his models in a 10-by-12-foot room the couple calls George’s “cave.” His awards line its walls.

He works on a table beside his drill press, milling machine, metal lathe and a Dremel tool for shaping, cutting and polishing.

He uses thousands of tiny pieces of material he stores in plastic containers. He converts tiny strips of fishing line into fuel lines, surgical tubing into brake lines and red tape into roller bar padding. Straight pins serve as cranks on engines. He spent eight hours painting the purple flames on the hood of a prized model ’67 Nova.

When he’s in the cave, “I relax, pour me a drink, and why it’s called a cave, I’ll be in here eight or 10 hours,” Henry said. “It’s tedious work, but it’s a challenge.”

He was 7 or 8 when he built his first hot rod, a 5-foot-long one he made from wood. He “borrowed” two wheels from his baby sister’s carriage.

The hobby grew into a NASCAR career. Henry raced modified and late-model cars in the 1990s, was crew chief for Jimmy Davis in the NASCAR Truck series and built chassis for Hess Racing.

He retired three years ago to found Hot Rods by George, on N.C. 150 in Maiden.

He does all the metal fabrication for the chassis he builds from scratch for clients’ custom hot rods. Chassis cost $1,900 to $10,000. Hot rods he builds go for up to $50,000, he said.

Now he’s also on another mission: to spread his love of all things automotive to a younger generation at the Goodguys show.

“You’re trying to keep the hobby alive, for one thing,” he said. “The young people are the future, of the hobby, of hot rodding, of the world. We hope to get their brains clicking to help them discover what they can do.”

Marusak: 704-987-3670.

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