Auto Biography

Auto Biography interweaves the history of the 57 Chevy with the life of Tommy Arney. Among other things, Arney had a car yard with plenty of "project cars." One car was a 57 Chevy that had the complete lineage available. The author goes through the lives of each of the owners and their experience with the car, combining that with the history of the car. Tommy's biography is much more complex. He was an elementary school dropout who grew up very rough with a strong temper. He lived a very vulgar, violent youth. He was regularly getting in fights, and would try to seek out vengeance for any perceived wrongs. He later discovered cars and eventually built up a "redneck empire" including a car lot, gogo bar, restaurant and various properties. However, he did that by taking loans from a bank. The bank was perhaps a little too liberal with the money, and he eventually plead guilty to defrauding the public (by taking loans to pay off loans) and had to serve time in jail. he also had regular run ins with the local authorities who wanted his property to have proper "bushes" and other landscaping features.
The restoration of the 57 Chevy takes a long time, and thus gets interleaved with many events in the book. Part of the length is simply the need to take time to work on it. Other projects come in and out in the process. However, finding the parts and doing the work also take a singificant amount of time. Parts need to be found from various other parts. Missing chunks of metal need to be replaced. Everything needed to be smoothed and sanded. The frame and body needed to be worked on independently. The total restoration cost much more than the value of the car. However, it did make for a nice car. The author then attempted to invite all possible previous owners to view the restored masterpiece. Many of the later owners did not recognize it. (The portion with the VIN is still the same, but much of the rest had been replaced.)