Junior Chase Crawford participates in quite expensive hobbies: drag racing and working on cars.
The junior works on his souped-up 1991 Ford Mustang with the help of his dad. He finds the time to put work into his vehicle any time he can, usually weekdays after school or weekends all year round. He has put three years worth of work into this car.
With all of his hard work, Crawford has seen some results, stating, “we have spent around twenty-thousand dollars on the car in the years that we have been working on it, but if we were to sell it now, it would probably be worth around thirty-thousand dollars.”
In terms of the car’s original worth, it wasn’t much, considering Crawford originally bought a “roller” for five thousand dollars. For those who do not already know, a roller, in the junior’s words, is “basically a car without an engine, transmission, or drive shaft. It is really just the body and the suspension making the framework of the car.”
In Crawford’s eyes, the hobby is very time consuming because, “if one thing goes wrong, I don’t always know what it is and then I have to fully go in so that I can find out what is wrong with it which can be a pain sometimes, but it is worth it in the end.”
Even though the sport of drag racing is more of an individual concept, Crawford says that he has “definitely” made some friends and connections through it whether that means events or car shows.
Crawford has not started racing yet but is planning to enter in a few races next year. Some people may be scared to take part in drag racing however he is not nervous, “the risk is definitely worth the reward because the track takes things very seriously, and they have a lot of safety features and protocols you have to follow if you want to race.” The most dangerous part of the sport he claims is working on the car itself, he has had a few instances where things fell on him.
The car guy believes that his father is the one who inspired him to get into this business, and in pursuing it with his dad he found love for the car industry. He likes this pastime because “I think it is really interesting and fun and I have a love for driving and messing around with new things on the car.”
