Most people go immediately into an apprenticeship to become a mechanic, but Chris fell into the trade differently. Chris became a mechanic via the first business he had at age 18, called Clean Me Car Detailing. We detailed cars all over Perth but had a workshop we would work at a couple of days a week detailing their cars after the workshop serviced them. The couple days a week led him to be on their books, which led to more working on cars than car detailing. The sponge turned into a spanner, and he couldn’t stop working on cars.

The workshop he worked for included specialists in Euro and older style Euro cars. He worked there for quite some time, learning it all before realising he should probably start an apprenticeship, seeming he knows everything to do with these cars yet no qualification behind him. So he started his apprenticeship, aced every test with flying colours, and finished his apprenticeship a year early!

Chris’ mentor was Swiss and lived and breathed euro cars, so he learned so much from him while also being the type of hands-on person that likes to pull things apart and put them back together and figure it all out himself along the way along with many hours researching and studying things cars. It’s safe to say he never went back to car cleaning as he was way more passionate about fixing cars and now lived and breathed everything car-related and is so happy to be running his workshop.

Our next blog will be about Chris’ first complete custom engine build and the wins and fails of starting a project unqualified, and what he would change in hindsight and had to change along the way.