JL: What’s the worst car you’ve ever owned?

TF: My first car was an 83 Honda Civic Wagon and I remember if I came up to any kind of an incline or any kind of a hill or whenever I was accelerating away from a stoplight, I had to flip the air off just so it could get out of its own way. And it always smelled like some certain type of plastic that had mildew under the first layer. Whenever it sat in the sun, there’s something about those old Hondas that makes a nauseating sort of melting plastic smell inside. Unfortunately a huge chunk of the population knows exactly what I’m talking about.

JL: My old girlfriend had an 84 Camry that smelled quite similar.

TF: Yeah, there are new cars that have that kind of weird left in the sun smell. Some of them are good. Like Audis when they sit in the sun — there’s something good about how that melting dashboard smells. But Corvettes smell like melting glue — like the dash is going to fall apart.

JL: I gotta start paying attention to that. The only cars I ever smell — because the engine’s in the back — are Porsches after you take it out and whip ‘em a bit. They just smell fantastic when you stand behind them. But it’s weird — like sniffing a dog’s butt.

TF: Any little bit of oil or whatever that was on the engine just kinda has melted off and you can smell the heat almost. Anyway, that Civic’s probably the worst car I’ve owned. Immediately after that I had a 73 Coupe de Ville that some would consider not to be the greatest car. But for a kid in high school it was the perfect machine.

JL: Sticking with that, I’m curious: How’d you learn to drive? Obviously you’re one of the better drivers in the world. So what were you like in high school? Were you a maniac when you were a teenager?

TF: When I was nine my family moved to Scotland and we lived 8 miles from the nearest building. In order to go to school the bus driver would come pick me up in his old Volvo and we would drive 8 miles back to where the bus was then start up the bus and go pick up the rest of the kids. He would sometimes let me drive that 8 miles and by the time I was ten I could drive — the family had a VW bus that I would drive a lot — At twelve-years-old the bus driver was letting me slide around in the snow and stuff and I really loved that. So when we moved back to the States and I finally got my license I had a good five years of driving under my belt and I paid very close attention to everything that had to do with cars from that point on.

I never really raced cars until I was in my early 20’s. Once I did start racing though, one of the first jobs I got in the industry was as an ice driving instructor and I think a lot of the techniques and stuff that I’ve learned have really come down to, you know, starting to drive and really learning some of the bad lessons of driving at an early age but more importantly learning car control on ice where its very easy to make a mistake. So you learn discipline. Ice driving is still something that when I have people approach me and ask me how they should get into racing, I always tell them the first thing to do is to go to an ice driving school and develop some car control and see if you have a knack for it and still like it.

JL: I think you just broke a lot of Southern Californians’ hearts.

TF: Or you can go to a drift deal — there are a lot of drift programs around LA where you can rent a car for like 100 bucks and go out and do the drift 101 programs, which is very similar. You know the car control is the same as on asphalt, its just at an ice driving school you learn discipline a little quicker and because everything is in slow motion its easier to overcome the bad habits that we all develop by using this sport of driving for transportation.

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