Taking his show on the road

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Jim Peek builds a new clubhouse for island auto enthusiasts.

If you build it they will come.

Bainbridge resident and automobile enthusiast Jim Peek just hopes they’ll bring cars instead of baseball gloves.

Peek’s new “garage of dreams” at his Baker Hill home is equipped with a car lift, and will be home base for the auto club he is starting on Bainbridge.

“Nowadays, everyone seems to be installing fancy kitchens or a media room – the next big thing is the garage,” said Peek. “It is a living room for my car, it is a modern clubhouse.”

The garage features an outside-in interior decor – a style that places normally exterior features of a building on the interior – complete with corrugated steel ceiling, reverse board-and-batten walls, and cedar shingling underneath a gable.

“When you get in that room it has a real positive, relaxing effect on you,” Peek said.

The garage will become the staging point of just some of the many activities he hopes to facilitate through his auto club, for which he has yet to decide on a name.

Peek’s club, open to automobile, motorcycle and truck enthusiasts of all ages, will offer monthly clinics to teach young drivers basic mechanics and safety. Summer cruises around the area are planned, as are open clinics on car maintenance and other events like car shows.

Peek, who said he still gets giddy about going to the mechanic’s for a tire change, has loved cars since he was young.

“My siblings and I were always jacking up cars and getting them ready for the weekend,” he said. “It all centered around going to Dick’s Drive-In in North Seattle and then to Golden Gardens to watch the unofficial races. Hundreds of cars would show up.”

Since then, Peek has been a member of several car clubs and participated in car shows.

The inspiration for starting his own auto club was the annual Bainbridge Island Classic Car Show, which Peek first organized in 2004 to benefit Project Backpack, a local charity that supplies island children with school supplies.

“We would draw 75 to 100 cars without trying,” Peek said. “Cars you would never dream were on the island showed up, and there wasn’t anything like a club on Bainbridge, it was amazing.”

Easy going

For all the potential the club has, Peek stressed the informality of his plans.

There won’t be any commercial side to the organization; membership, clinics and cruises will all be free, and he promises there won’t be any “boring, formal meetings.”

Peek’s goal is to bring together a large pool of auto enthusiasts across the island.

“There are a lot of people on Bainbridge still in the closet about their love of cars,” he said. “If it’s in your blood, you know it. It’s an outlet for a lot of us.”

For Peek, little can compare to taking his 1968 Oldsmobile 442 for a spin, even if its vintage 8-track player sometimes rumbles over the purr of the engine.

“The Oldsmobile is a 4,000-pound paperweight, and a magnet for scratches,” he said. “But I would rather be driving it than looking at it.”

Driving the car is about more than just the thrill of sitting behind a 375-horsepower engine. Taking a cruise in the 442 has sentimental value.

“Figuratively, my father’s fingerprints are all over the car,” he said. “It means a lot, since he is getting up there in years, to be driving a car that he drove and purchased brand new.”

With the auto club, Peek hopes to leave his fingerprint on Bainbridge and share his passion for cars while raising money for the community.

The club’s first event will be a Barrett-Jackson party, which will celebrate and screen the 2007 Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction in January.

“My dream has always been to have a place for people to meet,” Peek said, “where people can do minor adjustments, exchange how to solve problems and have some burgers.

“The club is about smiles and fun.”

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Wheel life

To join Jim Peek’s new automobile club or find out more about events, email jpeek@johnlscott.com or call 780-3310.