Where do you start with this one? I’m not sure. There’s so much to say about this car, but it’s hard to put into words.

Mike Burroughs of StanceWorks is about as good of a guy as you’ll find in the car world.  He does his own thing, turns heads, keeps people on their toes, all without an elitist attitude.  That’s hard to come by these days.  Some people start getting “internet fame” and their ego blows up.  Whether you absolutely loved his car and what it was about, or hated it for your own reasons, you’ve gotta chock it up to him…

Mike had lent the car to a friend about a year ago.  It was about as clean as a e28 could be.  Nothing major wrong with it.  Until it was hit by a tractor trailer and the car was totaled.  Instead of moving on and forgetting about his car, Mike didn’t want to let it die.  He rebuilt the front end with parts he had kicking around.  In his own words, “That accident was the rebirth of my car. It marked a moment in time where it went from an asset to a canvas. I had no excuse not to go ‘all the way’ with it… and so I did.”

I first saw this car at Southern Worthersee in Helen, GA back in May of 2009.  I loved it from the moment I saw it.  It was something different. Something fresh.  Someone doing what they wanted and not caring the least at what other people thought.  I heard people saying he was dumb for driving a totaled car on the road.  That he was wasting his time and money doing anything to the car since it was worth nothing.  Worth nothing?  Tell that to him.  Cars have more than a dollar value when you’ve spent years driving and working on them.  Like he said, it went from an asset to a canvas. Something he could do whatever he wanted with.  And he did just that.

Mike credits this car for many of the friendships he now has.  And I think we can all relate.  Take your cars away.  Take away the people you’ve met because of your cars.  What are you left with?  For me personally, that is most of friends.  They’re all somehow related or intertwined with cars.  But from another aspect, take away the experiences.  The road trips.  The wrench days.  The photo-shoots.  The nights you’ve spent standing in a parking lot freezing your ass for hours just to talk to these people.  You’re not left with much.  There is something about it that I can never manage to put into words. Whether or not you want to admit it, these cars are a huge part of our lives.

So I guess it’s time to fill you in on what happened.  Mike took the car to his buddies shop and took a look at things, only to realize the frame was tweaked really bad on the drivers side.  This was causing the front left tire to wear a little quicker than the others, something he didn’t really pay much attention to.  The car was “totaled” afterall.  But a few days ago things fell apart.  Literally.  When he was at his friend’s shop he noticed the body was cracking and starting to separate too.  In Mike’s words, “A few days ago, my best friend slipped through my hands, so to speak. Gracefully sliding my way over a speed bump, shit went to hell.”

I’m not going to say I can relate, because I can’t.  But I can imagine the pain.  Knowing everything that car has brought you, and now the car is gone. The friendships will still be there. And so will the shows. And Mike will probably move on and come up with another car in due time, but I’m not sure that anything will ever live up to the legacy of Rusty.

The Loss of a Friend from Mike Burroughs on Vimeo.

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skinnykid