Tigers, Spiders and Giants... on Federal Road?

When Craig Cook turned 16 in Easton, his father handed over the keys to his 1965 Sunbeam Tiger. It was a classic British roadster, one any teen would love to drive... which Craig did, until another car enthusiast spotted the car, and offered to buy it. After getting his father's permission, Craig sold the Tiger for $100... or $59,900 less than what a first-rate, well-restored version might run today.

Craig laughs while telling the story, now — but he can afford to, because since then he's owned, or driven, or worked on, about every car imaginable. Co-owner, with Gary Pojednic, of ENI Motorsports on Federal Road (across from ShopRite Plaza, but in the back building), he's used to cars coming and going... though he'd prefer the ones that stay, since when ENI started up in Brookfield in 2006, it specialized in long-term, top-of-the-line restorations.

ENI still does such work — in the shop is a 1959 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider Veloce convertible, being brought back to its original specifications for a contemporary architect — but the recession has forced Craig and Gary to take on more routine work. You're still more likely to see Mercedes and BMWs and Porsches in the shop than Buicks and Nissans, however, because both owners — who do the work themselves, with Craig more front-office, Gary more under-the-hood — have soft spots for German engineering.

Craig grew up in the car world, his father having owned a part-distribution company in Fairfield County and spending many weekend racing cars, muscle as well as sport. "He had a need for speed," says Craig, recalling how, as a boy, he'd spend his afternoons after school, and weekends, and summers, helping his father out at the company or on the track... and with that Tiger.

"My Mom tore up the transmission learning to drive the manual," says Craig, grinning. "I remember Dad re-building it on the kitchen table."

Craig's love of cars is obvious, but it wasn't his lifelong dream. He wanted to play pro football: a graduate of Redding's Joel Barlow High School, in 1985 he attended the New York Giants' then-new training camp in Purchase, New York, where Lawrence Taylor tried to inspire the "newbies" by showing them his paycheck stub. "I still have it," says Craig. "It was $60,000 a week back then." An injury shortened his sports career, though... and fortunately, he had a fallback.

He's happy with how things turned out... and the scenic, 20-minute drive to work (he lives in Sherman), which beats his old commutes to jobs, in restoration and part-distribution, in New York and New Jersey.

And Brookfield? The shop's location was mostly luck: when Craig and Gary described their proposed business to many towns and landlords, many thought "grease monkeys," and thus "DEP problems," rather than "high-end, spic-and-span shop," which auto-restoration concerns tend to be. The men rehabbed the facility themselves, leaving their car-restoration jobs in Pound Ridge, New York, at the end of the work day and, for three months, laboring into the wee hours to create their own dream.

Gary apologizes for "the mess" as he gives me a tour of the shop, but it's way cleaner than my own garage. And when Gary gets talking about German craftsmanship — the beauty of the 1950s-era 300SL Mercedes ("We've done at least 10"), back when parts were made to last, could be re-built, were created for very specific applications — you get the sense he's totally at home.

"That's craftsmanship, that's where the value comes in," says Gary — not in replacing parts ("anyone can do that") but in making old parts new again, or fabricating a new part that's as good as the original.

"It's been a wonderful experience so far," says Craig. "And there's always a project to do."