I built model cars for this (the dragstrip) and that’s when Revell came out with the 1/32-scale snap together kit. “Greg Zyla had a drag racing game, called the drag racing game and it was a board game where you rolled dice and moved cars down the track,” Garland said. Along with Bret Kepner, he has taken the game to an even more realistic level. Garland has built model cars to go along with his Greg Zyla game to add a realistic twist. “I don’t have hardly any of them left and I wish I did because a lot of them are worth a lot of money right now,” Garland said. Garland doesn’t know the exact number of model cars he has built, but it is the thousands. If I had a certain body I wanted to use and it wasn’t there, I would take an existing kit and reshape the body and make it the way I wanted it to look.” There were no decals for these cars that weren’t out there, so I had to hand letter everything I did. “So, I would paint and hand-letter my own cars to make someone else’s car. “I started building with the manufactured kits, and I did that for years, but it got to the point that I wanted to build stuff that wasn’t out there,” Garland said. Garland’s hobby began with the cars he could find in stores. “I’m going on my 50th year of building, and I went to my first drag race in 1967 (at Rockford (Ill.) Dragway, now known as Byron Dragway) and I fell in love with it.

“I started building models when I was 5 years old because I liked cars,” Garland said. Now, nearly 50 years later, Garland is still active in building some of the finest model Funny Cars and other race cars out there. Little did he know, a youthful endevour would become a lifelong passion. Little did he know, a youthful endevour would become a lifelong passion for Mike Garland.

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