An awesome byproduct of the hot-car scene is learning about the people we share this passion with and discovering what other hobbies make them tick.

First published in the July 2026 issue of Street Machine

Take Tuff Street stalwart (and aficionado for anything bright green) Tristan Ockers, for example. Although he’s well known throughout the car world for his head-kicking MINCER Capri, Tristan shares my passion for BMX bikes.

Like me, Tristan began his BMX journey in the early 1980s, starting with a garden-variety Reliance Stingray before stepping up his game to a Torker 360 freestyle bike in 1987. He still has a Torker in his vast collection today, but not surprisingly, he rates his all-bright-green Cobra as a particular favourite.

While 80s-era Tristan was jumping in a line-up of local friends in rural NSW, I would do weekend BMX rides into Brisbane City with a couple of mates, terrorising the Queen Street Mall and looping around the river. As car-crazy teens, our mid-pedal conversations would dissect the latest builds from our local heroes, Greg Carlson, Wayne Pagel and Rob Beauchamp, our chat interspersed with bunny hops, flick-outs and monos.

I remember one arvo when a mate’s bunny hop fell short and he clipped the gutter, popping his rear tyre. The Saturday shops were shut by lunchtime back then, even in the city, so there was no chance of a buying a new tube or patch kit. We were looking at a very long walk home.

So, we checked our lone backpack to see what we could cobble together. The pickings were slim; a couple of Redskins, a pack of Winnie blues and a Coke bottle full of tap water were about as good as it got, until we lucked upon a shifting spanner. Thus armed, we hatched a plan to make a very crude three-wheeled tandem bike.

We removed the offending flat rear wheel with the shifter before squeezing the rear dropouts of that frame over the front axle and forks of one of the other bikes, then used the now-spare rear wheel nuts to lock it all together.

And it bloody worked! One mate on the front bike steered, while our mate who had the flat scored the pedalling chores at the rear. Being a Skyway tuff, the flat-tyre wheel was easy to sling over my shoulder, and away we went, all making it home in one piece with plenty of laughs and weird looks along the way.

So, what does all that have to with cars? Well, for me and my mates, as with Tristan and many other 1980s kids, tinkering with bikes lay the simplest of foundations for our future automotive pursuits. We learnt basic skills like cleaning and adjusting bearings, stripping and respraying frames, and even the odd spot of ‘panel beating’ when we ran out of talent. We toyed with different chain wheels and sprockets to find the best gearing for our chosen combos, and as per that pseudo-tandem bike, we learned how to troubleshoot. It was all incidentally gained skills and knowledge that helped prepare us for the kinds of things we’d face later on with cars.

Indeed, within a few years, one of my mates from that teenage city ride, Toppy, had begun the resto of an LJ GTR XU-1, which he still owns today and proudly displays alongside a matching Mongoose BMX.

These days, I still enjoy a Brisbane BMX ride with like-minded folk. The pace is a little slower and those seats are a little harder, but it’s a great laugh, with conversations that nearly always revert back to cars. Oh, and I always pack a spare tube or two along with a spanner, just in case.

Project-wise, there’s been a bit happening with the Delta Falcon I mentioned previously. We’ve been sourcing and de-EFI-ing a late-model Windsor and have begun bare-metalling the rear quarters. Like many 60s customs, the Falcon’s body metal is a bit of an oxy-welded, Silence of the Lambs-style skinsuit under all the paint, but hey, it’s hung in there for the past 50-plus years, so we’ll knock it into shape to last another 50.