It’s hard to believe that a successful businessman’s first intelligible phrase was “Hot car, Momma,” but it gets easier when you know the man in question is Bobby Likis.

     Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1942,
a two year old Bobby uttered these words after due deliberation from the back seat of his daddy’s 1940 Ford Coupe during a July hot spell, and his first clear phrase seemed to prophesy his direction in life.

     Bobby moved to Pensacola, Florida in 1960, and his formative years come straight from American Graffiti and were spent ignoring his studies and working on cars and girls, not necessarily in that order. Though intrigued greatly by the fairer sex, tinkering with automobiles became Bobby’s obsession, and the hot rod, drag racing atmosphere of the early 60’s became Bobby’s real school.

     In the deep South, cheeseburgers, hangin’ out, and chopped and channel flat-head ruled the day during that very brief, unique, and vaguely innocent post-war/pre-war era, and Bobby was right smack in the middle of it all. Bobby built and rebuilt race car engines with a knack and assiduous care that bordered on vengeance. He loved cars, and it showed in every automobile he took apart, put together, renovated, or simply admired.

     Before Bobby left his teens, he wasn’t considered just a mechanically inclined young man who fooled around with junkers and jalopies. He was roundly acknowledged as an automotive expert by anyone who really knew cars.

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