A champion of vocational education, Scott Taylor is a winning short course racer, race shop owner, and manufacturer of performance competition parts. Congratulations to Scott Taylor, a 2022 inductee into ORMHOF; Scott is why we say; legends live at ORMHOF.org. Be sure to tune in on your favorite podcast app.
5:41 – I would take things apart I shouldn’t take apart
10:38 – I advocate deeply with high schools on how important it is to keep the five things of vocational training…
19:29 – I had a really good car and I drove the wheels off of it
27:29 – He was a lot faster than me, but I had my eyes set on somebody I had to beat
36:26 – we weren’t cheating, but we were building our own stuff and ahead of our times
45:25 – it’s like an old girlfriend calling you up after 10 years and wanting to start dating again
Special thanks to ORMHOF.org for support and sponsorship of this podcast.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:14.190] – Big Rich Klein
On this week’s episode of Conversations with Big Rich, I’ll be discussing life and racing with Scott Taylor. Scott is a 2022 ORMHOF inductee, a champion short course racer, manufacturer of performance competition parts, and race shop owner. Scott, it’s so good to have you on the air. Let’s find out more about you.
[00:01:38.770] – Scott Taylor
Okay, I’m glad to be here today, Rich.
[00:01:41.200] – Big Rich Klein
Let’s find out where were you born and raised.
[00:01:45.660] – Scott Taylor
Well, I was born and raised in this little town out in northwest Illinois, and it’s Belvedere, Illinois. Very close, we’re 12 minutes away from Rockford and about 70 miles west of Chicago. I’m born and raised here. It’s a very quiet community and very blessed to be in such a wonderful setting because I can go off and do what I did. And then when I come back, I’m back in my little protected bubble, we’ll call it, but keeping a low profile. But I grew up here and built a home a one block from where I grew up. And Kelly and I and my daughter still live right here in Belvedere, Illinois.
[00:02:29.510] – Big Rich Klein
Excellent. And I would imagine that the people that you grew up with in your youth, are there still a lot of them hanging around?
[00:02:38.430] – Scott Taylor
Oh, yeah, I’m into so many different things, and we’ll get into that possibly, but snowmobile buddies and flying buddies and shooting buddies, and we’ve lost a few of them along the way. But in fact, this weekend coming up, I’m going with a friend of mine that I’ve snowmobiled with for 20 years. My wife and I are going up to the U. P. To go riding side by side in the fall weather and the fall trees and just get away for a few days.
[00:03:06.280] – Big Rich Klein
Excellent. Those early years there in Illinois, you, it sounds like you did hunting and fishing and all that stuff. How were you as a student? Were you more interested in getting out or were you a good student?
[00:03:23.410] – Scott Taylor
I was a poor student. I couldn’t wait to get out of school to get home and help my dad mow the yard or helping paint or helping do whatever. My father worked from 7:00 in the morning until 5:30, the traditional hours, and I couldn’t wait for him to get home, and foot was tapping all the time in school. I got through it. I graduated from high school, but I was more interested in being home, fiddling with a go-cart or a lawnmower or who knows what. Then as I got older, in 12, 13, I was into fishing and hunting, and I just wasn’t really all that keen on school. I couldn’t sit still.
[00:04:10.410] – Big Rich Klein
Understood. That’s a common thread with all of us that are in this industry, as a matter of fact. So then the activities that you guys did, you mentioned snowmobiling and flying and what was the earliest things that you remember doing as a family?
[00:04:34.100] – Scott Taylor
My folks and I and my two brother and sister, I can recall we used to do a lot of boating on Sunday. They had to pack up the boat with whatever we needed to take to the lake and we’d go and spend a Sunday and the long drives home, which was only an hour, but then it seemed like it was all night. We used to go as a family, did a lot of boating. We went on camping trip and my dad didn’t like it, so we didn’t go back to doing that. But I was even into flying model airplanes, and my dad and I used to do some of that. I can’t really think of too many other things. I wasn’t into sports. I was into anything with a gas motor on it. Anything that you could put gas in and run it, I was all in.
[00:05:28.860] – Big Rich Klein
You had that same drive that most of us had, taking things apart as a kid and then trying to figure out how they go back together even if they weren’t broken?
[00:05:41.140] – Scott Taylor
Oh, yeah. I would take things apart. I shouldn’t take a part and figure out how it was built and try to make it faster, make it better. But my dad was a mechanic at the Ford garage in Belvedere, and my mother was a circuit clerk of Boone County. Mom and dad were both hard workers. My father left Manley’s, I forget the years now, but he was there for 57 years. I got to go down to Manley’s, where he worked on Saturdays when he went down to either work to service his own cars or get caught up on something or whatever we did. I used to go down with him, and I always looked forward to doing that. READ MORE
