ABOUT BRUCE GRIGGS

A LETTER FROM TOM WILSON, AUTOMOTIVE TECHNICAL JOURNALIST

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You can tell much about a man by driving his car. As a performance motor journalist I’ve felt the personality of hundreds of men transfer through the pedals, seat and steering wheel of their personally modified cars—a fascinating interaction between machine and observer.

Naturally, most of these drives fall within the fat mound of the Bell curve; comfortably mainstream, quietly suffering the usual shortcomings and ignorant of the excellence that could be. More than expected are simply hopeless, just a mash of hastily gathered parts bolted together in a juvenile rush. A very few are excellent, however. Yes, they are the result of technically skilled hands, but more importantly the best cars benefit from a clear vision of what’s possible and are backed by a will to make them so. Bruce Griggs builds such cars.

My realization Griggs’ cars were something special came during a magazine test in the early 1990’s. I was tasked with driving a series of Griggs customer cars at a private track test. Each was excellent, but one stood out because its chassis was much more balanced than anything I had previously sampled. This was a surprise as I was an accomplished amateur road racer and used to race-prepared cars. But this one was definitely tuned to a finer edge, a car built for that narrow sliver at the far right of the Bell curve where championship drivers ply their trade.

My realization Griggs’ cars were something special came during a magazine test in the early 1990’s. I was tasked with driving a series of Griggs customer cars at a private track test. Each was excellent, but one stood out because its chassis was much more balanced than anything I had previously sampled. This was a surprise as I was an accomplished amateur road racer and used to race-prepared cars. But this one was definitely tuned to a finer edge, a car built for that narrow sliver at the far right of the Bell curve where championship drivers ply their trade.

It definitely had some things to teach me. In short, the car was faster than I was, and I had some growing to do.

Such cars don’t come forth by chance and as I’ve found in repeated exposure to Bruce Griggs, the same combination of skill, sensitivity, direction and willingness to teach exhibited by his cars are emblematic of the man as well. Much of this comes from Griggs’ amazingly wide bandwidth. Interested in everything, a simple technical question with Bruce Griggs can easily run into an hours-long discussion ranging from metallurgy to metaphysics, all of it united by a deep conviction to get at the truth.

And the truth, once discovered, is something for Griggs to hold to. He’s not the man for halfway measures or expedients, nor is he much interested in repeating last year’s answer when it could be improved. The job is to be done right, and considering Griggs’ decades of automotive experience in concert with his skills it’s easy to see what a formidable source of solutions he offers anyone in the high-performance sphere.

     — Tom Wilson

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