The art of the motor mechanic

Many MTA members can claim to be experts, but there are not many that can claim to be artists – except for Steve Welford. Steve was raised on a diet of cars. They’re engrained in his proud Cantabrian bones following half a century of being elbow deep fixing, driving, and drawing them. He’s a true artist and has gained a lot of respect with his realistic paintings depicting motor racing and caricatures of touring cars.

January 2023 saw Steve tick over 50 years of cracking out the tools and he’s still hard at it in his Christchurch workshop, Steve Welford Automotive Ltd; that’s right, it’s his name on the building. He’s proud of it and it’s been a big part of his motivation to do a superb job for his customers.

Steve’s happy to be labelled a petrolhead and you only need to cast an eye over his workshop reception area to see why.

There’s an array of meticulously cared for scale-model cars he’s built safely on display behind glass, and the walls are adorned with his favourite automotive pictures drawn by him.

You get the feeling Steve’s a man of detail and a serious automotive aficionado.

A career path, racing and following legends

It was inevitable Steve would have a bent for cars. His dad was a mechanic and as a youngster he spent weekends traipsing after the old man to racing events at Wigram Air Base in the 1960s, where his senses came alive to the smell of gasoline and burning rubber and the mighty roar of racing engines.

Great memories, Steve says, and a place where his appreciation for cars was ignited by famous racing drivers of the day.

“He would also drag me along to watch Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart and all the best drivers on the Tasman circuit and we would go into the pits and with his camera we would get photos of all these greats, it was unreal.”

Later on, when it came time to choose a career, Steve was at a crossroads in life and was favouring the idea of becoming a draughtsman. But his dad had other ideas and with his contacts in the industry pushed Steve to get a mechanics apprenticeship, which he did, and decades on he has no regrets about the decision he made back in 1972.

“I started my apprenticeship at Hutchison Motors in Christchurch, working on Fords for eight years and then moved to Branston Auto to get a wider range of experience, later moving to Trevor Crowe Motors and getting involved with race car

In the mid 1980s there was a chap by the name of Jack Henderson who was one of the early importers of Japanese used cars and he employed Steve to set up a workshop to service these new additions to the national fleet. The mechanics in the imports were a bit oddball compared with what was on the roads at the time and it provided just the kind of challenge Steve liked.

“There was no internet back then and some of the cars had things on them I had never seen before, and I just had to figure any problem out. There were all kinds of problems like sludge in engines from a lack of servicing and seat belt problems, we had to fix them because we couldn’t buy replacements,” Steve says. “There were Hondas that came in with triple carburettors with an extra choke; I had never seen that before and I had to work out what it all meant and how it worked.”

After a couple of years Jack

Henderson decided to shut up shop and in 1989 offered Steve the opportunity to take over the workshop and he took on the challenge, calling it South City Auto.

“Jack said to me, just buy the equipment and you are in business.

“At that time, I was having my first baby and building a house, so I gave it a bash and it worked out,” he says.

After a few years he moved to new premises, changing the name to Steve Welford Automotive.

MEMBER PROFILE: STEVE WELFORD AUTOMOTIVE, CHRISTCHURCH

Automotive artist

Steve’s a talented artist who’s gained a lot of respect from the motoring fraternity with his realistic painting of motor racing and caricatures of touring cars.

“I was bought up with cars and Dad used to build model cars, so naturally I would build model cars and it taught me a lot about realism,” Steve says.

“I started drawing cars because I was bored as a kid while on holiday camp.

“It’s a hobby and by finding a market drawing the touring cars I found that I could make some money and pictures of touring cars appealed to the ego of the drivers,” he says.

He’s undertaken commissions for Australian touring car giant Perkins Motor Sport and created a calendar for Orix Finance in 2004. Steve says with decades of drawing and painting there is still more to learn and he’s still perfecting his work.

“I like a challenge and I like to be as accurate as I can be, and I have always been like a sponge soaking up techniques and information and I still like learning.”

It’s not just cars he’s drawn either; there was a series of cartoons for the NZ Fire Service also.

“I did six cartoons for the brigade and a friend of mine who was also an artist did some and we put a package together and they sold sixty thousand of them.”

He also has a stunning scale-model car collection, which is intricate right down to the spark plug leads, wiring and speedo cables - everything you can think of to make it real. In the coming years Steve hopes to sell the business, but for now he has a few scale car kits he would like to complete and hopes he will squeeze in some time by taking Fridays off driving cars, building kit cars and riding his motorbike, and ever the artist – drawing cars. “Just don’t ever ask me to draw a Tesla,” he says.