A shot from the family photo album: Jim and Alyssa Rawa with James and Davilee.
The Ultimate Car Guy A conversation with ‘Fury Jim’ Rawa
By Frank Adkins Photos courtesy Alyssa Rawa
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newspaper article published in 1992 heralded 13-year-old Jim Rawa as a “mechanical prodigy” for the restoration work he had done on his mother’s ’71 Chevelle. Although it might seem this was the first hint of what was to come for the young teen, the trajectory of his life had been set into motion years earlier. “My grandfather and my uncle were both Zenith TV technicians,” Rawa said. “When I was five years old I learned to solder, and I was already fixing radios by taking them apart and replacing the burned out tubes.” Not long afterward, he memorized the color codes for resistors. While in the third grade, he took a high school -level electronics class. “I read a lot of books and car magazines, including all of the car books in the school library,” he said. “Between kindergarten and fourth grade I built several car models, and I studied their individual components.”
Growing up in northern New Jersey, by fourth grade Rawa thought he would become an architect. “I loved Victorian houses. My mom would drive me around and I would take photos of different houses,” he said. “Then I would draw my own houses taking various features from the houses I had photographed.” He was as astute in learning home repair as he was in automobiles and electronics. He watched a plumber replace a water heater when he was 10, and he installed his first water heater two years later. He worked for an electrician 6
between eighth and ninth grades. In retrospect, he said, “I learned what mattered. My Grandpa died when I was 10, and after that I was the man of the house. The things I learned included gardening and how to take care of a home. I had already learned to sew before kindergarten.” Today his skills include carpentry and cabinet making. Rawa began working on his mother’s Chevelle when he was 11. “I took the carburetor apart to see how it worked. Then I put it back together so she wouldn’t know.”
