Voices No. 12
You’re never too old to play with cars.
september 2024
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5 minute read
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give it the wrks. Welcome to the twelfth edition of Scenic Route: Voices — a series spotlighting the stories of drivers and enthusiasts from all walks of life. This month, we’re entering the oddly proportioned world of Lincoln Wong. And finding out how a childhood spent playing with toy cars has helped informed his signature style and unexpected rise in popularity.
Words and photos by: lincoln wong
@lncln_wrks
In a time when cars are typically getting bigger, I ask, what if the cars were smaller? No screen adjustments needed. What you’re seeing are my miniature cars that I’ve drawn in digital 3D. Despite my love for drawing cars, I’m not an artist by trade. I’m a pediatric radiologist working full-time at a children’s hospital. It was my role as the medical director of the 3D Printing and Advanced Visualizations Lab that helped push me into drawing cars and creating LNCLN WRKS. I needed to learn how to use the 3D software that my hospital uses to view patient models. So, I began drawing toy cars as practice.
Toys are a big inspiration for the LNCLN WRKS aesthetic, I draw heavily from my childhood memories playing with Hot Wheels, Micro Machines, Lego, and Tamiya remote-controlled cars. I would spend hours drawing and sitting on the floor playing with them. I think that’s a big reason why LNCLN WRKS is so popular. My art evokes cherished memories of youth with a love of cars. LNCLN WRKS is a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
“
Toys are a big inspiration
for the LNCLN WRKS
aesthetic.”
In 1991 I was given the opportunity to write a monthly column for Vette magazine. The monthly column that I was assigned to write did not require photography, but the magazine’s feature stories did. After uninspiring results by several other photographers, I decided to produce the imagery myself, and the demand for my work grew rapidly after that
In 1995 Carolyn and I sold the shop so I could turn my full attention to writing and photography, and I was soon working for scores of different publishers. I produced car features, personality profiles, event coverage, technical articles, and opinion pieces
By virtue of an amazing sequence of events, a new opportunity presented itself in 1997. One day I got a call from a mysterious man who said he wanted to ask me for a huge favor, but before he could do that, he had to know if he could trust me. Convinced it was a prank, I told the caller he could trust me with his life.
“My name is Gary Claudio,” the caller revealed, “and I’m the marketing manager for Chevrolet Racing. We have a two-car factory Corvette racing program coming and I want to borrow your L88 Corvette for a display at next year’s SEMA show, which is where we will publicly announce the program.”
In that instant I knew the call wasn’t a prank. Several years earlier, Carolyn and I had found a lost piece of Corvette racing history — the 1967 Corvette that the Sunray DX Oil company had campaigned to a GT class win in the ’67 12 Hours of Sebring with Don Yenko and Dave Morgan behind the wheel. Dave went on to earn the 1967 SCCA Midwest Division A-Production championship with the car, and in 1968 he co-drove it with Jerry Grant to the GT win in the 24 Hours of Daytona. This incredibly successful vehicle is one of only 20 1967 Corvettes that left the factory with an all-out competition package called L88, making it the holy grail to collectors. Sunray sold the car in 1969 and though it was raced until 1987, its early history faded away.
After stumbling upon it by chance, we recognized that it was something special. We bought the car and restored it to its ’67 Sebring configuration, and then commissioned artist Charles Maher to create a painting of it. In 1992 that painting was displayed at an automotive show in Detroit. Gary Claudio happened to see the show, fell in love with the painting, and tried to buy it. He was disappointed to learn that it was a commissioned work and therefore not for sale. Five years later, when planning a display of historically significant Corvette race cars for the public unveiling of the coming factory Corvette race program, he remembered the painting, contacted Mr. Maher for my name, and made that fateful phone call that changed the trajectory of my life.