Houston car kings, each from different worlds, vie to see...

Jeff Kurtz and Ron Fehring would likely never meet if it weren’t for their cars — and a chance to become part of a toy dynasty.

They live in different worlds: Kurtz, 31, lives in Richmond with a job in Angleton. Fehring, almost 70, runs his family’s business in Baytown. Kurtz entered the drift scene, modifying the 2002 Honda S2000 that ferried him to high school and the technical school in Spring where he honed his mechanic skills. Fehring followed through on preserving his brother’s 1972 Chevy LUV — which sat in storage about as long as Kurtz has been alive.

For both, it’s been a long journey to the same place: a chance of winning a national competition and having their prized rides immortalized as Hot Wheels. Yes, the little metal cars.

“This has global distribution,” said Scott Shaffstall, a spokesman for Mattel, which makes Hot Wheels. “We’re talking tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.”

The cars are sold in more than 150 countries.

Only 18 cars from across the country were selected to participate in the event Tuesday in Las Vegas. Entrants were chosen on a few criteria: Cars had to be custom built by the owner, unique and with a compelling backstory.

The cars left last Tuesday for a semitruck trip west. The owners left a few days from their different locations and lives, linked by a love of gearshifts and custom grills — withering as younger generations forgo car-craziness for tech gadgets.

For years, signs have pointed to smaller shares of young people getting behind the wheel. Researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle in a 2016 study for the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found the percentage of people with driver’s licenses has dropped steadily since 1983.

Both Kurtz and Fehring would love to take home the toy.

“It means a lot to me because of the history of the truck,” Fehring said.

Keeping a promise

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Chris Fehring wasn’t supposed to live long enough to own a car or stay healthy enough to enjoy it. Cystic fibrosis sufferers in the 1970s usually died in their midteens, but there he was in 1978, 17 and the proud owner of a yellow 1972 Chevy LUV.

The tiny truck — its name was an acronym for light utility vehicle — was first made in 1972 and continued on with its signature four-headlight first edition until 1980. Popular as light-duty pickups and marketed for their toughness, they took on a lovable status in part because of the name.

Chris paid between $600 and $800, best as anyone can recall.

Ron, his older brother by 11 years, helped him make great plans for it. They tinkered and traded in the hopes of making it a true hot rod. They customized pieces and even split the frame in two.

“We built it as a toy for him,” Fehring said.

It was a pile of parts when Chris died about four years later. Fehring picked up the pieces, always planning on putting them back together to honor his little brother.

“Life got in the way,” he said.

He was growing a business, the truck repair and trim shop in Baytown bought from his father, a few months before Chris died. There were kids to put through school. His wife of 31 years died in 2003. Fehring said he was “lonely and lost” then saved when he met his second wife, Cindy.

The LUV remained in the back but never really went anywhere. About a decade ago, something stirred him to action, and he sent some of the pieces to a Houston-based company starting up to do customer restorations. The next time he checked on them, they were out of business.

“I found some of the pieces, but I didn’t find all of them,” Fehring said.

Years passed and Fehring developed friendships with Chris Hrabina and Matt Reynolds, swapping stories and Fehring talking about the LUV and what he wanted to do to fix it up. Hrabina turned to him one night, Fehring said, about five years ago.

“It’s time,” he said.

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The trio worked nights and weekends. The truck was sheared, lowered, louvered and lit up with a bright-yellow paint job.

“It just had to be yellow,” Fehring said.

This LUV, however, is hardly like the ones driven off the lot. It’s sporting 1986 Corvette brakes and suspension, along with the transmission of an Oldsmobile Toronado. The engine — now in what would have been the truck’s bed — is a 1957 Chrysler behemoth, topped with a supercharger.

Almost every surface has been either replaced or run through a custom modification. The rear bumper is a shaved-down El Camino tail. Caps for the tires come from a custom metal shop that sells ones with the Hot Wheels logo. Same goes for the steering wheel.

Spiffed-up side panels, however, are only part of the attraction. Even at idle, the little LUV roars, sucking in oxygen and converting it to an absurd amount of horsepower.

The LUV’s strength is real, even if it’s just for show.

“I don’t want to abuse it,” Fehring said, adding that people often ask if the engine is for real.

Where the engine should be, he stores the lawn chairs he and Cindy use for car shows.

“They’ll ask, ‘How fast does it go?’” he said. “I’ll tell them I have gotten it up to 72 (mph).”

There’s one question he can answer faster than he’s driven the car. No, it isn’t for sale, even if it could fetch far more than he’s put into it.

“Because of what it is, belonging to Chris, I’ll never sell it,” Fehring said. “But there has to be someone as a custodian.”

The crowds at his car shows tend to be, in Fehring’s kind estimation, mature. Classics cars don’t draw younger people like they used to.

Fehring knows one day he won’t be there to care for his brother’s truck. He’s got four grandsons, one of whom has shown an interest in becoming a gearhead — as some car enthusiasts call themselves.

“He’s 7,” Fehring said. “We’ll give him a few more years.”

Soon, he might have a toy version to occupy him.

The right fit

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Kurtz didn’t so much race into drifting as he learned to lean into it.

In 2005, his senior year at Angleton High School, he snagged a black 2002 Honda S2000. For a teenager, it wasn’t a bad ride: an open-top sports car. But with only a 2-liter engine it wasn’t handing a new driver a speed demon.

Unless of course, like Kurtz, you use the car for a couple years to attend vocational school in Spring to become a mechanic and then take all that Honda-hacking knowledge and a new-found interest in drifting and drop a V6 minivan engine in it with a supercharger. Then you tweak the torque parameters by stripping it, adding a lot of flexibility to the front — and perhaps adding a little nitrous oxide.

“It’s like a drug for race people,” Kurtz joked about the nitrous. “Once you get a taste, you want more.”

Kurtz knew he didn’t want an office job or to be in a college classroom.

“It just didn’t fit me,” he said.

He’d grown up around muscle cars — American icons such as the Ford Mustang and Dodge Charger showed off in Steve McQueen movies — but the first “Fast and the Furious” flick turned him into an import fan before he could even drive.

By the time high school came to a close, he’d opted for automotive tech. That landed him a service job at a Honda dealership, which hooked him up with a few racing teams at an Angleton race track.

Pretty quickly, he found himself leaving the Honda dealership and jumping into a job at the track taking care of all the cars there. That way, owners arrive, strap themselves in and race around the track.

It also opened up more chances to tinker with his Honda, a rarity on the drift track. Typically you’ll see high-end imports, or 3-series BMWs skidding sideways.

“It was the only car I had,” he said, “so we made it work.”

Drifting isn’t like racing in terms of fastest car wins. It’s more like diving or gymnastics, where the technical and the timing merge.

The sport is essentially the cooler version of anyone sliding on snow, done intentionally. The goal is to lose traction on the rear of the vehicle so it slides around while maintaining some control with the front. By intentionally oversteering on the front, it allows the car’s momentum to carry it — basically allowing it to drive sideways.

“You are there to perform and put on a show for the crowd,” Kurtz said.

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That does not, however, mean the driver is off the hook to burn rubber.

“You make the back of the car a drag race car and the front end a rally car,” Kurtz said, explaining the net effect is a car that travels sideways instead of straight.

Kurtz’s ride, meanwhile, isn’t a mere stock S2000. He stopped driving it on city streets when he put in the roll cage.

“A roll cage is great when you’re wearing a helmet,” he said. “If you’re not and you get hit, your head can hit the bar.”

He’s seen his share of strikes, particularly the back end slamming into the wall.

“We’ve lost tons of bumpers,” he said, replaced with new ones either scrapped or fabricated.

Often, someone who contributes materials to the car or his drift team earns a place on the car via laminate sticker. A clothing brand he works with has a prominent spot, along with the business that does his paint jobs. He prefers to keep a clean look, at least for a competition car, with the original black as a backdrop for eye-piercing safety green.

Kurtz never anticipated winning when he went to Dallas for the car show, but he said judges were fascinated by all of the extensive modifications to fit a Honda Odyssey engine into a small sports car.

Younger and driving a different vehicle, Kurtz admits he is an outlier among the 18 competitors and car fans. He also is perhaps among the last of a dying breed of gearheads who gravitate to cars rather than technology.

“It very well might turn out that way,” Kurtz said when asked about the potential, especially among fans of imports.

Japan is already facing a decline in interest, he said.

“They are having a hard time getting youth into cars,” Kurtz said, passing a hand across the safety green roll cage of his car outside the garage at the racetrack it calls home. “Most of them have no desire to drive. They’d rather ride public transportation.”

A Formula 4 car roars around the track behind him. At this point in his career, he can not only identify a type of engine by sound, but diagnose what sounds off. It’s why he’s bearish on electric cars.

“I’d miss the sound,” he said.

dug.begley@chron.com