SEATTLE – Ernesto Lacayo was 10 years old when he found his dream car.

His uncle, Carlos, had a warehouse when he would ship toys, clothes and classic cars to Central America. Tucked away in the corner was a green 1976 Volkswagen Westfalia bus.

Carlos had forgotten the bus was still in the warehouse, but while Lacayo was riding a forklift with his uncle and father, Luis Ernesto, the child spotted it immediately. The green color reminded him of the “Ninja Turtle car” and he fell in love with it.

“You guys can have this,” Carlos said. “I don’t even know if it works.”

Lacayo and his father were able to get it running and took it home. It has been Lacayo’s car ever since.

“I never looked back,” he said. “It was my dream car.”

For Lacayo, the VW has been more than a car over the years, in fact, it played a pivotal role in helping him land his latest job as the Dragons’ kicker. But it started as a father-son project.

“We used to work on it,” he said. "When we first got it, it was one of those things, well, let’s see if she starts up.

“It was something me and my dad bonded over a lot. It’s something that fascinated me. VWs, the air-cooled engine, is something that’s very easy to work on and it was just something really easy for us to do.”

The first time they took the car out for a camping trip, “we didn’t make it a mile.” With a little time, effort and maintenance, they got it running.

“It was something I was always known for as a kid,” he said. “It was the Turtle Mobile, the Green Machine.”

Now it’s something for the kicker and his head coach to talk about, since Jim Zorn was known to ride in a VW Beetle with his Hall of Fame teammate Steve Largent when they were playing for the Seahawks.

“He’s already given me some options to talk to him about VW,” Lacayo said. “He loves that stuff.”