Dr. Peppers and Dream Cars — A Woodstock Man’s Labor of Love

As a young kid growing up on Arnold Mill Road in Woodstock, Mike Free always harbored a passion for automobiles. He dreamed about them as he watched them come and go at the Sandy Springs service station where he started working when he was only eleven. He learned how to rebuild engines and transmissions in them when he went to work at a garage with his father. Now as the owner of Woodstock’s Cars, Inc., he finally gets to spend every day with his first love.

Cars, Inc. Tells Story of an old Woodstock

Back in the 1970′s when East Cherokee Drive was still just a tar gravel road flanked too closely by pines, Mike Free remembers visiting an old service station that would someday become Cars, Inc.

“This is where I used to come to buy my RC Colas and Moonpies as a kid,” Mike remembers with a wistful smile. (The location would also serve for a while as the Cherokee County South Precinct police station, he recalls.) The cars back then were still a curvaceous mix of chrome and steel, and Mike had a favorite: a GT Shelby Mustang. He didn’t know when or by what means one would come to him; he just had faith it would someday.

Then when he was twenty, he married and subsequently had two boys of his own. He spent the next twenty seven years building a construction and consulting business, but he always kept a garage full of cars at home to work on when he needed to unwind. “After a tough day, I would go out to my garage and work on cars sometimes until one or two in the morning,” says Mike. “My wife would come out and say, ‘You need to come home,’ and I would tell her, ‘I am home.’”

Finally, one fateful day a year into his retirement, he drove by his old childhood haunt on East Cherokee Drive and saw the “For Lease” sign. He knew right then what he had to do.

A Man’s Labor of Love

Mike’s life-hobby turned into his dream job seemingly overnight, and his business became not only a dealership for the classic cars and hot rods of his youth, but also a detail shop that does everything from minor repairs to total restoration. But more than that, he describes it as a sanctuary for car lovers like him.

“This is where the old boys come to remember,” Mike says.

You can now often find Mike with these “boys” in the showroom, enjoying his favorite snack of Dr. Peppers and McDonald’s french fries, and reminiscing about what it was like growing up in Woodstock. And if the boys can’t drop by, they just honk their horns or rev their engines in a respectful acknowledgment as they pass.

Mike still loves to tell the story about how he finally got his dream car, a 2007 GT 500 Shelby, who he calls “Eleanor,” and share what “she” means to him. Mike’s “Eleanor” represents what a man can accomplish from years of hard work, an unwavering faith, and a nostalgia for the American Dream.

“This right here,” he says as he motions to the cars that surround him, “this is what made America…and you should never forget where you came from.”

Mike Free, owner of Cars, Inc.

About Jennifer Carter

Jennifer Carter has written 17 posts.

Jennifer is a freelance writer and photographer who is passionate about discovering and sharing her great finds in the Cherokee County community, as well as the I-575 "Gateway Corridor." A veteran of the United States Air Force and a graduate of the University of Georgia, Jennifer has lived in Germany, Italy, and Iceland before settling with her husband and son in Woodstock. More of her photography can be found at jwanderlust.com.

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