As 'car guys', we can all remember our first car, and, even before that, the first moment we saw a car that burned itself into our young conciousness and launched a lifetime obsession with vehicles. For George Simone, the driving force behind the Auto Detailing Academy, the earliest car memory is a green early 50's Studebaker Land Cruiser that a neighbor proudly drove home, fresh and shiny from the dealer in the booming days of post-war America. The sight of that bullet-nosed beauty started young George on his automotive journey.

A precocious kid, George was in the lucky position of having a father who ran a small body shop, and when, at the age of 9, he complained to his Dad about his small allowance, he was given the opportunity to start working after school sanding cars for a dollar a day. This was a big step up from his previous chore of helping his uncle strain and rebottle the 'pit' oil at his Amoco station during Sunday visits, at 10 cents a quart, and made George a veritable prodigy of polishing, who can now lay claim to almost 50 years of experience making cars shine. The after-school work turned into a full-time job in the summers, as he continued his auto-body apprenticeship and started learning the car trade inside out, as his Dad was also buying and selling cars by then.

           George, Jimmy and Ted of ADA

A thrifty youth, George saved up his earnings, and got an early start collecting, too, when he bought his first car, a yellow 1940 Packard 110 woody, while still in high school. A significant choice that, as he is now one of the country's leading restorers and collectors of classic Packards. His daily driver was not too shabby, either, as he was the only kid in his senior class driving a new 1969 Corvette, bought with his own hard-earned cash. After graduation, he went to work full-time for his father at what was by then a full-service used car dealership, body-shop and repair facility known as Dexter Motors, of which he still is a principal to this day. He has also worked as a buyer for a major chain of car dealerships in the Northeast, dealing with major auctions like Manheim, Adessa and Southern, and is a licensed sales tax appraiser.

Having bought, sold, repaired, painted and polished thousands of cars, George now brings his lifetime passion for classic cars and perfect finishes to his latest venture, the Auto Detailing Academy, where he's passing along his skills both to fellow enthusiasts and to a new generation of automotive professionals. His mastery and training of auto detailing, which combines old-school craftsmanship with the latest high-tech materials and techniques, produces profits and customer satisfaction for the pros, and Concours d'Elegance trophies for the collectors, who learn from Auto Detailing Academy and use the knowledge.