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Josh Siegel plans to drive his 1955 Chevrolet 210 in Saturday’s Woodward Dream Cruise, a parade of thousands of vehicles that rolls annually through Metro Detroit. Photo: Jason Keen for The Wall Street Journal

Josh Siegel, 29, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who lives in Brookline, Mass., on his 1955 Chevrolet 210, as told to A.J. Baime.

This Saturday, the Woodward Dream Cruise will roll through Metro Detroit, within a half-mile of the home where I grew up. It is billed as the world’s largest car cruise, with over a million spectators. I will drive my 1955 Chevrolet 210 in the cruise, for the 13th time.

For me the story of this car begins with a summer job, back in 2003. I grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a suburb of Detroit that was deep in car culture. When I was 14, I taught kids at a summer camp to build model cars. No one in my family worked in the auto industry, but through that summer job I got hooked on cars.

Photos: A Learning Experience

Josh Siegel bought his 1955 Chevrolet 210 at age 14 with a learner’s permit and quickly had to figure out how to shift gears. Restoring the car inspired him to study engineering.

 
 
While Josh Siegel is a research scientist at MIT, he loves to work on his old Chevy because it has no computers. ‘It has everything you need, and nothing you don’t,’ he says.
Jason Keen for The Wall Street Journal
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I was just old enough to get my learner’s permit (14 years, 9 months), so I started looking for a vehicle of my own. I found a 1955 Chevrolet 210 in Arkansas, for sale on the internet. I had saved money from my summer camp job and I bought the Chevy for $3,000. Price included delivery, and the car was trucked to a town an hour and a half from our house.

My parents drove me out and I will never forget seeing that car roll off the truck. It was about 11 p.m. and I realized: I did not know how to drive stick. With my father in the car giving me some guidance, I figured it out. It was a terrifying and magical experience.

I did just about everything there was to do on this car. When I disassembled the 235-cubic inch six-cylinder engine, cleaned it all and put it back together, it was like going back in time because the car was about three times as old as I was. I studied electronics so I could redo the wiring, and learned about chemistry while stripping paint.

The experience inspired me to study engineering, and today my work involves putting sensors and modems all over vehicles so that you can know everything you need to know about your car through a device, like a phone. When I am tired of work, I escape to the garage in the home where I grew up and my parents still live to work on my 1955 Chevrolet, which has no computers at all.

The Woodward Dream Cruise is something I look forward to all year long. I get to celebrate my Chevy 210 and the car culture where I grew up.

Contact A.J. Baime at Facebook.com/ajbaime.