About The Owner
Melvin Sancho Hodges II is a lover of life, with a passion for people, travel, learning, and vehicles. With over two decades of professional and personal experience in the automotive world, he has developed practices and a rolodex of peers that allow him to reach spaces that few others can when it comes to blending skillsets to create amazing interactions for anyone he comes into contact with.
Hodges has travelled far and wide to learn as much as he can in his automotive journey, and he has been known to share his knowledge with a keen emphasis on the passion that drives all enthusiasts—regardless of where they stand in the lifestyle. His authenticity has lent him a unique and innovative voice that reaches destinations using different roads than many of his counterparts. These adventures have been coined ThisFastLife because there is no telling how each day will turn out, but there is a solid conviction that it will be different than the one before it.
Hellcatin’
Last week I coined a new verb that I would like Webster to add to his dictionary immediately. The word and its definition are: "Hellcatin' (verb) - Spelled without the last 'g' because it ain't proper; the act of raising hell on any of America's highways or byways in a manner that ignores the presence of physics, other vehicles, and the lawman who may be lurking around the next bend. An extreme amount of exhaust, tire, and supercharger noise must be being made, and the subsequent sounds must be echoing off of trees, buildings, tunnel walls, or all three in [...]
The Family Car, Pt. 1
This piece was written some time ago, so "last week" isn't last week. Last week I drove what used to be my family’s car the first couple hundred miles it’s been driven in the past several years, and I walked away feeling that it was definitely time well spent. The car is a 1985 BMW 535i, and I remember when my mother picked me up from school in it the first September afternoon she drove the car. The car was special at the time because the color it was delivered in (zinnoberrot) was not initially available on five series of [...]
HELLCAT
Originally written in 2015. Ever since Dodge announced that it would be selling 707hp versions of its Challenger and Charger, I'd been chomping at the bit to drive one. Each time I read about one, saw one in traffic, watched a video of Ralph Gilles doing a standstill in one, or heard personal accounts of how fast they were, my eagerness rose. It had become safe to say that I was lusting at the idea of speeding through a city in a Hellcat. Fortunately, I can finally report that I have drank the Hellcat wine, and that I'm still drunk. [...]
Old Volvos
It's 10:38pm and 45 degrees outside, and I just got finished washing a Volvo. Not a V60, a T-5R, or a 960 with a swapped American V8 under the hood a la the late Paul Newman... No, I just finished washing a plain old 1965 122s. Though this Volvo is literally 50 years old, it is certainly in better condition than many humans I know, for it has been lovingly cared for by its two owners over the years. That is not to say that it is perfect... As a matter of fact, the more one looks at it, the [...]