Collector Classics: Emerson Wong is the youngest gearhead in Canada

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Emerson Wong is only three years old. But he can name just about any car and can look at a newly released model and tell his parents it looks like a Range Rover, BMW, Ferrari or an Aston Martin.

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His favourite outing is to tour new car dealerships with his parents. He loves to talk to the sales staff about the cars, collect brochures and look at the expensive die-cast miniature models.

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“The other day we were driving and passed a new Camaro,” Jonathan says. “Emerson told me didn’t want to talk because he was thinking about a Camaro.”

Jonathan learned about cars from his grandfather – 92-year-old Pete Yuen – who is still working on old cars, including his Studebaker Avanti. The grandson-grandfather duo restored a bullet-nose 1951 Studebaker together as a means of Pete passing on his machinist skills. It worked. Jonathan has built up his own high performance 1989 Mustang GT. Jonathan’s passion for cars led him to use car names to teach his infant son how to talk.

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“He would repeat car names like ‘BMW’ even before he was really able to speak,“ Jonathan recalls. “We really couldn’t understand what he was saying but it was the names of the cars he saw.”

Emerson has learned to read up to six books a day at just three-and-a-half, after memorizing some of the car-related books his father would read to him. He asked to read a book on racecars by Hot Wheels every night for a month. “I thought I could do something better for the cars I wanted him to know about,” Jonathan says.

That has inspired the children’s book Gearheads – The Most Iconic Cars of All Time for Future Car Enthusiasts – written by Jonathan and edited by his wife Lily. Jonathan created the drawings using Adobe Illustrator. The opening pages feature a McLaren F1:

With carbon fiber, titanium and gold, this super car broke the mold

Speed and handling second to none, the iconic McLaren F1

The book, available on Amazon, is well timed for Christmas gift-giving for little ones who are fascinated with the automobile like Emerson.

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“I wanted to teach Emerson about all the different cars but there was no children’s book specific to cars that was available,” Jonathan says. “So I picked the most important cars and started putting rhymes together which led to the book.”

Jon, a Chartered Professional Accountant who teaches for the CPA Western School of Business, and Lily, a former pharmacist, gave up their day jobs to start a home business producing special interest car posters with colours customized to the buyer’s choice. The posters sell online from their website all over the world (customcarposters.com). One of the most popular illustrates the evolution of the Shelby GT500 from 1967 through 2020.

“We didn’t like being away from Emerson and the business just grew,” Jonathan says.

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Emerson is a real gearhead and I want my son to know all about cars early in his life.

Jonathan and Lily turned to the crowd-funding site, Kickstarter, to fund the book. They raised $6,000 to print 2,000 copies of the child-sized hardcover book. He and Lily have now produced car posters designed to teach children the alphabet and numbers with pictures of 100 special cars.

“Emerson loves the book and the posters. He quickly learned the alphabet and counting to 100 because of his interest in the cars on the posters,” Jonathan says. “We spend time to teach him and are fortunate because he already likes cars.”

Jonathan and Lily are now planning a sequel to their first children’s book on cars.

“I’ve been explaining to Emerson about how cars are made to go fast: removing weight, adding superchargers and turbocharging,” the proud dad says. “It might be harder to create rhymes about this, but I want to write a children’s book that explains what makes cars go.

“I could always call my grandpa when I needed help fixing cars or to know how things work. Emerson is a real gearhead and I want my son to know all about cars early in his life.”

To see a video of Jonathan and his son reading the new book, go to youtu.be/cLXP4ojVwGc

Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators, a Vancouver-based public relations company. aedwards@peakco.com