A Cavalier Attitude

"When I drive by, I want people to look at me and say, 'Wow, that's a Cavalier,' " Josh Detorie is saying.

Detorie's got a cleaning rag, and he is working it over his maxed-out Cavvy. He's tall and lanky and soft-spoken and has reddish hair cut short and a wispy beard and is 23 and is smoking a cigarette. The evening light is going in the apartment parking lot in Towson, Md. He and the car have been together since 2004; he and Anna Hutson, his fiancee, have been together about that long, too. They have a daughter, Zoe, who will be 2 this summer. Zoe, she's toodling around on the sidewalk. Detorie and Hutson and Zoe and Detorie's mom and her lady friend who drives an Orkin truck all live in an apartment one floor up. It's a garden apartment complex with a pool.

"Most of the people who drive muscle cars, yeah, they say stuff about the Cavalier. I say that muscle cars are built the way they need to be. This is something to get new power out of. It's fun in the process. You do it all yourself."

He won something like a dozen trophies at car shows last year, but mostly minor stuff. He wants to get "to the next level," where you can be like in the top 10 and win $300 or something. The car shows are great. You talk cars all day, get ideas from other rides, then go back to the hotel. A guy in his car club, his girlfriend has a stripper pole. They set that up and see if you can hold your body out sideways. Beer pong is popular.

Detorie works maintenance at Sunbelt Rentals, a place where you can rent backhoes and tractors and things. He wears a work shirt with his name stitched on the right pocket, putting in six days a week. He's at work at 7 a.m. He never knew his dad and was raised by his mom and her parents. He packs his lunch.

Hutson is 24 and works at a day-care center.

"I'm in the potty-training room. It's ridiculous." She's sitting on the curb painting her toenails.

"Everything has to be perfect with me. I have to look cute when I go out. Perfect. He probably told you that."

Detorie had in fact not mentioned that. His head is under the hood. He's tweaking wires to the throttle position sensor.

The car is candy-blue and silver. It's gorgeous.

"I have a couple thousand pictures of my car from what it looked like when I bought it until now. It wasn't blue and silver originally. It was black and silver, but the black got to be so much to keep up with. Oxidation kicks in a lot faster. I was working so much I wasn't able to keep up with it."

He produces several hundred pictures of the car on his iPod Touch.