Driven for Givin’

For Barry Watkins, it’s always been about wheels, from building lightweight competition motorcycles in the 1970s to racing vintage automobiles in the 1980s and 1990s. But in the last two years, the real-estate-developer-by-day’s passion for vehicles has expanded to include wheelchairs as well.

It all started when he read bestseller The Purpose Driven Life by Christian author Rick Warren in early 2004. For Watkins, it was a watershed moment.

“It’s really about your purpose in life and how you can use what you’ve been given, along with your passions, to help other people,” Watkins says of the book. For him, that meant finding a way to combine his passion for motorsports with helping people in need.

What really started the gears turning was when he considered how another of his skills, marketing, might come into play. A look back at Watkins’ involvement in motorsports reveals a creative use of marketing strategies to support his expensive hobby.

In the 1970s, Watkins approached Yamaha with a proposal: if they would sponsor him, he would get one of their motorcycles — one he planned to shave enough pounds from to turn into a true world-class competitor — on the cover of a magazine. Yamaha agreed, and the bike went on to appear on the cover of Cycle Guide. And in the early 1990s, a prototype sports car he built with famed former Ferrari engineer Giotto Bizzarrini was featured in more than 100 magazine articles seen by an estimated 17 million readers — coverage that, by Watkins’ estimation, would have taken some $4 million for an advertising agency to replicate.

“It kind of spurred the idea that if you build interesting cars, people love to publish them,” Watkins says.

Enter the SportStar. Developed as a street rod from remnants of a racing project Watkins started, the car features an unusual powerplant with two Harley Davidson 88 cubic inch twin-cam engines mounted amidships. As a unique creation, the SportStar seemed just the vehicle for what Watkins was beginning to envision as an unusual, attention-grabbing car that could heighten the public’s awareness of charities by generating publicity for them. As the “Star” in its name reveals, the car is intended to function in the same way a celebrity would in promoting a cause.

As all of these pieces were coming together, Watkins met Don Schoendorfer, a mechanical engineer and founder of Free Wheelchair Mission, an Irvine, Calif.-based charity that provides inexpensive wheelchairs designed by Schoendorfer to people in third world countries for free. To date, Watkins says, FWM has provided some 150,000 wheelchairs to people who otherwise would never be able to obtain one.

The SportStar was featured at the “Night of 100 Stars” Oscar gala in Beverly Hills in March. At the event, co-sponsored by Sundoulos World Motorsports, Watkin’s company, Schoendorfer was honored for his efforts. The SportStar and its mission also received coverage in popular automotive enthusiast magazine Car and Driver in June.

So what’s next for the “celebrity” vehicle? Watkins says there’s a pretty good chance it will lead a parade of Harley Davidsons — no small feat, he notes, since traditionally, he’s been told, a group of Harley Davidson riders “will not follow any vehicle.”

To learn more, visit www.sundoulos.us and www.freewheelchairmission.org.