Dr. Paul Lynn of Braceville has a 1924 BSA Model 10 Light Car, which was an attempt to market energy-efficient cars 100 years ago. He drives the car almost daily.

BRACEVILLE — Since childhood, Dr. Paul Lynn has been surrounded by vehicles.

His grandfather, Will Wilson, founded HochHausen Racing Team in 1928, where he competed in open-class fuel boats and hill-climb Harley and Indian motorcycles in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

According to Lynn, 60, his grandfather held international speedboat records.

“We still have the trophies in the shop as well as all of his fuel recipes,” Lynn said. “I used to hill climb and motocross race motorcycles in Ohio and western Pennsylvania and race sports cars at Nelson Ledges (Road Course), Mid-Ohio and Mosport. I also worked on several endurance road racing crews. My favorite was always the 24 hours at Nelson. Those were good years in the 1980s. (Actor) Paul Newman used to race there as well as many famous and semi-famous drivers,” said Lynn, a Southington native who returned to the area 20 years ago.

Lynn’s interest in motor vehicles continues to this day, particularly with antique and vintage autos.

“I have always been interested in cars and mechanical things,” said the Warren JFK graduate. “Over the years, I have had 60 vintage cars, trucks and motorcycles. I am no longer interested in a particular make or model. I enjoy the engineering of cars from the post-World War I through World War II eras, especially the history of early race cars.”

He travels in his restored and updated 1924 BSA Model 10 Light Car along local roads.

“It’s driven for fun. People give a lot of thumbs up, but it doesn’t get the attention of our ’53 Ford pickup,” Lynn said. “I worry about being seen by other drivers because it is small, slow and fragile.”

The Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) Company originally produced weapons. Later, it made cars, bicycles and motorcycles. The two-seater BSA Light Car was marketed as an energy efficient automobile in Europe and taxed much less than larger cars that used more gasoline.

“They were cars which could get 38 to 40 mpg with an inline four cylinder of less than 1.5 liters. Birmingham Small Arms made about a thousand of them in total,” he said. “We have done some tuning on it, and it currently gets about 30 mpg.”

As an Antique Automobile Club of America Preservation Class car, it is being kept in as original a condition as possible. For Lynn, that means maintaining the original ash wood frame. He believes it was restored in 1958 or 1959.

“It was just one of those cars that was traded around and ended up staying in the barn. It has a lot of history, but it wasn’t a race car and wasn’t a very safe car for the street. It took quite a bit of work to get it mechanically reliable,” Lynn said.

Adding further improvements, Lynn used his nearly century-old, family-owned antique milling machines with a touch of modern technology — digital readouts — that can cut irregular-shaped surfaces and drill, bore and cut gears, threads and slots in order to make parts for the car to be more drivable.

“When working on a 100-year-old car, one often has to make parts or sometimes adapt parts from other antique British cars, which are less rare,” he said.

After Lynn’s father died, the BSA gained more importance. He pared down the number of cars and motorcycles the family owned. Since HochHausen’s beginnings in the early 20th century, Lynn estimates they had more than 70 race vehicles plus speed boats and hydroplane boats. Besides selling off the street legal cars and race cars, including three C3 Corvettes, two Porsche 944s and several drag race bikes, he also reduced his inventory by finding new homes for nearly a dozen of his own autos, including Model A Fords, a 1964 Lotus Seven and 1970 Lola T-250 Formula car.

Other than his Ford truck and a Captain America Harley-Davidson copy of the motorcycle Peter Fonda rode in the film “Easy Rider,” Lynn has focused on cars made between the two world wars.

“It’s a time period wherein the driver still felt very connected to the road and environment. With the BSA, you can reach out and touch the pavement,” Lynn said. “Motoring along at a slower speed in an open cockpit car always helps to clear my head. This was also a period in history in which one could participate in many grassroots motorsports for very little money. It was fairly inexpensive entertainment during the Great Depression, and there were events for anyone to participate in. Southington used to have a jalopy track behind the American Legion Post.”

While his passion remained with cars and motorcycles, Lynn admitted that his parents had other plans for him.

“As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I always wanted to work with my uncle and grandfather on the machine shop stuff. My parents felt I should go to college instead. During college at Hiram, I did work at the Nelson Ledges road racing track and started to learn that end of the racing business,” he said.

Later, he received his master’s degree at Edinboro University and doctorate at University of Pennsylvania in contextual taphonomy, which led to jobs as a senior clinician, court liaison and forensic taphonomist (which deals with body decay before recovery).

He worked with Doctors Without Borders, as part of state administrations in Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, as well as the U.N. His career experience includes organizational psychology, health care management, court advocacy, state compliance and large nonprofit oversight. He chaired four state and regional human rights committees and co-chaired a state behavioral health research committee.

“I worked as a mental health advocate for individuals with complex needs for whom the state held guardianship. We were actively advocating for de-escalation long before it became popular in the vernacular,” Lynn said.

Retired four years ago, he runs Hochkrausen Presswerks, which is an extension of the family-run machine shop.

“We do repair work on letter presses, some over 100 years old. These days I’m most interested in continental vintage racing events. We have precious little like that here, especially like the grassroots organizations in Britain and France. Racing is increasingly cost prohibitive in the United States. It would be nice if we had antique car events here where the emphasis is on driving old cars,” Lynn said.

With his son and daughter in careers far removed from motorsports and his wife, Melissa, working a government job, Lynn senses that Hochkraeusen Racing Team “will end with me along with the (machine) shop unless someone wishes to apprentice or gain knowledge of antique machine practices informally.”

He continued, “I would like to do a YouTube channel with the antique vehicle machine shop stuff and hand making obsolete parts, but I don’t have anyone to film it. So much of this knowledge is being lost forever. In Europe. there are a few YouTube channels devoted to antique race car restoration.”

Just as important to him is connecting to other antique and vintage car enthusiasts. He suggests that they contact him at his email fossilledges@gmail.com.

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