Matteo Agosta was born in Trapani, Sicily, Italy, before moving to a location in the United States that was a foreshadowing of his future: Detroit.

“As a kid, I was always interested in cars,” Agosta said. “You couldn’t help it, being in Detroit.”

He recalled that his paper route took him past a Jaguar dealership, “and I looked lovingly at the XKE.” As a teen, he made going to auto dealerships on October 1 a regular routine in order to see the new lines of cars. “But my dad was always a Packard lover, so up to 1961, we had only Packards.”