What Is Build to Enjoy? Rediscovering the Joy of Car Culture

Let’s get this out of the way: Build to Enjoy is me. Hi. Hello. Welcome to the chaos.

My name is Mike Bonanni, and I’m addicted to cars — but lately, I’ve realized I’m just as addicted to unpopular opinions about them.

I’ve been “the car guy” my whole life — the kid who organized his Hot Wheels by horsepower, not color. The teenager who wanted a car older than he was. The adult who somehow turned that obsession into a racing career, sponsorships, and a few legitimately incredible machines.

And then, predictably, burnout.
Like, delete-all-my-accounts, sell-the-cars, disappear-for-a-while kind of burnout. Dramatic? Sure. But if I’m anything, it’s committed to my decisions.

Somewhere along the way, the fun got replaced with pressure. Enjoying cars became content. Passion became performance. I was chasing numbers — championships, race wins, lap times, sponsorship dollars — and lost the spark that made me love car culture in the first place.

Then it hit me: I didn’t fall out of love with cars. I fell out of love with how I was approaching them.

So I hit “New Game.”

My entry into car culture was by way of American Muscle Cars with a 1970 Chevelle Malibu I bought at 18 years old. It was my daily, I took it drag racing, to car shows, and “cruise nights” back in the early 2000s.

The Reboot

Have you ever beaten a video game, then wiped your save file to start over — just to see how much better you can play it with the experience you already earned?

That’s what this is. Build to Enjoy is my second play through. No competition. No deadlines. No pressure. Just me, the cars, and the freedom to do it for fun again.

But this time, I’m doing it differently.
This is my “King of Unpopular Opinions” phase.

King of Unpopular Opinions

Let’s be honest: car culture loves its echo chambers. Manuals are “pure.” Cheap cars are “trash.” Base models are “cringe.” The Porsche GT3 RS is the best car ever made.

Cool. Watch me disagree. Well, that last one is pretty spot on actually.

I want to take the things people roll their eyes at and execute them as well as I possibly can. To prove that joy still exists in the places we’ve written off as a car culture.

A C4 Corvette? “Worst Corvette ever.” Perfect — I’ll take it.
An automatic? Fine — I’ll find a way to have fun with it.
A written blog in 2025 when I “should be doing YouTube”? Even better — I’ll make it worth reading.

This isn’t rebellion for the sake of it. It’s curiosity. It’s asking, “What if everyone’s wrong?” It’s an experiment, to prove to myself, and hopefully a lot of other people, that the barrier to entry into getting an epic car culture experience is lower than you might think.

Can you have a premium car culture experience even if you’re doing everything wrong? We’re going to find out.

Some of What You’ll Find Here:

Build to Enjoy is where I document that experiment — but it’s also where I tell the stories that made me who I am. This site is equal parts memoir, manifesto, and garage notebook.

One-Offs
Random essays, sponsor talk, and stories from the trenches. This section scares me the most — which probably means it’s the good stuff.

King of Unpopular Opinions
My current obsession — diving headfirst into the ideas car culture mocks and seeing if there’s truth under the sarcasm.

Tech Talk
Diving into how things work so you can impress your friends.

Love Letters
Emotional rants about cars that I love. Sometimes unpopular choices, sometimes popular ones, but always ones that stand out to me personally.

The Parts Bin
Deep dives into the weird, wonderful corners of car culture and well…everything. What makes a road trip good? What is vanlife like? Why are Jeeps and ducks a thing? And everything in between.

Vanlife is the sub-culture I found myself in after I burnt out and hit the reset button. It was still vehicle based, but completely secluded.

Who Is This For?

If you’ve ever:

Had an opinion you were scared to say out loud in a car group.
Bought something that made zero sense on paper but perfect sense to your heart.
Been told “that car sucks” and thought, “yeah, but it makes me smile.”
Needed a reminder that this hobby is supposed to be fun.

Then you’re my people.

The invite:

I’m not here to be perfect, or polished, or right all the time. Builds break, opinions change, and sometimes you just buy a dumb car because you want to. That’s the point.

So hop in, buckle up, and don’t touch anything.

The first posts are live — check them out. Or leave forever, it’s up to you.

Let’s build something — to enjoy.

build to enjoy