The Grease Girl

For a few days each year, the City of Sin returns to a simpler time. The temps are still scorching, the high rollers are still rolling, but in a pocket of the city, lovers of vintage style and classic cars convene for the annual Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend: a car show, music festival, and unabashed celebration of 1950s culture, all rolled into one. Kristin Cline attended this event throughout her 20s, and it only enhanced her love of that bygone era.

“I still remember walking around and noticing how each of the cars had its own personality,” Cline, 43, tells Fort Worth Magazine. “Each one was a reflection of the person who brought it to the show, and I loved that.”

For a classic car fan like Cline, it was heaven. That’s why, years later, with her own classic car to showcase, Cline made a long, fateful trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. She had just finished working on her 1955 Studebaker (“Studie,” as she calls it) for a year and a half, and now that the car was ready to hit the road, she charted course for the rockabilly celebration.

This was in 2008 before Cline, 30 at the time, became Grease Girl, an Aurora-based car expert who currently has more job titles than many people will earn in their entire lifetime. Cline is a mechanic, a writer, a collector, and most recently, a politician. From her small town roughly 30 minutes from Fort Worth, she aims to empower women who, like her, are often excluded from the automotive world.

“I guess you would say my real driving force is to be empowering for women,” she says. “Think about it: Are women invited into garages, or is it just men? When women go to a mechanic’s shop with their husbands, who does the mechanic usually talk to first? If any girl or woman out there is interested in cars, I want them to know there’s a place for them in this world.”

That drive would come later. First, behind the wheel of her beloved Studie, an aspiring health care leader and LA resident named Kristin Cline hit the road to see the show she had spent years attending and loving every minute of.

The trip changed her life.

Her First Classic

Cline is the youngest of four children and the only girl in her family. As she writes in her popular blog, “This meant that my mom had me practicing ballet while my brothers were building model cars.” That early love of music soon morphed into adoration for old tunes and vintage clothes, and a love of old cars wasn’t too far behind.

After her father brought home a ’59 Ford Wagon, the young Cline escaped to the garage every chance she got, even if it meant simply twisting a ratchet while her father tinkered on the car. In fact, rockabilly and that ratchet sound were practically the soundtrack of her childhood. But eventually she wanted to learn more.

“I asked my grandpa, ‘How does an engine work?’ because he was probably the main car person in my life,” she says. “And after that, I just started building all the knowledge I could.”

Her journey to become a true classic car expert continued throughout her 20s when she was living in LA and working at a health care clinic. She learned, for instance, that you can’t simply own a classic car; you must work on it. Otherwise, you have no street cred. That was fine by Cline, who, after years of coveting classic cars, had stumbled upon the ’55 Studebaker that would become Studie.

“It took a year and a half at a shop before I got it going,” she recalls. “I would go to the shop every weekend, and while they worked on the drivetrain, I did the interior.”

Soon enough, the shop became her second home.

“I liked the problem-solving, and I liked doing stuff with my hands. I liked working through things and diagnosing things.”

None of that was surprising, especially since Cline was applying for jobs as a physician’s assistant while running a clinic for community education. Still, her clinic job wasn’t enough to cover the work on Studie, so she got the perfect gig for someone in love with vintage culture: a waitressing job at a place called Cafe 50’s.

“I assumed there would be other people into vintage who worked there, and there really wasn’t,” she recalls, laughing. Even so, the gig was pretty fun. Cline would go to work with her hair done, her red lipstick on, and red polish adorning each nail. She fit the bill to a tee, and the manager loved her. (To this day, Cafe 50’s has a picture of Cline and Studie on one of its walls.)

Best of all, the waitressing and health care work was enough to get her first classic car up and running. It might’ve taken a year and a half, but Cline wasn’t complaining.

“When I got it on the road, it gave me such a sense of empowerment,” she says. “Driving classic cars is an experience so much different than driving modern cars. People wave at you, people talk to you at gas stations, and it seems like everyone wants to know your story. It makes the world a smaller, friendlier place.”

Birth of a Grease Girl

The Vegas trip — Studie’s first time on the road — opened Cline’s eyes. Even 14 years later, she still brims with pride describing how it felt to pull her own car — her own classic car — into the event she revered throughout her 20s. The pinup fashion and big band brass brimming from the speakers made it even sweeter. But it wasn’t all positive.

“I get to the show,” she recounts, “and I realized I was the odd one out. Everywhere I looked, it was all men. Maybe I sound naive, but it was an eye-opening moment for me.”

Rather than discourage her, though, the fact that this world was so male dominated became the perfect motivator.

“I remember thinking, ‘How do women view this world? How can a girl who loves cars get the info she needs?’”

She knew the answer to the latter, of course: They had to read, watch, and listen to a lot of men, many of whom spoke from an expert’s perspective.

“No one was asking and answering those beginner questions,” Cline says. So, she’d be the one who did.

“Maybe I’ll start writing about my experience and what I’m learning,” she recalls thinking, “and maybe I can convince other women to buy their first classic and get engaged in this community.”

She launched her website, The Grease Girl, and began chronicling her adventures as a rider, writer, racer, and aspiring mechanic. She also launched her own working car club, the Gasoline Girls. What was once an interest had become a calling, and Cline wasn’t looking back. As she puts it, she was “investing in what made me happy,” in the hopes that other women — or anyone that loves cars — would do the same.

In a turn of events that would eventually prove fortuitous, the grant funding Cline’s clinic position ran out around 2011. Rather than continue pursuing her health care career, she decided to bet on herself and invest in writing full time. As for that moniker?

“It sounded catchy,” she explains succinctly. It’s led to plenty of confusion (“I think some people come to my site expecting me to talk about the movie,” she says) but over time, it’s become much more than the name of her website.

Grease Girl is, in effect, her brand. It’s the perfect way to convey her adoration of vintage style and her prowess under the hood of a car.

“I prefer to keep my cuticles trimmed and fingernails red,” Cline writes in her blog. “But even so, I guess there’s still that slight alteration of DNA that causes me to inhale deeply the fumes spouting out of my 383. And if I have to get a little grease under the fingernails, well, then I guess that’s okay.”

Cline has used her site to write about everything from car maintenance for beginners (“13 Ways to Start Learning to Work on Cars,” reads one title) to her many adventures in amateur racing. She even has an entire section devoted to vintage beauty and style. (The writer of this story didn’t have much use for the hairstyling tips, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless.)

Yet by her own admission, Cline has gone from posting a new blog roughly once a week to publishing a piece once a year. The reasons vary, but the biggest one is her schedule. The Grease Girl persona has opened up many new doors for the classic car aficionado, including a full-time gig as the editor-in-chief of the magazine Driving Line, whose in-depth yet accessible features on automotive work and life are vintage Cline. She has also added to her car collection (she now has seven cars in her personal garage), and many of her days are spent working on classic rides like the one her dad brought home all those years ago.

These new career adventures have been accompanied by some big steps in her personal life, too. Cline is now married to a trained mechanic who shares her passion for cars, and four years ago, the couple left the West Coast in their rearview. After decades in big cities, they were both ready for some place quieter, some place quaint.

They found their latest adventure just outside of Cowtown.

An Adventure in Aurora

To outsiders, the small town of Aurora, Texas, (population: roughly 1,500) is best known for something its locals would prefer people forget. You would think forgetting would be easy, considering it never happened. But anytime UFOs are involved, stories have a tendency to stick around a while.

In this case, “a while” is over a century.

On April 19, 1897, a man named S.E. Haydon wrote a Dallas Morning News article entitled “A Windmill Demolishes It.” At first, the article appears to describe an accidental plane crash of some kind. Then it takes an interesting turn.

“The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one on board,” Haydon writes, “and while his remains are badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.”

Haydon (whose claims, for the record, have been thoroughly debunked) also quotes a signal service officer and astronomy expert who claims that this pilot was from Mars. The “alien,” named Ned, was later buried.

According to Cline, the alien myth continues to endure — much to the dismay of many current Aurora residents. In fact, this is just one of the quirks of Cline’s new community. In late 2021, the local paper reported that a fire had destroyed Aurora’s City Hall and that a former city administrator had been arrested in connection with an embezzlement investigation. While the fire and the fraud have not been formally linked, multiple news reports indicate locals and officials believe the two are connected.

This might not be the kind of place you’d expect an adventure-loving car enthusiast to call home, but Cline is committed to her community. She and her husband moved to Aurora in 2018 when his job made it possible to relocate.

“I really love big cities, and there’s a lot I love about California, but I wanted to put down deeper roots,” Cline says. “We were just getting really tired of the traffic and the busyness and the pace, and we wanted the freedom to do our own thing more.”

The proximity to Fort Worth was another draw.

“Fort Worth has quite a bit of talented car builders and car enthusiasts,” she adds.

The couple moved into a former military base built in 1940, and the building gives them enough space for both a house and a garage. Cline has used the garage to host beginner’s courses for folks interested in working on cars (see sidebar), and one day soon, she and her husband hope to kickstart a business that restores vehicles and offers engine and performance work. In the interim, Cline continues to edit Driving Line, and she has yet another job title: city councilwoman.

“So often, our political action is just voting or taking one side or another, when really, people can have the most effect by engaging in local politics,” she explains. “We all have an opportunity to make change where we live.”

Cline became interested in city council meetings shortly after moving to Aurora. It started as a way to get to know people and her new community, but she soon realized her town had a major transparency problem. For instance, before one meeting, she says the city budget was provided just five minutes before the council was gaveled in.

“There was maybe five minutes of discussion, and then it was approved,” Cline recalls.

That didn’t sit right with her, and, of course, neither did the fire. So, she decided to take on another kind of race. Earlier this year, Grease Girl announced her candidacy for council. According to city records, Cline was up by just one vote by the time early ballots were counted.

When the race was called on May 7, she won: 34 to 25.

This interview took place less than a month after that victory, so Cline’s council career was still fresh. Even so, she shared a vision for what she’d like to do in office.

“I’ve taken the same perspective as I’ve done with Grease Girl, which is, ‘How do I build a bridge between two people?’” she says. “You very quickly find you have more in common with people than you may know.”

Luckily, none of this means she’ll be hanging up her greasy shop rag anytime soon. Her Instagram (@greasegirl) provides frequent glimpses at her garage work and her vintage style, both of which continue to bring her joy.

“I want to be an agent of positive change in our world, whether that is bringing more women into automotive or whether it’s from a decision I make on city council,” she says. “I didn’t buy my first classic car until I was 30, so I want people to know it’s never too late to do what makes you happy. We’ve got the rest of our lives to build the rest of our lives.”

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Quick Tips for Aspiring Grease Girls and Guys

Kristin Cline knows firsthand how great it feels to drive a car you worked on yourself. “Spending even a couple hours in a garage can be empowering and give people a lot more power as a consumer,” she says. That’s why she wants to help aspiring enthusiasts and mechanics learn the ins, outs, and intricacies of car maintenance. Here are three foundational tips for anyone hoping to know more about what goes on under the hood.

Don’t let your inexperience stop you, but be willing to learn Classic cars are much more accessible than people may believe. As Cline explains, when you open up a hood, the engine is right there. She hopes people of all ages give it a try. “That was why getting my Studebaker was so empowering to me: Because I tried something new and unknown, and oftentimes as adults, we don’t do that,” she says. “We stop being beginners. And there’s something so powerful in being a beginner.”

Find other people to learn from It’s important to start small, Cline says. “Find someone else who is working on a car and ask them if you can join.” This advice is applicable to car lovers of all kinds. “If you’ve always wanted to go to the track, go to the track! Make friends. If you’ve always wanted to have a car from the ’50s, make friends with someone who wrenches on a car from the ’50s.”

Safety is very important Cline can’t stress this enough: Before you jack up a car, please learn how to jack up a car. The same advice applies to practically anything involving gas or electricity. “There are major risk and safety points that really need to be considered,” she says. “Don’t overlook those, and don’t take them lightly.”

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Dream Garage

“A lot of times with car people, the question is, ‘If you could have one car in the whole world, what would it be?’” Cline says. And if she had to pick just one, she’d pick Studie every time. Still, she covets plenty of other cars. If she had an unlimited budget, here are the classic rides she’d spent it on:

1949 Delahaye 175 S Saoutchik Roadster

This light blue two-seater was owned by movie star Diana Dors. It’s an odd-looking car with a long front and very little room for sitting, but at the same time, everything about it is captivating. Gleaming chrome accents highlight the vehicle’s sleek curves, which Saoutchik employed to convey a sense of drama and movement. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more distinctive ride.

’66 Ford Pickup F100

Cline is working on this vehicle right now, but she simply can’t get enough of old pickups. “Pickups from the ’40s through the ’60s just have so much character,” she says. This car may be far more ubiquitous than a Saoutchik Roadster, but it’s by no means less classic. Even those unfamiliar with classic rides will look at this vehicle and immediately associate it with vintage Americana.

Porsche 356

A lightweight sports car first manufactured in the late 1940s, this Porsche model is often cited for creating heightened interest in motorsports. And while it began as a coupé only, its early success spawned multiple models, including a roadster, a convertible, a cabriolet, and a very rare split-roof. Even now, decades later, the legend of the Porsche 356 endures among car enthusiasts and the automotive press. “It’s just iconic,” Cline says.