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SUMMERFIELD — Standing still, Michael Boyte’s 1972 Monte Carlo looks like it’s doing 120.

Crank ’er up and the engine doesn’t purr. It growls like a dog on a chain, straining to break free.

Twelve years ago, Michael Boyte, who is 46, got an urge to tinker with the classic muscle car that had been parked in his parents’ garage for more than a decade.

Boyte’s itch to restore the car to its 1972 splendor had nothing to do with nostalgia or the thought of winning trophies. His motivation was his older brother, Randy, who died in a horrific car accident with three friends when he was 20 years old.

The day was Dec. 2, 1978.

Michael Boyte was 14.

He remembers the 4 a.m. knock on the door, bringing the news. He remembers going to the accident scene. And he remembers the names of all the young men who died with his brother that night: Ken Miller, Foster Poole and Tim Wilkins.

But the loss really hit him two days afterward. That’s when his father took him out to the garage where Randy’s car, the Monte Carlo, was parked.

“That’s your car, now,” Wilbur Boyte recalls saying.

His father bought the car for Randy just before his 16th birthday. It was the proverbial cream puff, owned by a lady who only drove it on Sundays.

Wilbur paid $3,500 for it and, within a few years, Randy repaid every penny from the money he made driving a school bus.

The Monte Carlo was white with a black vinyl top and black interior, though Randy hoped to paint the body black someday.

Michael remembers his brother meticulously detailing it, shining chrome and polishing the body.

“He’d take the bucket seats out to vacuum it,” Michael says.

Randy graduated from Stoneville High in 1976, the school where his mom, Peggy, taught and his dad was an assistant principal. He went on to complete Montreat College, but it was the bright gold tassel from his mortar board at Stoneville High that dangled from his rear view mirror.

When Michael turned 16 and started driving the Monte Carlo, he left the tassel there.

But it certainly wasn’t a reminder to be cautious. “I knew one speed — wide open,” Michael says.

And he loved cars. He’d learned to drive on a 1959 Vauxhall at age 8. He rebuilt his first V-8 engine at 14, so he was well-versed in how to squeeze as much speed as he could out of the Monte Carlo.

He put in high-performance parts and he started testing the car’s prowess at “The Squats,” a place on Berryhill Road near Eden where locals gathered on the sly to race their cars.

With warnings from his parents, Michael graduated to legitimate drag strips. “It was supervised and safer,” he says.

“Drag racing is the most addictive thing you can do,” he says. “You’ll spend everything you have to win.”

But the racing came to an end in the mid-1980s when Michael’s daughter was born. With a family to support, he couldn’t afford racing.

Selling the car didn’t seem right, so he parked it in his parents’ garage.

And there it stayed for years.

He’s not sure why the desire hit him to restore the car. But a little more than a decade ago, he started the task that would obsess him for years as he sunk thousands into bringing the car back.

He’d replaced most of the standard parts long ago, but fortunately, he’d saved them. He put what he could back on. The years ticked by as he searched the Internet to get parts and saved the money to buy them. Nothing after-market, either; it had to be showroom quality.

He had it built to NASCAR specifications and sought out the best people in the country to help.

Someone in Pennsylvania worked on the grill. The detail work was done in Michigan.

“It was a complete bumper-to-bumper restoration,” Michael says.

As he neared completion, he had the body taken apart and painted — black, of course, just like Randy had wanted. It took three paint jobs to get the perfect, mirror-like finish.

As the car came together, so did Michael’s purpose for the work. He wanted to take the car to national competitions.

That’s what he did earlier this summer.

First up was the Super Chevy Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, where Michael and his wife, Ann, put the car up against 1,500 others. The three-day event started on June 11, which would have been Randy’s 52nd birthday.

It garnered two awards: Best Chrome and Most Outstanding Monte Carlo.

With that competition under their belts,  Michael and Ann took the car in late June to the ultimate contest: the Monte Carlo Nationals in Richmond, Ind. The event also marked the 40th anniversary of Chevrolet’s release of the first Monte Carlo.

“Very stressful,” Michael says about the hours it took for the judges to inspect each car.

To top it off, it sprinkled rain, off and on. At least three times, Michael hauled the car back into the trailer to keep it from getting wet. Each time he brought it back out, he had to polish it back to perfection.

But, in the end, Michael got what he came for. The car was named the 1970-1972, 2010 Monte Carlo National Winner.

“It gets no larger than that,” says Michael.

With the trophy in hand, Michael made a phone call to the two people who would understand what the win meant: his parents.

“That car right now is everything Randy always wanted it to be,” says Michael. “It’s a tribute to him.”

Which is why, still dangling from the rear view mirror even now, is the bright gold tassel from Stoneville High, class of 1976.

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-1781, Ext. 116, or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com