So he - a guy who raced cars for fun - built one.

He's now built, oh, 20 or so. (They are so noteworthy, a few will be on display at the Orange County Swapmeet in Costa Mesa on Saturday.) Most of those he's built for family members - more specifically, for "eight or nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren."

They are beauts - the cars, we haven't see the children - now with fiberglass bodies and gleaming flamingo red paint, silver-leafed numbers, thin chrome bumpers and flashy wheel covers made from, well, from, well, pizza-pie plates?

Seems the machine-tooling people wanted $800 for the set. Restaurant wholesalers charge 80 cents each. Easy call, that one.

Still, Lawrence is building these things custom, when people ask, and for auction - the last one went for around $2,300 - and he's giving them to, gasp, 4-year-olds?

Speaking of the grandkids, "They've all crashed them," Lawrence says. "One knocked the washing machine right off its foundation."

And you're OK with this?

"It's part of the training process," the Irvine man, 74, says, then he adds so that you know that he means it: "They're toys."

But they're pretty, you protest.

There's this wise pause. "All toys," Lawrence says, "are pretty."

Ben Lawrence knows a toy when he sees one. And he knows a car when he sees one. He raced Kurtis Mighty Midgets at the El Toro Speedway.

He's built cars that were raced at the Bonneville Salt Flats. And for 25 years - 1969-94 -- he was vice chair of the Indianapolis 500, in charge of inspecting those cars for structural integrity. (Yes, ma'am, some flunked.)

He's had a body shop in Santa Ana for years - now it's his kids' - and he's still regularly called by the courts to do forensic work on cars. Lawrence built his very first car - a soapbox racer in 1938 when he was visiting his father in Texas. The rules were, he says, that you had to do it by yourself and you had to get the wheels from the Chevrolet dealer. He remembers quite vividly that he never did better than second in his class.

Was it a great car?

Again with the wise pause. "A car is a car."

And a pedal car is a fun version. Tolling and tooling in the back of the shop he once owned, Lawrence has designed and crafted his own. Pedal cars, you know, can go as fast as you can pedal - that's like 1 to 2 mph. They're built to seat big 4-year-olds, most 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds whose legs haven't grown too long. They weight about 40 pounds - any heavier and kids couldn't pedal them.

Pedal cars are way-hot collectibles these days. Restored ones can cost you a grand or more.

Reproductions can start around $350.

Lawrence is the only guy in Orange County making them.

You ask him why. "For the grandkids," he'll say again as if that explains everything.

Nearby, his friend of many years watches this piece of conversation. Joe Monteith can't help adding, "He wants them to have them as keepsakes, something to remember their grandpa by."

He's not called Grandpa by those kids, you know. He's called Racer.

And next year probably, when the littlest great-grandchild turns 2, she'll be getting the very first car this genuine Car Guy ever put his hands on that will be pink.