Life On The Fast Track, Bob and Corrine Woodman

story by carol lauvray     photography by susan deloach

Making Cars Better and Faster Since the 1970s…

That’s what Bob Woodman says his life’s work has been. He’s
tinkered with cars since he was a teen living in the northeast suburbs
of Atlanta where he grew up, the oldest of five boys. In his youth,
Bob voraciously read car repair books to learn everything he could
about fixing cars. While in high school during the mid-1970s, he
worked part-time in a local garage repairing imported cars—Triumphs,
Jaguars, Austin Healeys and MGs—a skill that would serve him well
later. “I specialized in British cars because no one else in the shop
liked to work on them,” he laughed. As a junior in high school, Bob
won the Plymouth Trouble Shooting Contest awarded for diagnosing car
problems and prescribing the appropriate repairs. As a senior, he
placed second in the nation in VICA’s auto mechanic technical and
vocational competition.

After a six-year stint in the Navy, Bob’s passion for working on
cars led him to a job in an Atlanta garage. That’s where he met a
car-repair customer who would change his life. Ed, an avid car
collector from Charleston, S.C., owned more than 50 classic and
high-end automobiles, including 17 racecars. Impressed by Bob’s
expertise as a mechanic, Ed offered Bob a job in Charleston as the
full-time mechanic for his extensive car collection. Bob moved from
Atlanta to Charleston in 1987 to work for Ed. Among the cars in Ed’s
collection were several Ferraris, a Lola F-5000 car and an Aston
Martin DB4-GT, as well as motorcycles, trucks and boats.

From France to Charleston to Beaufort

Corinne Gaillard grew up in Vienne, France, an ancient town
dotted with Roman ruins near Lyon, as the youngest of three children.
After college she worked for Celette, a French manufacturer of
frame-straightening equipment for car bodies. Corinne’s language
skills (she’s fluent in French, English and German) proved to be life
altering. Her French company had an office in Charleston that was
being reorganized and needed someone fluent in English from its
headquarters in Lyon to oversee the restructuring in Charleston.
Corinne moved to Charleston in 1985, but what was described as a
temporary, three-month assignment stretched into five years. Her
office was located in the same complex where Ed housed his car
collection and Bob worked. Corinne had decided to return to France,
when fate intervened, she met Bob and the two of them fell in love.
Bob and Corinne married in 1991 and their daughter Audrey was born the
next year.

In 2005, Corinne was taking classes to become a real estate agent
when she saw a listing for a waterfront home on Lady’s Island she
liked. It was more affordable than comparable homes in Charleston and
she and Bob liked the small town atmosphere and friendliness of
Beaufort, so they bought a home and moved here.

The family had just relocated to Beaufort and Audrey was only 13,
when Corinne was diagnosed with breast cancer. “It made me look at
life with a whole different perspective. Today life is good and
beautiful every day…I just live fully!” Now a successful agent with
Ballenger Realty, Corinne says she chose that vocation not for the
money, but so she can help people have a positive experience buying
and selling real estate.

Racecars and Tires

Bob Woodman has actively participated in vintage and club racing
since 1989. When he worked as the mechanic for Ed’s collection of
racecars, Bob traveled to as many as 10 sports car races a year in the
eastern United States, at tracks like Watkins Glen International,
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Sebring International Raceway and Road
America at Elkhart Lake. Part of his job as Ed’s mechanic was buying
tires for Ed’s racecars. When Bob went to the racetracks, he took
extra tires along he’d purchased himself and began selling them on the
side to other racecar owners. Bob quickly realized selling tires and
being self-employed offered more financial opportunity than being a
mechanic for someone else. So in 1993, he began selling Hoosier Race
Tires (Hoosier is the world’s largest manufacturer of racing tires).
His business quickly grew as he added other lines including Pirelli,
Toyo, Goodyear and Yokohama race tires.

Today, his company, Bob Woodman Tires, is thriving here in
Beaufort. Bob says, “We moved the business here from Charleston 10
years ago and it has continued to grow every year, despite what the
economic environment has been.” He explained that his tire business
revolves around race schedules, so he finds work to keep his staff
busy during slower times. Five years ago, Bob added a shop to repair
Porsches to keep his staff busy. “My job is to create good jobs that
are fun! It’s important to me to make sure these guys continue to get
a paycheck even when the tire business is slower,” Bob emphasized.
When you visit his business, it’s apparent that Bob means what he
says—it’s a laid-back environment with music playing and guys laughing
as they work on the high-end Porsches in the shop. His approach to
building a successful business recently earned Bob Woodman Tires &
Motorsports the 2015 Civitas Award for Excellence in Free Enterprise,
presented to Bob by the Beaufort, S.C. Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Bob began his sports car-racing career in earnest in the
mid-1990s racing a multi-colored MG. But his long-term racing plan
involved buying a Porsche 911 because he wanted to learn the nuances
of driving them. “I’ve always had my sights set on (racing in) The 24
Hours of Daytona race—that’s the reason I bought my first Porsche 911,
Arty,” Bob said. In 1998, he built the vintage 1974 Porsche 911 into a
racecar. His young daughter Audrey named the car “Arty,” for the blue
graphic artwork painted on its white body. Bob describes Arty as “a
serious RSR Porsche.” He says Arty costs $300 an hour to drive; after
40 hours of racing, he must rebuild the engine at a cost of $12,000 to
$15,000! Bob still drives that 911 in races, but now it has a
different paint job—all white with the name Woodman painted on the
sides. Arty now has a vintage 1974 IROC (International Race of
Champions) paint scheme.

Bob isn’t the only Woodman who drives sports cars, though. On
Valentine’s Day in 1994, Bob gave Corinne a surprise—a mustard-colored
vintage 1974 MGB. Corinne named the car “Butterscotch” and she and Bob
drove it together in car rallies. Corinne began racing cars herself in
2000. “I was spending a lot of time at the race track and love to
drive fast, so I decided to take the Porsche Club of America (PCA)
driver’s training course,” she said.  “Bob bought ‘Zippy’ for me to
drive, a 1970 Porsche 911 painted red, white and blue—very patriotic,”
she added. Corinne currently races “Pumpkin,” a vintage 1973 orange
Porsche 911 with a Clemson tiger paw painted on the hood. She shares
the racecar with daughter Audrey, now 23, who works in Bob’s tire
business in marketing. In addition to driving racecars, Bob, Corinne
and Audrey are all PCA Certified Driving Instructors who teach others
to drive Porsches on a track. Audrey was accredited as a PCA driving
instructor just two weeks after her 18th birthday.

In theory, when Bob buys another car, he repairs and upgrades it
to sell at a profit to pay for the next project. Corinne says in
practice, he doesn’t always sell the cars that he buys to fix up.

Bob admitted there are times he has more cars than he realizes,
as he counted on his fingers to determine the number of Porsche 911s
he currently owns—the answer was eight. Corinne recalled that she saw
Bob several times with a white 911 she didn’t recognize at Roebling
Road Raceway in Savannah. She finally asked him if the car was his,
already knowing the answer to her question.

Races Here and Abroad

Bob says the fastest speed he’s driven was 204 mph in 2003 at
Daytona in a race of historic prototype cars. “When I’m on the track
it’s so peaceful and I enjoy every minute of it—maybe it’s like
meditating,” Bob explained.  Corinne added, “Bob is very relaxed right
before a race—he’s always singing and joking.”

Bob’s motorsports accomplishments include driving various types
of cars in both the United States and abroad. In 2001, he realized his
dream of driving in The 24 Hours of Daytona race. He qualified a
Nissan-powered Lola prototype for a starting position ahead of Dale
Earnhardt, Sr., just two weeks before Earnhardt’s fatal crash in the
Daytona 500 race at the same track. In 2005, Bob finished third in
class out of a field of more than 50 cars in the Petit Le Mans 10-hour
race, driving the “Silver Bullet,” a LMP-2 Le Mans prototype car. Then
in 2007, he won the championship of a season-long series of historic
prototype car races held at many different tracks, against national
and international racers.

This year, Bob and his friend from Atlanta, Jack Lewis, drove a
VW-based buggy in a 1,000-mile, off-road race across the desert in
Mexico. “Racing from Ensenada to Cabo was such a huge adventure. The
four-day-long event is one of the biggest off-road races. One day our
GPS wasn’t working, so we had to turn around and start that stage
again, but we still managed to finish second in our class,” Bob said.

Giving Back to the Community

Bob and Corinne believe in sharing their blessings with others.
While both of them have experienced the loss of loved ones—Corinne
lost both parents to cancer and Bob lost two brothers in their 20s to
illness and an accident—they feel fortunate Bob’s parents now live
nearby in Beaufort and their family is healthy. Because Corinne is a
cancer survivor, she and Bob are committed to helping others who have
cancer. She joined DragonBoat Beaufort in 2012 and is now on the board
of directors of the nonprofit organization that raises funds to assist
patients undergoing treatment, cancer survivors, and caregivers.
“While I was in treatment, I received much support from strangers and
people all around me. It is my time to pay it forward.” Corinne says.
Last year, Bob Woodman Tires sponsored DragonBoat Beaufort by
contributing a significant amount toward purchasing the team’s second
boat, “Dragonfly.”

The couple has even found a way to help others using their
racecars—by participating with the Porsche Club of America to give
disabled soldiers rides in their Porsches around the track at Roebling
Road Raceway. Bob and Corinne Woodman are winners when it comes to
life.