JORO Bojilov is in love with cars.

However, this does not mean he is a maniac driving flashy show-off wheels at top-speed. Instead, he wants to fix them and get them in shape.

"The car may be without front bumpers, but it has to have a strong suspension and a reliable motor," he says.

Joro is a very merry young man; one can't see him without his smile, while he makes fun of himself and everything in his colorful language.

"Meddling with cars is my passion," Joro says. "And as of late, it's not just work, it's also a sport."

The 27-year-old car mechanic is a member of the support team of one of Bulgaria's best car racers, Mitko Iliev.

"At the moment, I am living my dream," Joro says. "Without even having driven Mitko's car."

He enjoys working with cars so much, that he finds nothing difficult. He doesn't even complain about working almost non-stop before a rally. For example, for last weekend's Sosser Sliven rally he spent in the car-repair shop every day since the previous Friday, most of the days working till past midnight.

But his career path has not always been that bright and merry - it's gone through many shadowy downhills.

It started after his graduation in 1996 from the Transport and Energetics Technical School (now named after Henry Ford), where he majored in Internal Combustion Engines, and became one of the very few graduates to pursue a career in his major. "I chose this school because of my interest in cars," Joro says. "There we studied mostly theory, but it pushed my development, plus I got a drivers' license there," Joro says.

Naturally, he could drive before he was 18. His father first taught him to drive a lorry, then a bus, and finally he let him onto the family's Lada.

"I felt very proud, because unlike my mother I earned the privilege to drive this car!" he says with a smile.

The craft of fixing cars Joro learned in practice at the Peugeot service station, where he got his first job right after serving in the army. He was initially hired as a car washer, but within six months he persuaded the management to make him a mechanic.

"I became an apprentice of the most skilled master of Peugeot automobiles, and he was the man who showed me into the trade."

By day he would work at the Peugeot service station, by night at an underground service station under his block of flats.

"I'd sleep for five to six hours at most, but these were very merry times - I didn't miss a party or a night out," Joro says. This also when he met his current employer, who was at the time racing with a Peugeot and was having it fixed at the service where Joro worked.

Joro lost his job after he and a colleague crashed in a client's car. The two continued working in the underground service for about a year.

"It was very nasty: lots of dust, dirt, no space."

Then the neighbours started complaining vociferously, and they were forced to emerge above ground and rent a place to work.

"We were very happy, because we were finally working in daylight," he says.

Once again, at daytime Joro would work in the new place the two were renting, and in his free time - usually at night - Joro started helping racing car driver Mitko Iliev with his car. Starting this year, the racer is his only employer. "I am no longer a private craftsman, I am now a hired worker," Joro says. "And I don't miss being my own boss, because Mitko is more a friend than a boss," he adds.

Iliev now races with a Mitsubishi Lancer (class N4), which he recently added to his first Peugeot. Joro's job is to take the racing car to pieces and then reassemble it after every race; races are about every second week, both in Bulgaria and abroad. The support team consists of three mechanics, and an additional fourth one joins them for the races.

"This is the real thing, this is everything I've dreamt about," Joro says. "I am a part of the most real racing team in Bulgaria." The team - Boyla Automotor Sport - with Iliev at the wheel, won the Sosser Sliven rally, valid for the FIA East European Rally Cup.

The support team deserves its share of credit for this. Joro gives an example from a previous rally: "In July at the Hebros rally, near Peshtera the car crashed so seriously, that it hardly reached the pit-stop." Each pit stop can be 20 minutes at most.

"At the first pit stop we managed to get the car on its wheels. At the second - we repaired it so well, that at the final one could hardly tell it had been in an accident," Joro says. "We sweated a lot that day; but Mitko finished third in the general ranking, and first in his class."

Joro himself drives an old Lada. Or maybe it's better to sat he used to drive it - it has been sitting still with flat tyres for the past six months.

"I love it a lot, it served me faithfully, but it's very hard to drive and take care of." Joro bought it few years ago, when his father stopped letting him use the family's Lada. He wishes that his next wheels are a motor bike, but has not been able to get the money yet.

His free time Joro saves for extreme sports: snowboarding in the winter and kiteboarding in the summer.

Now that his dream is actually happening, what is it that he looks ahead to?

"I want to go snowboarding in Canada," he says. "And maybe go back to school, as this is something I kind of missed at the time."