Peter began working on cars professionally in 1977 in his hometown of West Palm Beach, Fl. at the Datsun dealership in West Palm Beach. Since then, he has owned his own repair shop (Haughton Motor Works) for 8 years in the early '80's.

Emerging technologies in the mid '80's required a return to the dealer environment for the purpose of continuing education. From '87, to the formation of Japanese Motor Works in the fall of '92, he worked for 4 different Japanese automotive manufacturers and received extensive training from each of them. His continued commitment to ongoing education due to the rapid advancements of automotive technologies allowed him to maximize the training offered to him. The advent of the Internet has allowed him to continue his training through online educational materials and the professional web site, Iatn.net .

His love for cars, specifically sports cars began at a very young age. His father, David Haughton, a Palm Beach Optometrist took him and his two older brothers to the world famous Sebring Sports Car Endurance Race in 1960. They have been attending as a family ever since, as well as other sports car venues throughout the south. For this reason, the move to Athens in 1988 was an easy decision for him. Road Atlanta has been on his venue since the late '70's, and is only fifty minutes from Athens .

Peter's personal cars have always been Japanese and he always manages to coax many hundreds of thousands of miles from them with minimal repairs because of his aggressive maintenance of them.

His wife's '90 Acura Legend has more than three hundred thousand miles on it. And to this day, remains a reliable backup car. She now drives a 1999 Acura RL with close to two-hundred thousand miles on it. His own daily driver, an '96 Toyota T100 pick up truck has in excess of one hundred, seventy-five thousand miles on it and is used often to pull a heavy camper or pontoon boat! So, when promoting maintenance, he speaks from the experience of success! His “beater” truck is a 1977 Datsun king Cab, which Peter rescued from the bone yard in 1988, and then put another 20 years and a couple of hundred thousand additional miles on it! He guesses the mileage on this old beast to be in the half-million area! We think this type of reliability caused all of the manufacturers to add another digit to the odometers.

The car lover's hobbies also include camping in the mountains, scuba diving in the Florida Keys for lobster, salt-water fishing, and fresh water fishing and thinking about fishing. He also dreams of surfing again, a sport he enjoyed all of his youth growing up within swimming distance of the ocean in south Florida .