OK, so this was supposed to be my story about how and when I knew I was a car and motorcycle person, but dumb me had to go and invite the gang to contribute their own stories. You know, just a little something, because my story wasn’t going to be particularly long or interesting. And thus, the more the merrier.
I didn’t need extra stories, I merely thought it would be nice to include them if anyone wanted to contribute. “Just a couple or three sentences,” I said.
I did not get a couple or three sentences. I got novellas. Well, good! I was just going to say I fell in love with Speed Racer and my Dad took me to Seekonk Speedway on the regular, which sealed the deal. I was a car kid and knew I’d be a car person for life. I was also an Evel Knievel kid, which set the motorcycle hook.
Of course, it was going to be a while before I could drive a car or a real motorcycle, so I had to content myself with Hot Wheels and Stick Shifters and bicycles that did their best to be hot rods and/or choppers, or in the case of the Huffy Wheel, both.
Oh, and I had R-R-R-Raw Power, a must.
But enough about me, it’s time for the show to be stolen:
Alanis King
When I was 13 years old, my mom got free tickets to a NASCAR race from her job. I didn’t know anything about NASCAR, and I didn’t want to go. But she said: “It’s the recession, so if we’re doing anything ‘fun’ this year, it’s this.”
We arrived at Texas Motor Speedway, and it was the biggest facility I’d ever seen — like a tall, shimmering glass kingdom in the middle of Texas. I got to my grandstand seat and felt like I could see the end of the Earth, and when 40 cars took the green flag, the shrieks and ground-shaking could’ve opened a portal to the center of the planet.
That’s when I decided I wanted to do motorsports for a living, and cars just came along with it. I never missed another NASCAR national series race after that day. [Ed note: Hey everybody, go follow Alanis on YouTube – Pete]
Mercedes Steeter
I trace the beginning of my car enthusiasm to the day when a now long-distant uncle gave me a Pontiac Firebird Matchbox car. I think I was maybe four at the time, but I suppose I never realized how that little car would turn into something so much bigger. As a kid, I would go on to collect hundreds, if not thousands of Matchbox, Maisto, and Hot Wheels cars. Every single time I went to a store I figured out a way to bring at least one car home with me.
My car enthusiasm truly blossomed through the help of go-karts. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, Wisconsin Dells wasn’t just known as the so-called “Waterpark Capital Of The World,” but also a sort of go-kart mecca. Basically every theme park in the Dells had a go-kart track, and there were some parks that were nothing but go-karts. My favorite was Big Chief Go-Karts, where the teens running the place tweaked the governors on the go-kart engines, resulting in tracks where you could go so fast that you could actually get airtime.
Kid-me adored driving fast more than perhaps anything else in the world. My mom would come into a bunch of money soon after and treated my brother and I to a pair of off-road go-karts. My kart was the faster of the two, and I spent basically every summer weekend racing the big kids on the secret dirt track they built in a nearby forest. These kids had much more powerful ATVs and dirt bikes, but I made that 5 HP Manco Critter Kart work hard. I even managed to crash it into a tree trying to drift around a corner. I panicked at first, but eventually I brushed myself off, pulled the kart out of the tree, and got back racing.
That kart, diecast cars, and racing games helped me get through my confusing childhood. My body was changing in ways I did not understand and perhaps worse, my brain began realizing that there was a disconnect between my body and its own expectations. Eventually, I got to a point where I looked at myself in a mirror, understood that something was wrong, but couldn’t determine what.
I would go on to experiment with my identity and slowly become who I am today. But I couldn’t have done it without that Firebird, Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, and a little red go-kart with a bald drive tire.
Stephen! Walter! Gossin!
I distinctly remember being around 10 years old and having a Dodge Stealth poster on my bedroom wall above the black & white TV that was hooked up to my shiny new NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). This was in 1990. I recall lying there at night, trying to fall asleep, staring at the curves of that Stealth poster and wondering what my dream garage was going to look like when I got older. 6 years later I bought my first car (’84 Cougar) for $400 that I made lifeguarding and working at a guitar store and immediately removed and rebuilt the 3.8 V6. I’m a lucky guy to still be here, 35 years and 151 cars later, living that dream and doing what I love, each day. [Ed note: You don’t have to use the exclamation points when you say Stephen’s name, that’s just how I do it – Pete]
Adrian Clarke
I was probably only a couple of years old maybe even younger. I remember having a green Dinky McLaren Can Am car in my cot as a baby, as well as a friction car that made sparks when you pushed it. It had lead screws which i used to like licking. Yes, I am old. What age do babies outgrow cots? Like five or something? When I was big enough for a proper bed I had one of those police car bedspreads, which I used to sit on and pretend to drive. Mother Dearest and I lived in a 9th floor council flat on a main road out of east London, and as an extremely child small I would sit transfixed for hours watching the traffic.
Your turn, finally: How And When Did You Realize You Were A Car Person?
Top graphic images: Schwinn; Mattel
My first word was “car”. Not Mama or Dada.
At 3 I knew every car on the road.
At 5 I fell in love with the 1961 Imperial and carried around a 1/25 red convertible for several years like Linus with his blanket.
It was all onwards and upwards from there.
It happened long before I can remember. My mother said that when I was a toddler there was no such thing as a short walk to the post office, for example – I had to stop and examine every single car we passed.
I was born that way. In my family, it is known as the “car gene”. My Dad and Grandpa definitely had it, and passed it along to me and one of my brothers. There are too many stories to recount as proof, but as an example I self published a 5 page memo recently titled “History of Rob According to Cars”.
While I passed the gene along to two of my three sons (VW GTI and Subaru BRZ), I swear that the other son could not tell you the brand of car he owns, let alone the model. I am thinking of asking for a DNA test. Is he really mine? Did I really have to pay for his college education?
when I was very little and young, when ever I would clean the house or do work around the house, my mother would reward me with a matchbox car still in the box. later I started buying the hot wheels cars, tracks and carry case. I had thousands of cars un boxed but well preserved till the age of 40 then up and sold it all. They called me a true collector because of how the cars were stored. Same holds true for the Star Wars stuff I had.. I met a woman down on her luck and wanted to get something for her son for xmas.. I gave him all of my star wars toys and collectables. I’m still waiting for that day to come where it is said the things return to you tenfold.. I’ve not seen it yet.. and I’m nearing 70. Lastly, I’ve had 46 cars or trucks since the age of 16.. worked on most of them myself until the 80’s
My first word was “car” and by 4 or 5 I was notorious for identifying cars via wheels/hubcaps, later doing the same at night via headlight shapes (that skill has since deteriorated with LASIK & age, as well as all these newfangled designs coming out!)
Same first word for me.
Apparently when I was a baby I would sleep with a hot wheels or matchbox clutched in each hand instead of a stuffed animal, so it seems it was inevitable from the very beginning…
I was about 5, and saw my cousin’s 1965 Matchbox No. 23 Trailer. I thought that trailer was the coolest thing ever. Fell in love with the Lesney Corporation, and my collection began. Also, my Grandpa had a 1970 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight with all the bells and whistles ( Power windows were the biggest luxury in my young mind )
I must have been into cars from birth. My parents said when I was a baby I would just turn toy cars upside down and stare at the spinning wheels. They also tell me I could identify car brands by their logos before I could even read.
No clue, but I do know I loved might machines when I was like 4-6. It probably started there with large construction and industrial vehicles, then grew into normal cars and trucks.
Due to a bad case of the poor, we were always working on our stuff – mowers, bikes, etc – to keep them running rather than replacing broke down equipment. So there was always an aptitude and a tendancy to wrench rather than buy from a very early age. I remember Dad screaming about his tools being left in the yard as a result as far back as 2nd grade.
About 8th grade Dad took a crack at rebuilding the 305 in the family van in situ in the front yard. It was quite instructional and confidence inspiring and took our wrenching habits to a whole new level.
I knew I was a car guy when, in high school, my brother and I kept JEGS, PAW, and JC Whitney catalogs in our lockers to peruse in down time through the day.
Being a child in the 80’s, my toys revolved around cars. I did play with action figures and other stuff, but the Matchbox, Hot Wheels, Corgi, slot cars, RC cars and Lego vehicles were everywhere in my life. Not to mention the TV shows with the top 3 having hero cars: Knight Rider, The Dukes of Hazard and The A Team. For some reason I never really saw the Fall Guy show. I also got into bicycles and remain deeply passionate for all things that roll on wheels. I also passed it on: When my kids were very young, we would sit by a large window and watch the vehicles go by and play a game we called “Car, Truck, MINIVAN!”. It was the early 2000’s and there were no CUV and fewer SUVs, but we would yell MINIVAN because they were more rare to see.
My dad said my first word I spoke was “car”, so it probably started there.
Countless HotWheels (and the knockoffs), RC cars, racing games, NASCAR bed spreads, auto shows, races, monster trucks, etc.. followed in the coming years.
I remember going to the International Auto Show when I was 4 or 5 and being AMAZED that the NSX was shorter than me. I still have the polaroid of me sitting in Mario Andretti’s F1 car (this would’ve likely been ’92 or ’93, I should go take my ibuprofen now).
We never had money growing up, so I wouldn’t get my first taste of the sports car life until I picked up a Genesis Coupe for my 22nd birthday. I figured “if not now, when?”
I’ve been a car person since birth. My first word was “car”.
I loved Matchbox, Hot Wheels, and watching muscle cars cruise the main streets and downtown square of my town when I was a kid. In 1970– back when ‘new car season’ was still an early fall tradition– 10-year-old me hopped on my bike, rode it to all the car dealerships in the area to pick up every brochure about every car, pored over them, and kept them until the next fall rolled around. I never looked back from there. I started reading the car mags when I was about 12, (it took me a few years to figure out what some of the stats in the articles meant, but I persevered).
My first success as a car ‘influencer’ was in 1976: my dad was a successful traveling salesman who had been getting a new Caddy every year since the early 1960s, but I talked him into test-driving a Jag XJ12, which he then went ahead and bought. I got my license a few months later, and driving it every once in a while (between my dad’s road trips and the car’s trips to the shop) was a major win for 16-year-old me.
From an early age Building model cars, electric trains and race cars, control line planes, hot rod bicycles, home built go carts, trying to get a 100% when identifying cars by make and model, excitedly going to car, air and boat shows. The list goes on and on. The best was seeing CanAm races in Edmonton and Mont-Tremblant.
Summer of 2003. My friend had a DVD copy of 2 Fast2Furious and the first time I saw that movie it was like a bomb going off in my head. I was immediately hooked by that blue Yenko Camaro and orange Challenger…Immediate car fanboy. I saw Smokey and the Bandit a few months later for the first time, and it had a similarly profound effect.
My granma once told me that by age two I could barely speak, but I could identify cars by their sound and babble their names. I was (and am) extremely nerdy, maybe on the easy part of the spectrum, so it was no surprise that I started asking my dad for car magazines since I was a small child, learning to read at 4y/o.
I was four. Four year olds don’t have much self awareness so this isn’t my personal remembrance, but my dad noticed when we would pass by other cars I was able to say the name of every single one of them. The only one that stumped me because I’d never seen it before was a ’76 or ’77 El Camino that I just called “car truck car.” By the time I was six I had a Hot Wheels and Matchbox collection at least fifty strong, owned Top Gear 2 and 3000 for the Super Nintendo, owned Hot Wheels Crash! and Hot Wheels Micro Racers, was watching my neighbour every weekend when he would race R/C cars, and was building my own cars out of LEGOs.
I was a car nut from a very early age. Had tons and tons of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars and whatnot. I can remember leafing through the phone book looking for pictures of wreckers at a very early age. Built lots of (gravity powered) go-karts as a kid. Helped that I had two car nut pilot uncles. One was also into motorcycles (still is at 70+), but that bug never bit me, other than bicycles until I got my license.
I also had a Schwinn like that with the stickshift and banana seat, but in 1976 red, white, and blue paint, my 8th birthday having been three days after the Bicentennial. Mine was the lesser version with 3spds and coaster brakes. That was a really, really good birthday. Got my first HO train set too – also in Bicentennial colors. It was definitely the theme of 1976. Good memories!
I was 22 when I got engaged to a Mazda boy from a car family. I decided I could either be bored for the rest of my life or sit down, shut up and learn, so I started watching Top Gear. I’ve long had a more British-oriented sense of humor, so it made sense to learn that way and it worked pretty well. I started picking things up, but there were already seeds sort of planted in my brain, just waiting for a drop of water. As a teenage on a band trip to LA, I took my first car pic out of the bus window, a then brand new Lamborghini Gallardo, and I still cherish that photo. I would also notice cars I just liked the looks of on the street, usually they were more angular sports cars like early MR2s and Cadillac XLRs. I’d say in 2012, when I begged and pleaded my brand new husband to let me get a Fiat 500 was my confirmation moment. Interestingly, cars are very much in my blood as well. My dad was a VW and Porsche guy, though he died when I was young, so I wasn’t raised in it; but I do have sense memories deep in my lizard brain that get triggered by my boss’ VW Thing. I also have photos of my ancestors posing with their cars circa 1911, so I’m proud to carry on the tradition.
I guess it started around age 4 with a Hot Wheels Lola T-70 and some track, and fully coalesced when I was 7 and my father had a BMW and a subscription to Road & Track and we went to the IMSA races at Lime Rock. I was also very into trains as a kid but I have been only a casual rail fan versus a heavy gearhead
There’s a picture somewhere of me holding onto a wooden spoke of my Grandfather’s Model T. 3ish? I remember laying in the back seat of Mom’s Cutlass on late-night runs from Iowa City to Papillon Nebraska, and hearing the dual pipes gain a tone as she hit the kick-down getting on the highway.
Around 8or maybe 9 I heard my neighbor reving his E-type and it was pure excitement. 2-3 years later, I read a passage in a Hunter S Thompson book about riding a motorcycle at high speed—booming through the curves, then catching the next gear—and how nobody alive truly knows where The Edge is exactly. That gave me chills.
No moment of realization: it’s just innate
8 Years old. I liked playing with Hot Wheels and such. But, what really got me was a game. We’d occasionally visit family, and one time we went to a get together at my Uncle’s house. Most of my cousins were all older than me, but as long as I didn’t be annoying or anything, I could hang out with them.
My cousin was showing everyone a new game he just got for his Commodore 64. It was called “Test Drive” and was the single most amazing thing I had ever seen up to that point! You could drive cars! Like really drive them, from the driver’s seat and not just an outside view. And, the cars were all amazing. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Lotus, and Corvette!
Upon returning home, I immediately begged for my own copy of the game. A few months later, I finally got a copy and it took over my life.
Jump ahead a few years, I’m now about 11, and everyday I can’t wait to get home from school to jump on my 386 PC and play some Test Drive III.
In my late teens, the PlayStation releases and then Gran Turismo comes out. A new obsession all over again.
Now, I’m in my late 40s with way too much money invested in a Sim Racing rig, as I still love racing, cars, and playing games about them.
I started watching IndyCar and NASCAR on TV when I was 3 years old. I loved playing with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. Later in my childhood I even had the same Firebird that Mercedes mentioned. I may still have it somewhere in my closet. I could read when I was 4, so my parents bought me car magazines and those annual car buyers guide books. I still have a 1984 car buyers guide. It might have been published by Motor Trend. I enjoyed Smokey and the Bandit because of the car chases. I watched The Fall Guy because of the truck and Hardcastle & McCormick because of the car. I got a Nintendo for Christmas around 1988. Of course, my parents gave me RC Pro-Am since they knew I liked racing.
I’m not sure where my interest in cars and racing came from, since my parents aren’t into cars and aren’t particularly handy. In my 40s, I still go to a half-dozen car shows a year, still watch IndyCar and F1 races (I dropped NASCAR), I started buying diecast cars again, and I play Gran Turismo 7. I’m sure I’ll still be into cars and racing until the day I die.
Since before I can really remember. I learned to swim at a really young age, like young enough I don’t remember taking swimming lessons. As the story goes though, according to my mom, the swim instructor would get me to swim across the pool by prying my Matchbox car(s) out of my hand(s) and going to the other side of the pool, and I had to swim to them to get my car(s) back.
My wife is a car person too. She and I actually met off-roading our Jeeps. Our kids didn’t stand a chance of not being car people from birth, lol.