Second only to their parents (one hopes), kids are influenced most by their mass-media heroes. They may be actual real-world humans (sports people, actors, musicians, insipid influencers, ugh) or purely imaginary (your Luke Skywalkers, Men of the Spider, Super, and Bat varieties, you get it). Thankfully, well-meaning adults have, for the most part, given kids pretty good imaginary heroes and role models (exception: Caillou). As for flesh-and-blood heroes of sports and entertainment, well … your mileage may vary.
But for better or worse, media heroes shape kids, and I’m sure you can think of a few childhood heroes and recall lessons they taught you, and how they altered your interests. And since you’re reading this at The Autopian, there’s a pretty solid chance that includes your interest in cars and/or motorports. Would I have been a car-kid had it not been for Speed Racer? Probably, but boy, Speed sure helped. Five-year-old me was absolutely glued to the tube when that jaunty theme music kicked in with a piercing horn hit and the knockoff started spinning. I was all about the powerful Mach 5, exclamation point, and cars were my thing.
Spacer
My other race-car-driving hero was Richard Petty, who was at the peak of his powers when I was at my most impressionable. But he wasn’t really a person to me, he was a car. That blue and red number 43 was my jam, and it was an exciting day indeed when my Dad returned from the auto parts store with a new fan belt and a genuine STP sticker (that was the exciting part, not the fan belt) and stuck it on the seat of my tricycle. Instantly, power was increased by 100%, and the handling went from sluggish understeer to snappy oversteer. Such was the power of Richard Petty and a logo.
Speed Racer and Richard Petty were huge for 1970s kid-dom, but one figure loomed large over them all: Evel motherhumping Knievel. What an absolute badass. Evel was everywhere, jumping on motorcycles very much not designed for the job (good lord Evel, use a dirt bike!), breaking hearts (one assumes) and breaking bones (his own, and definitely). Evel’s Snake River “jump,” an ill-fated blast in a steam-powered rocket that Evel was all but certain would kill him, was the event of the decade. Ideal’s line of Evel Knievel toys was the hottest thing going, and kids around the world wrecked themselves emulating Evel’s antics on their Sting-Rays. That certainly included me, and plywood-ramp-jumping led to long run as a (not very fast) BMX racer. Unfortunately, there was fear that kids would also emulate Evel by taking retribution on their perceived enemies via assault with baseball bat just like Knievel did, which killed the toy line and, for the most part, Evel mania itself. Waddaya gonna do?
But enough about me (booooring!), let’s talk about YOU. Who were the heroes of your childhood who helped make you the car or motorcycle person you are today? The Autopian is asking!
Evel Knievel is way high on my list. I may have had the toy stunt cycle, or it could have been a knock off. I was too young to remember.
Then there’s the Dukes of Hazzard. I thought they were super cool, although my Dad would make fun of the janky back-and-forth-yanking-on-the-steering-wheel “driving style”.
Need For Speed Porsche Unleashed, SEGA GT 2002, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit II, ATV Quad Power Fury 2, Drag Racer V3, Hot Wheels Highway 35 World Race, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, The Fast And The Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, White Lightning, Cannonball Run, Mark Martin, Bobby Labonte, Jeff Gordon, Tommi Makkinen, Trucks! with Stacey David, Monster Garage, Initial D Stage 2, and Initial D Stage 3 were all massive influences on me.
Because of this diversity of media I grew up loving just about everything. Old ’70s land barges, shitboxes, supercars, trucks, oldschool hotrods, concept cars, tuners, and sleepers. I was born in the ’90s, but there’s a whole slate of stuff from 1999 to 2004 that was this often ignored zeitgeist of automotive enthusiasm that went way beyond just The Fast And The Furious.
Watching Stacey David play guitar to end out the episode at nine in the morning, playing SEGA GT 2002 or Need For Speed Hot Pursuit II until about one, then walking over to my neighbour’s house where he was working on his classic hotrod style ’34 Ford Deluxe sedan and just as I enter that shed hearing Mike Joy shout the network ID as the broadcast for the Coca-Cola 600 started at two in the afternoon is a core memory of mine. My neighbour, a man in his sixties at that point, would always root for Bill Elliott while I rooted for Gordon and Martin.
Having access to Limewire and other things early on also let me discover Initial D and Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld, starting my love of shitboxes, sleepers, and the World Rally Championship. You’d expect me to say drifting, but somehow my mind connected the narrow mountain roads of Akina to the WRC when I was young.
As a kid I was a big fan of the guys who could drive anything and win, especially Mark Donohue – a classy and humble dude with gobs of talent. He left us far too soon.
Herbie and Speed Racer early on. Ayrton Senna and Wayne Rainey a bit later. Sure enough, when I started smoking things later in life I preferred Marlboros (and thankfully kicked that habit almost 15 years ago). If Yamaha ever decides to bestow the XSR 900 GP on the US market I will immediately and enthusiastically put a deposit down on one.
James Garner, and as sad as it is, Burt Rynolds for Smokey and the Bandit.
The Love Bug
Speed Racer
Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies
Diamonds on Wheels
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (“We’re the ones with the Imperial and We’re running last?)
The Great Race (“Push the Button, Max!”)
James Bond films – particularly Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Magnum PI
Hart to Hart
(I would not mind being an ex-con butler/dog-walker/car washer/chef who lives in a Brentwood guesthouse and drives the family Corniche & MB 300TD while helping my Boss & his lovely wife solve crimes)
I’m gonna have to give a nod mostly to Burt Reynolds. Both for the first two Smokey and the Bandit movies and the Cannonball Run movies. They were in regular rotation on cable when I was a kid.
And an honorable mention to Optimus Prime, the 2nd Transformer I ever got (Bluestreak was first). Transformers weren’t really about getting me into cars as confirming that I was.