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!
As an European late 80’s / early 90’s kid it was mainly rallying. Mainly Carlos Sainz (local hero) and Juha Kankkunen (which seemed capable of winning everything).
I’m not yet 30, and I don’t know if this makes me unique, but I can’t say I had (or really even have) any automotive heroes. Never really got into racing…or at least, yet. Who knows what the future brings.
Mad Max: Fury Road is definitely the most automotive-focused movie I recall watching, and for brief moments of time I will tell you I want my very own War Rig and/or Doof Wagon, but the vehicles catch my attention more than the characters, to a degree.
For me it’s kind of an eclectic group. Dale Earnhardt, Bigfoot monster truck, the cartoon M.A.S.K., the movie The Wraith, Magnum PI, and Days of Thunder when I was young. Teenager was Gran Turismo, Ronin, and The Fast and the Furious. I somehow didn’t get into Mad Max until I was much older.
OG Transporter. Ronin. But honestly, it’s the box chevy from fall guy. Or the A team van.
The Dukes of Hazzard was my fave. Motor mayhem on unpaved country roads & the General always flying through the air.. Spectacular!! Redneck Rallycross. Also, Daisy Duke was my 1st crush.
For a certain age group, catherine Bach was all of our first crushes.
Impossible. She was all mine!!
I was way more into Bo and Luke.
😉
See username.
Nice!
“Thankfully, well-meaning adults have, for the most part, given kids pretty good imaginary heroes and role models (exception: Caillou).”
Caillou is annoying AF but Pokemon is just the worst!
The whole premise of that dystopia is kids roaming the country completely unsupervised, not a parent in sight capturing wild animals and forcing them to fight each other purely for the glory of the “trainer”. They rationalize their actions with the claim the animals want to fight and that they love their animals which does not make any of it better.
Around the time of the Michael Vic scandal I read an interview with a different scumbag who did exactly all this with his own real live dogs the rational was exactly the same as Pokemon. They love their animals they WANT to fight! In this case sometimes literally tear each other to pieces. Animal fighting is wrong and should never be glorified especially to impressionable children.
Bo Duke and Jim Rockford
In my earliest memories, it started with Herbie movies and The Dukes of Hazzard. 1982 brought two big additions: Knight Rider premiered and I first saw The Cannonall Run. I was five years old, but my gearhead tendencies were already set in stone at that point.
Those are mine as well, plus Mad Max, Smokey & The Bandit, and Bigfoot. I also loved drag racing in general, though I think it was a lot like monster trucks in that I didn’t really care what car it was or who was driving, I just loved the spectacle of it all.
I’m Gen X, so obviously as a kid it was Speed Racer, Smokey and the Bandit, then Mad Max!
But as a young adult it was 100% Alex Roy with the Gumball rallies and then the Cannonball.
My formative mass media car influences :
Simon and Simon Power Wagon.
Fall Guy truck.
Riptide S58T Screaming Mimi.
Mad Max Interceptor.
The truck from Sorcerer.
All the cars from The Wraith.
Corevtte from King of the Mountain.
2 Land Black Top 55
Falfa 55.
Speed Racer was huge, and was on TV for more than a decade in reruns.
We also can’t overlook the Rat Fink and Speed Buggy (which was pretty cheesy and cheaply produced).
K.I.T.T., the A-Team van and ‘vette, Ponch and John, The General, The Fall Guy truck, Cursor from Automan, Rockford’s Firebird, Starsky’s Gran Torino, Crockett’s fauxrari Daytona…
I liked Street Hawk too, though in retrospect, jeeze that was a completely silly idea (and this it network tv we’re talking about…)
One of the reasons for my love of Mustangs came from seeing Spenser’s – both his classic ’66 AND his later gray two-tone 5.0 foxbody.
“Big Daddy” Don Garlits
So Y’all didn’t have a 12 year older brother that kept the driveway, garage, and some of the back yard full of MGAs, Jags, and GT6s by time your 5? That’s sad. Also WTF with Speed Racers pose? It always struck me as unnatural, like the artist had no idea how humans move.
I wish I had that brother!
He has good taste in cars. GT6s are highly under-rated, and are representative of the sort of featherweight sports cars we aren’t allowed to buy in the USA anymore.
A modern EV version of something like a GT6 would certainly be interesting.
Looking forward to when you post your EV conversion story.
Lol I am the older brother. I have three younger brothers, the youngest 19(!) years younger than me, and he loves my many car projects.
Speed Buggy
The Wonder Bug
Herbie
Suzie (The little cartoon car in the minimovie before Herbie)
The Turtle Expedition
Even though I was really too young to see him in his prime (born in the mid 60s), AJ Foyt was a living god to me. As Eddie Cheever said, “If A.J. Foyt didn’t exist, we would have to invent him.”
Also, I read this book 1000 times growing up and in fact still have a copy. So, everybody in this book. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Racing-Cars-Drivers-Charles/dp/0448011506
MASK
I still don’t understand why gullwing cars can’t fly when you keep the doors open.
Just tonight I saw a reasonable condition IROC-Z on the road! Darker red, but still…
My dad collected Hot Rod, Car Craft and other hot rodding magazines. Those, combined with Hot Wheels and car model kits started me down this path. Later I found Smokey and the Bandit, Dukes of Hazzard, all the 70’s cop shows with malaise car chases, specifically Starsky and Hutch. Kid me had no idea what a pile that car was.
Then I found Motor Trend, Car & Driver and Road & Track. That began the obsession with the Bugeye Sprite and other ‘weird’ cars according to the hot rod/American muscle world. Cut out pictures from the magazines and that’s what was on my walls.
For me, the Mad Max films certainly left an impression. Totally bitchin’ wheeled vehicles in all films(although the 1st is my favorite). And not only have the concerns over resource depletion, nuclear war, and environmental collapse expressed in the films’ stories grown more relevant since the series started, but the sort of Aussie Iron exhibited in those films has become even more coveted, rare, and increasingly unobtainable.
The first one is my favorite too, and is even more powerful once you’ve seen the others. The gathering storm clouds feel of it is great – the world hasn’t descended into anarchy just yet, there’s even still functioning government. But it’s getting dicey.
Smokey and the Bandit
Convoy
Rockford Files
Anything where Paul Newman was driving
“Mad Max” Rockatansky, though it was quite a while after the first movie came out.
The opening scene where you don’t see his face – just hands reinstalling a distributor cap, operating the radio, and then starting the car in a clear series of steps. The music that car made on startup was fantastic.
And basically tied with the Interceptor is Jim Goose’s KZ1000.
One of my favorite shots of that movie is that start up, as the police radio describes the situation…the various indicator lights illuminating on by one, the engine firing to life, etc. It’s so steely, fitting the character well.
I’m a 25-year-old. For me, it was Travis Pastrana. As a kid, he was this mythical hero who could do anything when it came to things with motors. The Top Gear guys and Speed Racer were definitely more responsible for getting me into cars themselves, but that guy was my childhood idol.
As a Gen-Xer, I’d have to go with: ’70s and ’80s action/adventure tv.
For those not so old, it probably seems odd I know, but back then, most network non-sitcoms invariably featured a signature vehicle for the main and often secondary characters. They were as much a part of the show as the human actors, and seemed a big contributor to their cool. They were never boring or practical (yeah, I know, the van did actually make sense) and were key to our heroes saving the day. How could a kid NOT be drawn to them?
Shows back then were brutally simplistic in their execution. In-depth relationship drama and examinations of traumatic experiences with this changes everything reveals? No. Tire squealing chases culminating in a minute :54 shooting of a tire causing the bad guys to careen into a gasoline tank truck? Yes, nearly always.
Thanks to Tubi, I’m currently enjoying “Stingray,” a now-forgotten show of the era that I liked back then b/c yes, it centers around a Corvette and a mysterious-loner-who-helps-people named Ray. Good times.
Stingray was awesome! I loved that lightbar setup he had to avoid detection when folowing someone at night.
I’d forgotten about that from childhood, but immediately recalled it when I saw it again! Such a great example of the show’s conceit that you’d think he was falling into some sort of trap, only to find out he’d cleverly thought it all through first.
Knight Rider and Dukes of Hazard, I think, took an interest that was already growing and took it up several notches
Speed Racer and Pat Goss were up there for me. I loved watching Speed when I was a kid. I believe it came on around 3pm and I wouldn’t miss it. Then when I got older, I would always tune in to watch MotorWeek and listen to John Davis and Pat Goss tell me all about cars. I guess to a lesser extent, Click and Clack from Car Talk on NPR.