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!
I wasn’t really a car person growing up. I think the combination of my parents only owning stick shift cars and a couple of my friends being in to cars is what got me started. I do vividly remember a friend in high school showing me a video clip of Jeremy Clarkson trying to drive that Golf with a W12 shoved in it and thinking that was about the coolest thing I’d yet seen.
Regarding pop- culture references I would say Blues Brothers and the Dodge Monaco ignited something in young me,and later on The Fast and The Furious naturally. The first one,mind you.
I was thankfully a kid before streaming and internet so I used to watch Formula 1 and WRC on the television whenever I could. I especially remember Kimi and Shumacher in F1 and Sainz and Mäkinen in the WRC.
For me, it was somewhere between the Dukes of Hazzard, Michael Knight, Mario Andretti, and Dale Earnhart. Honorable mentions to the 928 in Risky Business and Bandit’s Trans Am.
I am old enough to be given original Hot Wheels and Tracks and Tongues and a C-Clamp with Dual Track connection so we could hold races.
Learned about Physics, too, as a result.
The DeLorean from THE MOVIE. That was the first car I was obsessed with when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Then the Lamborghini Murcielago from Batman Begins. That movie came out my freshman year of high school, and I was just about to become obsessed with cars. And, kind of a weird one, but the 73 Malibu and Mustang GT from Drive (2011). I was in college, but this was the first time I saw something on the big screen that I could relate to. The hero of a modern film was driving an accessible (at least back in 2011) classic car, and a Ford anyone could go to the dealer and buy. It shifted my car lust from unobtainable exotics to Muscle Cars for the better part of a decade.
Knight Rider! The 3rd gen F-body will always have a place in my heart.
Back to the future, for obvious reasons
The A-team. Shaggin’ wagon Vanduras will always be cool to me, especially if they are loaded up with some ruger Mini-14’s
As an Discovery Channel kid, it didn’t take long for Chip Foose to sink his felt-tipped markers into my frontal lobe. It was all downhill from there.
Outside of video games, I’d say in Jay Leno is the pop culture icon (if you even want to call him that) that helped shape me. You can tell he likes his Mopar’s a lot but will buy & own virtually anything else. He even admitted he daily drives a Fiat 500e.
Dude isn’t just a “car enthusiast”, I’m pretty sure he’s the epitome of one.
I don’t think it was media —though I certainly watched a lot of CHiPs & Emergency mostly to identify the cars & for the wrecks. If I had to pick one name, it would be Colin McRae: the vcr in the 90s was constantly set to record at I think 3am Sat so I could get my rally fix
You say Richard Petty, but I say David Pearson. #2 on the all time wins list, he had a harder time on getting a regular ride, which meant less opportunities. The 1976 Firecracker 500 last 2 laps are available to watch to see these 2 giants battle it out I can still remember watching that as a kid.
I was a subscriber to Cartoons magazine and Hot Rod in late elementary school with articles on shift points for drag racing ( Torque peak, not redline), and other how to article. Though living in New England, I was always jealous of them picking up a 10 year old car to restore/resort, and not having a lick of rust on it.
Fictional, I saw Gumball rally like 15 times in the hteatre.
I’d say my biggest influences were from video games. Gran Turismo 3/4, Midnight Club, and Need for Speed. All great for a young car enthusiast.
I did like the Fast and Furious movies. I remember thinking that 2 Fast 2 Furious was the best movie ever made (lol).
I had a copy of “The Birthday Car Book” when I was around 2 or 3, and loved Corvettes, Mustangs and Beetles, but the late 70s and early 80s that set the hook. Every cool guy on every show had a cool car:
-Starsky and Hutch
-Smokey and the Bandit 1&2
-The Dukes of Hazzard
-The A-Team
-Knight Rider
– Riptide
-The Fall Guy
– Hardcastle and McCormick
– Stingray
– Charlie’s Angels
– Magnum PI
– Vega$
– Simon & Simon
– The Cannonball Run
– any James Bond movie after Goldfinger.
It was the time, and, since I was already predisposed to it, Hollywood and the good folks who made toy and model cars made it easy to develop the habit.
Worth noting: Playmobil has made some great stuff in recent years, including the A-Team Van, KITT and the Goldfinger DB5. Were I less mature (read: they were expensive enough for me to pass up), I would be all over them.
Don’t forget Rockford’s Firebird!
I knew I would forget some. Hell, I nearly forgot KITT!
Bo Darville, 100%. The car, the hat, the mustache. The money, the glory, the fun.
Also Luke Skywalker, I REALLY wanted an X-34.
Speed Racer, Herbie, and Doc Brown doing mad science “with some style.” I literally wore out my The Love Bug VHS.
Oh boy. I think I’m younger than a lot of the commentariat here (born in 2001), but the properties I grew up with span decades.
The first Pixar “Cars” film influenced my childhood a lot. That launched a love for NASCAR and Jeff Gordon that I still have today!
I also grew up with the 1999 game LEGO Racers, which has also influenced my interests a lot. Rocker Racer was intimidating when I was 6.
I also grew up with Knight Rider and The A Team, the latter of which has given me an undying love for vans.
There’s many more, Speed Racer included, but that’s a nice summary.
See profile pic. That’s where it all began. My uncle, only a decade older than me, took me to the movies to see “Smokey And The Bandit” in the theater (on, like, his twelfth trip), and the die was cast.
Then, of course, “The Dukes Of Hazzard.” Later, as cable and VHS became a thing, I dove into some of the classic car movies – “Bullitt,” “Cannonball” (NOT “The Cannonball Run,” but “Cannonball,” with David Carradine and two identically race-prepped early 70s split-nose Trans Ams), “Vanishing Point,” “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.”
Of course, as a southerner, I had a head start, especially considering that the aforementioned uncle and his friends were all basically extras from “Dazed And Confused” – imagine being the five-year-old nephew or little brother of any of the main cast members, observing them having what looked like heaps of fun in all sorts of cool cars in the late ’70s, and that was pretty much my childhood.
I grew up reading Michel Vaillant, that’s definitely my biggest pop culture reference re: cars. The A-Team was also a very strong pop culture influence in the car department; I still remember vividly the episode when B.A. Baracus built an armored car out of a Renault Le Car, and I loved my miniature A-Team van. Knight Rider too, to a certain extent – I know I watched it religiously once a week, but I barely have any memories of any storylines.
Outside of pop culture, there was F1: some of my older cousins and my uncles were crazy for it and supported Ayrton Senna, so I grew up watching races with them, reading their old magazines and idolising Senna as well – which made it so much more painful to watch him die live when I was 12, not even a month had passed since another personal hero of mine had passed away – Kurt Cobain. I ended up a musician who loves cars. 1994 may have been the single most defining year of my entire pre-adult life.
EDIT: forgot to mention Michelle Mouton, who I learned about reading my uncle’s old car magazines and became fascinated with. Forever a part of my personal pantheon of automotive icons.
I got my start with racing games, but beyond that it would be MotorWeek and Car and Driver. For the drivers, in no particular order: Bill Elliott, Sterling Marlin, the Andrettis, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, and Indianapolis’ adopted son Tony Kanaan.
NASCAR was big in my family, but I was always more of an open-wheel racing fan. My dad had tickets to the inaugral Brickyard 400 and a couple years managed to snag press passes from one of the local papers since he was a photography buff as well, so I got to meet some of the drivers in person when I was a kid.
Clarissa (of “Explains It All”) shared my need for a car way earlier than I could drive, haha.
I watched waaaaay too much “Dukes of Hazzard,” too. Cars! That jumped! Also, monster trucks whenever I saw them on. I even got to ride in a random monster truckified bus that was offering rides around a Walmart parking lot, and it was sick.
I was also a kid when Danica Patrick was just a very fast woman and not off the deep end/actively trying to pull up the ladder for other women behind her. It was cool to be a woman into cars. Look at this one kicking ass in IndyCar. That’s neat.
Later on when I found out about other women in motorsports, well, I stan Michele Mouton. She’s awesome, and actually trying to make the world a better place for the rest of us, too.
Please don’t forget the Queen of the Ring, Sabine Schmitz! An absolute hero to anyone who remembers her giggling like crazy taking a Transit Van around the Nurburgring at a stupidly high speed
Oh my gosh, yes! Gah, serious omission on my part, but I was thinking way younger (like, pre-college). I even wrote about her massive influence on me when I was at The Drive. Easily one of the biggest badasses in cars.
Sabine is right up there with the greatest of the greatest. She’s sorely missed and her influence should never be downplayed when it comes to making car culture more welcoming to everyone. She was a role model for kids everywhere, both in showing young girls they have every right to be a part of car culture in any capacity, and showing young boys they shouldn’t even question women in motorsports to begin with. Tragic that she left us so soon.
I’m so gutted that I never got to meet her. She’s a big reason I’m into farting around race tracks and why I love the Nürburgring so much. Just such a legendary place. Her enthusiasm for that and for cars was extremely contagious.
As an Old, I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out The First Lady Of Drag Racing, Shirley Muldowney. What an amazing, badass lady.
Hell yeah, Shirley rules.
I was born in Indianapolis and in the early 60s no name carried more gravitas than A.J. Foyt. Then I became aware of a NASCAR driver named Fireball Roberts. A perfect name for a driver. Next up I was enthralled by Jim Clark in his Lotus at Indy. It was rear engined so all the roadsters looked archaic by comparison. And his car was green. That was gutsy to me because traditionally green race cars were considered unlucky.
Damnation Alley and the Landmaster.
So, I’m a young fart. Much younger than most of the commenters here, it would appear.
What really got me interested in cars, and particularly working on cars, was watching Junkyard Digs youtube channel for the last 6 years. I watched the ‘original’ F250 revival that really started off his channel, and I was hooked. Anyways, I have since revived quite a few cars, Junkyard Digs or Vice Grip Garage style.
Similarly, what got me interested in a lot of the car enthusiast stuff and especially the weird cars and engineering sides of things was reading Jason and David on Jalopnik. Jalopnik was one of few car-related websites that was not blocked on my school laptop, and so I ended up reading it a LOT.
Well, for me, it definitely was not Speed Racer and his Powerful Mach 5.
My friends and I would watch it and just laugh at the proto-Manga animation and English voiceovers.
What got me into cars were the late 60s Mercedes-Benz ads with the cars going on the seemingly vertical walls at “the Mecedes-Benz test track in Stuttgart, West Germany.” I just found them unbelievably cool to watch.
I wouldn’t want to deal with one now, but oh how I dreamt of driving a 300 SEL 6.3.
My first wife’s parents had a 280 SE 4.5 from that era and it was not as scintillating to drive as I expected.
Perhaps an example of why one should never meet their heroes.
A generation or two newer, but you get the idea:
mercedes-benz-stuttgart-test-track.jpg (1920×1080) (motor1.com)
When I was 5 years old, it started with the dukes of hazzard being aired on the Dutch television and I loved that charger! A few years later it got replaced by the A team and I loved the GMC van. When a few years later Knight Rider was aired, it blew my mind! I had to own a car with a digital gauge cluster myself. By this time I was 10 years old and craving for racing!
My childhood racing drivers that inspired me were Nikki Lauda and Alain Prost. I’ve seen both win the Dutch Grand Prix in 1984 and 1985 from the balcony of a friend of my parents. I loved the screaming of those turbo engines, having the laggy response and all of a sudden the surge of power pushing the engine 7000 rpm up like it was nothing!
I grew up watching a VHS recap of the 1997 WRC championship so for me it was Tommi Makinen, Colin McRae, and Carlos Sainz
WRC drivers are just at a whole ‘nother level of skill and courage. And I would have to wear a diaper to be the navigator.