We’re all car enthusiasts for a massive variety of reasons, and I’m not just talking about the genres of vehicles we’re into. Today on Autopian Asks, we’re talking about formative experiences, the places you got your car enthusiasm from, because wow, are there ever so many facets of the hobby to fall in love with or be influenced by.
Some people have cars in their blood, growing up with parents who were always fixing, buying, selling, or even racing cars. Some people saw a sports car, or an off-roader, or a muscle car one day and were smitten. Some people found themselves falling in love with the artful dance of driving. Some people had a really cool aunt or uncle who showed them wheelspin in a Corvette was like. Some people received their first Hot Wheels car as a kid, and it was off to the races.
In my case, I’m genuinely not sure where my love of cars came from. Even my parents aren’t quite sure, to be honest. It’s just always been there, and likely always will. They aren’t elbow-deep car nuts as such, having owned exclusively pragmatic machinery, although my mum can rev-match downshifts and my dad appreciates the look of a fine classic sports car. Perhaps it’s because when I was small, a neighbor had an exceptionally well-specced B5.5 Passat. Now that was a classy family car.
However, that’s not to say I didn’t have moments that furthered my love of the game. The slingshot push to the top of third in a Dinan turbocharged 635CSi. My first auto show. My first roll of film. The first time I went karting. Helping to drop the tank on a New Edge Mustang on a concrete slab, crossing our fingers that the axle stands would give us enough height. Stopping by showrooms both at home and on vacation (pictured above) to see new and old models in the metal. The first time I went to a junkyard. Every trip to Canadian Tire. Life is defined by experiences, as we’re all aggregate beings, molded by moments and memories both solo and shared. All of mine have led up to hitting “save draft” on this blog, just like how all of yours have led up to your current pursuit.
So, how did you end up here? Who or what sparked the flame of car enthusiasm within you? Let’s talk about why we all do what we do in the comments below, because it’s not like any of us are calling it quits on this passion anytime soon.
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
-
What Nameplate Has Been Used On The Craziest Variety Of Vehicles? Autopian Asks
-
What’s Your Favorite Car Driven By A Celebrity? Autopian Asks
-
What Forgotten Car Features Ought To Make A Comeback? Autopian Asks
Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage.
I’m sure like many here, from family. My dad taught me to drive a stick on an ’87 Saab 900S, and both he and my mom have had a series of cars that were at least interesting since then. When my dad wanted something fun that could still survive winter snows in the mountains where they live, we found him a 2003 Audi TT 6-speed quattro that’s been an absolute blast and dead-reliable for a dozen years now. Even my grandparents had interesting cars, including an ’81 Scirocco that was gorgeous and super fun to drive, if not exactly quick.
Practicality and a car accident started mine enthusiasm. When I 17 I don’t think I could even change the oil on a car by myself. I got T boned driving down the road by somebody who made an illegal U turn at the wrong time and hit my passenger side. Getting 2 junkyard doors for that car (an ’88 Accord) and putting it back to together I found really interesting and fun. Add in that I had spent hundreds on car repairs already, I realized that in order to actually own a car, my only option was fix it myself. The more I learned about fixing them, the more I learned about how they worked. The more I learned about how they worked, the more I tried to learn how that could be modified.
I rapidly also learned I am far too cheap to build HP. So now I’m mostly in to swapping in hotter motors rather than building up an existing one, but more so, I’m in to the metal repair and fabrication side of the hobby.
Undiagnosed Autism, I think.
We are legion (I mean, I’m diagnosed, but you know, all rampant in the car community).
My Dad. He collects, restores, and drives antique cars.
Maybe I was born with it. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in cars, honestly.
Maybe it’s Maybelline.
If that’s Chuck Berry’s Maybellene, I get it.
Nothin’ out runs my V8 Ford.
Sort of the Bond movies, sort of Carmageddon and Twisted Metal. A dash of Terminator, especially for big rigs (I’m a dilettante there in particular, don’t quiz me). But that moment that really crystallized things, the analogue to the moment where you realize that Jennifer Aniston really is your sexuality weathervane *no matter your sexuality*, was a Forza Motorsport 2 commercial with a drifting M3.
I still suck horribly at Forzas, but I buy them because I love getting to play with my car crushes. I learned a decent amount from the upgrades and tuning, too; real basics I’d never been introduced to before. Some of it was just the parts of cars, some of it went deeper like camber, slip angles, the fact that redline isn’t the best place to shift for acceleration.
I had an uncle who was an enthusiast. He owned so many cars and eventually ran a chain of parts stores.
The first car I recall of his was a late 30s Pontiac-based hot rod with a rumble seat. He used to baby sit me and would put me in that rumble seat and roll around town. Scared me to death to be honest when he opened it up on the highway, but in a good way.
Later, he owned a Corvair Monza Spyder convertible and ‘63 Corvette roadster. The car I recall the most was his yellow TR-3 stripped down for SCCA races. He wasn’t particularly good at racing, but a friend of his – also racing a TR-3 – was great. His friend, Bob, formed a racing team located one town over and my uncle would often take us to area races to watch Bob run.
Bob turned out to the great Bob Tullius, who, along with his Group 44 Inc. racing team, went on to SCCA fame. I followed Bob and Group 44 for years and that, and my uncle, was the origin and impetus for my own auto enthusiasm.
Growing up, my uncle (dad’s brother) was racing. He started in SCCA sports car classes, progressed through Formula Ford and others before finishing his career in Formula Atlantic. So there were race cars of various sorts around at my grandma’s place and we went to various tracks around the PNW to see him race. SIR, PIR and Westwood in BC come to mind. Riding to the races in the cabover sleeper of an old IH pickup camper was I’m sure **totally** safe, but those memories always stuck with me and all that got me hooked as a car enthusiast, which continues to this day.
The one I call father unit I would assume mostly as he got his 57 when I was young and we went on a few road trips in it. When I got my Firebird me and my dad had not talked in a few years, he didn’t talk to me from late middle school and until I was in college, but working on it has helped us reconnect as when I bought it I didn’t know much about cars at all and was in the mindset of V8 = fast and I really like hatch backs also. So when my Firebird needed work my dad started to help out as he had the garage space while I was living in an apartment with my mom. Now I am much closer to my dad and talk and see him regularly but the opposite of my mom. (But that is a whole nother can of worms haha)
Also my dad’s twin has my grandpa’s old Packard (think it is a 1932?) and I fondly remember riding around in the rumble seat as a small lad.
I thank my late departed Uncle Denny for my love of cars. He took my brother and I to a demolition derby when we were like 5 and 6. Damn Skippy! The roar of the engines..crash bang!! Caught on fire! That was it…we were hooked. After 50+ years in automotive service and owning over a 100 cars…wished he would have told me to get a barn and keep all those cars!! Back then if I could flip em in 2-3 days and triple my money I called it good. Thanks Uncle Denny!
PS…Decades later got to be the announcer for a Demolition Derby in John Day , Oregon. Full Circle!!
I’ve always been around decent cars; my dad had a 240z and also two different Gremlins. My sister had a sweet Prelude when I was growing up, also. But I’d say I didn’t really get “into cars” until I got hooked on Top Gear. It was those guys who showed me how much fun cars could be, beyond just hauling you to school and soccer practice and stuff.
Gran Turismo 2
Yes totally – all the forbidden fruit. Until i played that game i had no idea what an Evo or a Silvia or half of those cars were.
It was the late 70s. A neighbor had a second-generation Camaro jacked up sky high in the rear. On Cragars as was the style of the time. We always heard when he was going someplace.
A childhood friend’s father had a Lincoln Mark V that only left the garage for special occasions.
My two uncles always had cool cars when I was growing up, and still do although they are less enthusiastic as they’ve gotten older. One was a Mercedes man, so he always had a convertible. But it was always a status symbol for him. Now he’s onto Aston Martins.
The other uncle though, he is the cool one. He is a Jag guy who used to race motor cycles and Shelby Mustangs back in the 70s, but he also had random projects he was working on (a chop-top Model A with a turbo Thunderbird engine in it, for example) His pride and joy was his beautiful red over tan De Tomaso Mangusta. He took me for a couple rides in it and I always thought it was the fastest thing on the planet. He sold it several years ago as he and my aunt were downsizing and I’ve liked him slightly less because of it.
Mostly my dad, who taught me how cars work and how to wrench on them. He also taught me to identify makes & models, and the rules of the road.
But also, being a 80s kid meant that driving was freedom, the only way to escape the boredom of (my) suburb. To this day, I’d rather be driving somewhere than doing just about anything else.
Dad was a Mopar man with his three Barracudas. Mom was a GM woman with a Monte Carlo SS. I never had a chance.
So MOPAR+GM=Ford? Toyota? A bit of everything?
As a child I was all in on American muscle, “no replacement for displacement” and whatnot, even if my Ford-less upbringing relegated them to distant third in my thoughts. These days my tastes are more varied, but still pretty heavily biased towards what I know.
Mostly helping my dad fixing and maintaining our modest cars. Then it grew exponentially when I worked for a Phillips 66 service station in high school. However, my only super fun cars have been few and far between. The best one being my 1990 Taurus SHO
I have a photo of me, age 2 or 3, wearing those footed pajamas, standing behind the (enormous) wheel of my father’s 1956 Jaguar XK140 fixed head coupe.
Apparently, if I were all agitated/wouldn’t go to sleep, he’d take me for a drive and that would calm me right down. Good thing I guess, as back in the ’70s, taking babies for a drive simply meant putting them in the car.
I like to think that’s how it started.
A desire to build a relationship with my dad ignited it, he and I were never close and had very little in common until I was about 12, when I decided to go work with him on a car. No idea what he was doing, or even what car it was, but after that I always “helped” him work on cars, and eventually got pretty good to the point that by 17 I was helping friends and neighbors repair their cars, and loving every minute of it. I have had a number of fun cars, taught many people to drive stick, helped with car buying decisions, and now am attempting to get into writing about them with the help of this awesome community. In a decade when I retire from my current career, I definitely want to get a job doing what I love, and it will for sure be automotive related. In the meantime I will keep trying to build my obsession and try to pull others into it as well!
Being from a place where not driving meant an hour and a half walk into the nearest town with a gas station, a tiny grocery store, and one restaurant.
Actually, I’m probably a weird enthusiast. I love the industrial design having a conversation with practical constraints. My first car was a ’74 beetle, which was such a cheap, practical solution to getting people places faster than a bicycle. I currently drive an econobox with dented panels on every side- what’s the cheapest way of getting around that I can reasonably rely on to get me a few states away at any given moment.
I appreciate this angle as well. While sure, I like sexy loud go fast things as much as any red-blooded male, but the more I learn about cars, the more I appreciate the effort that goes into making ones that fit with their real world intentions. It’s an art unto itself.
Like, as much as we all love to make fun of GM’s iron duke, its durability is pretty impressive a feat. And I think Saturn at the beginning showed there’s a ton of people who value the result at least of that conversation you mention.
I drive a Fit that fits for that very reason. Intelligence of design attracts me.
I’m unabashedly from the ’80s sport coupe era, so I’m esp. attracted to the various attempts, if not the actual execution, over the years to make pedestrian stuff at least fun.
The various little tricks like low first gear + really tall every other one to make them feel deceptively strong off the line, all manner of tape stripes, endless bright colors, odd gauge lighting, etc. were all about trying to give us a little enjoyment in what would otherwise be a penalty box. Enthusiasm for the masses isn’t the worst thing.
Agreed. Fun plus practicality makes me happy.
You own perhaps the platonic ideal for that!
…I’m actually not sure. Spent a lot of time in the family E-150 growing up, and then basically had my own to take care of from the end of high school through college and a little bit into my current job, including day trips with friends, DJing, and band stuff.
A lot of odd stuff broke and even though I seldom had the opportunity to fix mechanical things myself, I did like replacing speakers and the head unit, adding subwoofers, etc. And I’m still working on mods for my Prius v.
Somewhere along the line I found there were other people who don’t just care about what car is fastest or prettiest or whatever, and learned it’s okay to like cars. And here I am.
I got a couple of very nice hardcover books with large color pictures of 80s exotic cars when I was 3-4 years old. Not sure if those were the cause or the effect of me being into cars (I had lots of Matchbox and Hot Wheels too) but they certainly sustained my enthusiasm as a young kid, and it’s why I can tell you more about the (then upcoming) Vector W8 than about a modern BMW. I still have them.
Neither of my parents and no one in my family is or was a car enthusiast, works on their own cars, or ever owned anything too exciting apart from one uncle who briefly spent money he didn’t have on an air-cooled 911. Riding in that car when ~4 years old was a formative memory.
As a teenager, I found out from my father that my boring uncle actually owned, here in the states, a Ford Capri back in the ’70s. I’m still kinda annoyed there were never any pictures of it.
Our neighbor had one and he’d take me for rides.
Wasn’t that the same as a Mercury Capri? I seem to remember seeing enough of them around in California I didn’t think they were anything particularly special.
In the ’80s, yeah…they were rebadged Mustangs. But the ones from the ’70s were captive imports from Europe without a U.S. version. Somewhat confusingly though, they were sold in Mercury dealerships, simply as “Capri” (no mention of Ford).
The ones I’m thinking of are the round headlight 70’s ones, not the later square light, rounded butt Foxx bodied ones although those weren’t uncommon either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Capri
So maybe they were more common than I’d thought? I grew up in the midwest, and I don’t recall ever seeing one back then. But I’ll admit it, the Mustang II totally captured my attention (“look at those louvers!”) so I was hardly a good judge of things.
I’m in California so maybe a regional thing?
“I was hardly a good judge of things”
Nor I. I used to walk past a long nosed duck tail Porsche RS every morning on my way to 5th grade and only noticed it because I thought it looked dumb. Porsches should have whale tails!
I truthfully have to say it’s from both of my parents. Mom’s tastes are a bit different from my dad’s but they had a ’48 Dodge when I was a kid, then the 64 1/2 Mustang convertible. Steamboat Springs, CO had vintage auto races and a small Concours event for several years when I was young and we started going and saw a huge variety of different vehicles. Many of them driven hard.
My acquisition of car enthusiasm was borne of a failure to acquire money.
poor = fix stuff when it breaks
Which in turn leads to learning to fix cars, which leads to learning enough about cars to know which ones were fixable and which ones weren’t (financially as well as practically), which leads to finding the coolest car that is fixable, which leads to making cool cars fixable that aren’t, which leads to wrenching and coolness, which leads to dreaming of coolness and wrenching…because poor.
This definitely played into mine, especially when I was in my 20s. Also helping fix neighbors’ cars for a bit of extra money, or really most of the time I would do the repairs if they bought me the tools I needed to do so. Worked out quite well for me.
Nothing builds enthusiasm like a paying gig.
And new tools are always fun to play with!
Is that why hookers and porn actors get so into their jobs?
I got it from my Dad. I started out just watching him work on our cars as a kid, then handing him tools, then actually helping. Finally he let me do stuff on my own. He watched me rebuild the engine of his 67 MGB in the car port. After that, he gave it to me as my first car.