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.
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Who knows? I had it by the time I was two or three. I was born in a country and city without a particular car culture, no one in ,y family was into them. Best guess is Suzy the Little Blue Coupe and the Corgi 911 I got.
Hot Wheels and Matchbox. . .and Dad. . .he was too poor(early Dad)/cheap(later Dad) to ever buy anything nice, so he was always repairing something. I held the light, but never in the right spot
“I held the light, but never in the right spot”
The trick is to prop it up JUUUST right and quietly sneak away. Do it right and you can get in at least a whole Scooby Doo and Speedbuggy before Dad starts bellowing.
My maternal grandfather restored cars from the 1920s & 30s, so I was around that world from an early age. I was drawing cars by the age of 4–and I remember looking at the cars in Richard Scary books and thinking they weren’t real. Then a neighbor bought a Jaguar v12 years later, and the sound of him revving it prompted me to wake up and immediately run outside to see what that beautiful ungodly sound was: I was hooked and have never looked back.
I am embarrassed to admit. The Fast and the Furious. saw it in theaters when it came out, and i wanted that, i wanted exactly that and nothing else.
I was going to come in to say the same thing, with the same opening line. My first car was a 1985 Toyota Van (an R-series TownAce for those outside North America) that was a total basketcase but I loved and still miss dearly, which itself followed a series of ramshackle pieces of junk my parents schlepped everyone and everything around in, so my experience with cars was just that they were all jalopies that couldn’t even get out of their own way. F&F changed that, showing me that everyday, regular cars had potential. Even though I never got into the tuner scene, I still got interested in cars altogether–well, “sport compact” imports, anyway. I’ve come to appreciate the classics since then, especially as compact cars have nearly gone extinct.
These days, I don’t think I even care about driving anymore, which I chalk up to [1] all the psychos I share the road with who are too busy checking facebook to see the street ahead of them, and [2] the slow death of the manual.
I was seemingly born with it, though perhaps my mother’s manual Capri 1600 had some bearing. If anything, my father’s enthusiasm almost, uh, drove me away for several reasons, but then I saw the Countach at the beginning of Cannonball Run.
This one goes to gramps. He bought me a little Mini Cooper walk-around toy when I was a young lad, and since then has shaped me like fine pottery into the GM-biased, SSR-loving, Eureka Springs-attending, Hot Wheels-hoarding, Cars and Bids-strolling monster I’ve become now.
I don’t know, actually. I think it’s always been there. But I’ll tell you some of the things that fanned the flame: the new-for-1979 Mustang. Dad’s Beetle, TR-4A, and Fiat 128. All the cool cars his tennis buddies drove. My aunt’s Levi’s Edition Gremlin. Corgi. Lesney. Mattel. Stomper 4x4s. Tonka. Buddy-L. The Cannonball Run. Jim Rockford. Tamiya and Kyosho. Satch Carlson and Peter Egan. Our old John Deere lawn tractor (the first self-powered thing I ever drove). A trip to Indy (not for a race, sadly). Tyco and AFX slot cars. Radio Shack catalogs. JC Whitney catalogs. My uncle Bill’s 1981 Jeep Scrambler (the first street-legal thing I ever drove). Choose Your Own Adventure number 17, The Race Forever. Clausager’s coffee-table books. The 1979 Volkswagen Scirocco that was my first car. And so on.
The Race Forever! A classic if only for the cool bit of how if you make a certain set of choices, the story loops infinitely.
IIRC Inside UFO 5440 also included a similar thing with an ending that was there but impossible to get to.
I actually built RC versions of the two off-road trucks from it:
https://scalebuildersguild.com/forum/threads/the-race-forever-trucks-first-photoshoot.31605/
For me, it might have been all of the 80s car-forward TV shows & movies. Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazard, CHiPs, Hardcastle & McCormick, Smokey & the Bandit, Cannonball Run, A-Team, Magnum PI, Miami Vice….
Or maybe I watched all of that because I was already a rabid car kid? Who knows?
I reenacted as much of the stunts as I could using my Big Wheel, and later my very crappy BMX bike.
In the ’80s, you couldn’t be the lead on a show without a signature vehicle. In that vein, I recently rediscovered a lesser known but still high ’80s classic I liked back then – Stingray.
Unknown action man cruises the country helping people in need with a unique set of skills and a badass car? Just perfect. It’s like they got the car first, and then figured out how to script a show around it.
My parents almost always had boring cars, so I decided to be different 😀
instagr.am/jakobksgarage
The short answer is … David Tracy.
The longer one is a series of events happening over the course of several decades: a young lad curious about all technical things, a dad enamoured with aviation transmitting the bug, doing oil changes to save a buck when a student, a career in aerospace that got me disillusioned about the dream to fly, a colleague who rocked a cool BMW, finding the old site, realizing cars aren’t only a rich man’s game through David “Rust lover” Tracy, meeting the enabling bunch that Oppo is, my first track day, buying my first project car, passing the car mechanic exam, restoring an old Datsun.
I blame you folks.
Sputnik! Now, before you say ‘whaaa…?,’ let me explain.
Launched when I was 4 years old, it created a great amount of fear that the USSR (remember them?) was beating us in the space race and engendered a tremendous boost to what is now called STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math). I was enthralled with Einstein by the 3rd grade and had my eyes set on being a physicist. Years later, I met a real nuclear physicist who studied the shapes of the nucleus. He owned a red 1959 Chevrolet Impala. Thus was born my interest in automobiles. About the same time, family friends had just come back from Europe with a Simca. I loved the car because of its brilliant yellow headlights and cushy and bouncy seats.
Ultimately, I settled for a degree in applied physics and worked as an industrial materials scientist for 40+ years. Before I forget, I was also a super big fan (pun intended) with Jim Hall’s Chaparral. I had a slot car version (no fan).
When I was a toddler, our family lived in Karlsruhe, Germany at the behest of the US Army. According to family lore, in 1958 my first word after Mommy, Daddy, and No was Porsche. We had a two-door Chevy station wagon at the time, and the three of us during my dad’s leave would drive down to Rome, camp out on Italian beaches, and spend the night in the infield at the Le Mans 24 Hour.
Other than the diagnosable bit, some combination of a crib overlooking a local highway giving me lots of time to stare at cars, and a well worn copy of Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which I knew well enough that my parents were never allowed to skip a page.
Dad.
When I was a really young, my father would go out on business for weeks or even months at a time. But every time he came home, he would bring a toy car from wherever he went home as a gift.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to follow in those footsteps (especially with today’s two-politics) myself, but that sense of journey is universal. Like appreciation for music and food, across all cultures.
Geo-politics.
My dad did similar, but often with small Lego sets, frequently vehicles, you couldn’t get here in the U.S. at the time.!
I had a bunk bed as a kid. I slept on the bottom and stapled to the underside of the top bunk was a poster with a white Countach, red Testarossa and black 930. Way too much money spent on cars and parts since then.
“Justification for a Higher Education,” right? 😉
Growing up, my family was poor (they were still poor when I grew up, but yeah), so we owned a series of eclectic shit boxes marginally suitable for family duty. I think the excitement of “oh, what new car will we have this season?” got under my skin and gave rise to my Automotive ADD.
Also, I was in kindergarten and my next door neighbor’s dad has a Volvo 244. I remember being amused by the silhouette of the catcher’s mitt head rests. Their unique shape absolutely captured my imagination. That may or may not have been the reason I wanted a catcher’s mitt as a kid so badly. If I couldn’t have the car, I’d have the next closest alternative.
My first TV fandoms were Speed Racer, the Hot Wheels Saturday morning cartoon and ABC’s Wide World of Sports. So what if the races shown on TV were weeks old by the time I saw them. Forget the football, I want to see that GT race from Watkins Glen! With commentary from Jackie Stewart.
My father took me to see the US GP at the Glen in 1970. Fittipaldi beat a charging Ickx to seal the championship for his teammate Rindt; the only posthumous winner.
Two years later we watched the Ferrari 312Ps win the 6 hour. Both were amazing automotive memories I’ll always cherish, along with many more in my almost 70 years.
The CNY Mopar Fest is really what made an enthusiast, I think. First time I went, these people were in love with their Chrysler products of any and every kind, and they seemingly loved everything else brought to the show, on top of their daily non-Mopar’s that they didn’t bring. Sure, a Chevy or Ford joke would drop every now and again, but to see the enthusiasm from them was amazing…. particularly when you were a teen, and they were excited to talk about their cars and the hobby!
Good memories of crawling under about everything with my Dad. Lots of busted knuckles and rust in my eyes. Nothing better than times under a 58 Buick Special on a summer evening. Miss him…
My first spoken word was “car”. Not “Mama”, not “Dada”.
I remember seeing a cartoon with an ambulance walking on tiptoe before I could talk.
I knew every car on the road starting with the 1959 model year cars at the age of 3.
Who knows where this comes from, but it’s still strong!
I think it might be genetic? Because neither my mom or dad give one solitary shit about cars. My dad especially. BUT, both great grandfathers were plant managers in detroit, and always had cool stuff. I think it just skipped a few generations! I remember the first seed that planted the love though. We had an old ’71 K20 with a small block, and I remember my dad gunning it. The roar of that wheezy ol’ 350 lives with me to this very day.
Probably my folks. My dad fixed his own cars for the most part, and my mom would wax poetic about some of her cars. My grandfather on my mom’s side died before I was born, but he was a member of the SAE. And my uncle did head work on his Fiat Topolino, carrying the head down to his basement to work on it and bring it from 16 to 25 HP.
But I had tons of toy cars as a kid. I watched all the cool car shows of the 70s and 80s. The interest waned for a while until I decided I wanted a car while in university, and the hook was set deep.
It might have actually been that car, a 1897 Acura Integra LS. Before that, I drove my Ada’s Ford wagons, the exception being my mom’s Mazda 626. But that little Acura was so much better to drive than any of them. And the automatic transaxle failing made me a convert to manuals.
Sadly, it started to rot, and I sold it before it could dissolve into flakes and blow away like a Jeep jn the wind. But every car after that up until my 2009 Mazda 6 was interesting. Hopefully I’ll get something interesting again at some point.
One of my first memories was sitting in my father’s lap in his 1970 Skylark convertible, hands on the steering wheel, thinking I was steering it in the parking lot at preschool. I got obsessed with that yellow convertible with its tan interior… eventually it led to an obsession with plastic model kids of muscle-car era vehicles, and finally I got my ’68 Olds when I was in college. A love of cars was definitely some common ground I found with my father and led to some of our closest moments.
Growing up on a farm, mechanical things always held a certain fascination with me, especially as dad taught me how to maintain and fix various things on the tractors and implements. add to that a sizable collection of Matchbox cars and Tonka toys that we drove for millions of miles in the dirt outside, or on the model train layout, well, how could I not be interested. Then I found Motortrend and Road and Track magazines. By junior high school, I had the requisite pictures of various Porche models on the wall. After cutting my teeth on farm equipment, then I was moved on to help out with vehicle repair and maintenance on our cars. Brakes, oil changes, exhaust work, a clutch replacement in dad’s 3/4 ton chevy pickup, and helping my older brother rebuild his 350 sbc in his pickup just cemented everything in place. Glad to be at a point in my life where if I’m going to work on a vehicle it’s because I want to, not because I have to.
Dad. Total gearhead. I grew up with a Ford big block sitting in our living room waiting for the day it would be rebuilt and installed in the 34 Coupe body shell/frame (that day never came, but the body made a kick ass backyard playscape). I received Hot Wheels as gifts from their launch in ’68 (I was 2 years old). Dad owned, serially, the trifecta of Ford Cobra Jet engines: 427 in a Mercury Cyclone, 428 in a Ranchero, and 429 in a Montego. When I was still at a single-digit age, he restored an MGB. For my first car, he bought me a Triumph Spitfire that, after buying a second one, managed to piece into a single running car. For his mid-life crisis, he bought a 300ZX, 2-seater turbo with all-out 80’s digital dash.