OK, so this was supposed to be my story about how and when I knew I was a car and motorcycle person, but dumb me had to go and invite the gang to contribute their own stories. You know, just a little something, because my story wasn’t going to be particularly long or interesting. And thus, the more the merrier.
I didn’t need extra stories, I merely thought it would be nice to include them if anyone wanted to contribute. “Just a couple or three sentences,” I said.
I did not get a couple or three sentences. I got novellas. Well, good! I was just going to say I fell in love with Speed Racer and my Dad took me to Seekonk Speedway on the regular, which sealed the deal. I was a car kid and knew I’d be a car person for life. I was also an Evel Knievel kid, which set the motorcycle hook.
Of course, it was going to be a while before I could drive a car or a real motorcycle, so I had to content myself with Hot Wheels and Stick Shifters and bicycles that did their best to be hot rods and/or choppers, or in the case of the Huffy Wheel, both.
Oh, and I had R-R-R-Raw Power, a must.
But enough about me, it’s time for the show to be stolen:
Alanis King
When I was 13 years old, my mom got free tickets to a NASCAR race from her job. I didn’t know anything about NASCAR, and I didn’t want to go. But she said: “It’s the recession, so if we’re doing anything ‘fun’ this year, it’s this.”
We arrived at Texas Motor Speedway, and it was the biggest facility I’d ever seen — like a tall, shimmering glass kingdom in the middle of Texas. I got to my grandstand seat and felt like I could see the end of the Earth, and when 40 cars took the green flag, the shrieks and ground-shaking could’ve opened a portal to the center of the planet.
That’s when I decided I wanted to do motorsports for a living, and cars just came along with it. I never missed another NASCAR national series race after that day. [Ed note: Hey everybody, go follow Alanis on YouTube – Pete]
Mercedes Steeter
I trace the beginning of my car enthusiasm to the day when a now long-distant uncle gave me a Pontiac Firebird Matchbox car. I think I was maybe four at the time, but I suppose I never realized how that little car would turn into something so much bigger. As a kid, I would go on to collect hundreds, if not thousands of Matchbox, Maisto, and Hot Wheels cars. Every single time I went to a store I figured out a way to bring at least one car home with me.
My car enthusiasm truly blossomed through the help of go-karts. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, Wisconsin Dells wasn’t just known as the so-called “Waterpark Capital Of The World,” but also a sort of go-kart mecca. Basically every theme park in the Dells had a go-kart track, and there were some parks that were nothing but go-karts. My favorite was Big Chief Go-Karts, where the teens running the place tweaked the governors on the go-kart engines, resulting in tracks where you could go so fast that you could actually get airtime.
Kid-me adored driving fast more than perhaps anything else in the world. My mom would come into a bunch of money soon after and treated my brother and I to a pair of off-road go-karts. My kart was the faster of the two, and I spent basically every summer weekend racing the big kids on the secret dirt track they built in a nearby forest. These kids had much more powerful ATVs and dirt bikes, but I made that 5 HP Manco Critter Kart work hard. I even managed to crash it into a tree trying to drift around a corner. I panicked at first, but eventually I brushed myself off, pulled the kart out of the tree, and got back racing.
That kart, diecast cars, and racing games helped me get through my confusing childhood. My body was changing in ways I did not understand and perhaps worse, my brain began realizing that there was a disconnect between my body and its own expectations. Eventually, I got to a point where I looked at myself in a mirror, understood that something was wrong, but couldn’t determine what.
I would go on to experiment with my identity and slowly become who I am today. But I couldn’t have done it without that Firebird, Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, and a little red go-kart with a bald drive tire.
Stephen! Walter! Gossin!
I distinctly remember being around 10 years old and having a Dodge Stealth poster on my bedroom wall above the black & white TV that was hooked up to my shiny new NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). This was in 1990. I recall lying there at night, trying to fall asleep, staring at the curves of that Stealth poster and wondering what my dream garage was going to look like when I got older. 6 years later I bought my first car (’84 Cougar) for $400 that I made lifeguarding and working at a guitar store and immediately removed and rebuilt the 3.8 V6. I’m a lucky guy to still be here, 35 years and 151 cars later, living that dream and doing what I love, each day. [Ed note: You don’t have to use the exclamation points when you say Stephen’s name, that’s just how I do it – Pete]
Adrian Clarke
I was probably only a couple of years old maybe even younger. I remember having a green Dinky McLaren Can Am car in my cot as a baby, as well as a friction car that made sparks when you pushed it. It had lead screws which i used to like licking. Yes, I am old. What age do babies outgrow cots? Like five or something? When I was big enough for a proper bed I had one of those police car bedspreads, which I used to sit on and pretend to drive. Mother Dearest and I lived in a 9th floor council flat on a main road out of east London, and as an extremely child small I would sit transfixed for hours watching the traffic.
Your turn, finally: How And When Did You Realize You Were A Car Person?
Top graphic images: Schwinn; Mattel
As long as I can remember.
I grew up around my maternal grandfather working on cars and watching NASCAR races at age 4, continuously asking where Mark Martin was. Every Friday, my other grandparents would surprise me with another diecast car, like the old Racing Champions or even the Hot Wheels series.
My parents believe I started counting Volvos as we drove around town around the age of 3. So yeah, I’m going to say around 3.
I recall dad refinishing the wood on our ’49 Ford woody wagon when I was a kid. I recall toy cars always in the house. We went hiking and skiing and used our Chevy truck with a basic box-shaped slide-in camper hauling our family of five plus Gram. We complained a lot about “why don’t they make a four-door truck”? We went out for a bike ride on our street when I was 10 and I saw a blue four door truck go down the cross street with a For Sale sign on the driver-side rear door. Dad and I chased after and caught the driver. I went to the sellers house with dad for the negotiations, got bored and checked out the seller’s wife’s car. He was very rich and he bought her a brand new car each year, and I looked inside and noticed it only had 14 miles on it, in the summer. So I was well into cars at a young age. The truck was special-ordered at a local dealer, coach-built by Crown. I still have and drive that ’64 F100 crewcab with 350k miles on the drivetrain. Dad had an overcab camper built for it that we drove all over the west. I wish I had the camper!
That’s awesome that you chased him down—and still have the truck
Big thumbs up
Since I was born, the only things that interested me as toys were cars. We did not have our own car until I was 5 and boy was I jealous of others who had them by then. It was post soviet country and 90s fun time. My dad had to work 2 jobs all week through as he wanted to save as much so we can buy a car (forget the word Financing, nobody knew what Credit means, all cash baby. no money, no honey). I still remember the day dad brought almost new 1993 Lada 21093 in Safari white…. I ran around entire neighborhood block telling every single person that MY DAD BOUGHT A CAR. my mom told me later that when dad saw that he almost teared a bit and said it was worth it for that moment. Later I would regularly “steal” the car to drive around with my buddies, great memories.
all I could draw was a car. I was very fascinated with bicycles until I was able to drive legally. on 18th birthday I was at the Police (we would only get drivers license at 18 and you would have to go to the road police station to get it) first thing in the morning doing my test.
my family have never been car people, but I always was. My dad though would be ok with me filling the driveways with cars all the time and regularly changing them. He saw how much i love them.
my uncle would always store his winter tires in our place and starting at about 15 years old it was my responsibility to change them twice a year in our driveway and I could not be happier! i pretty much started taking care of cars before I was even driving them. I would wash, change tires, refill fluids. all that stuff.
I am 38 this year. I have a wife, 2 kids and 4 cars. I currently am lurking at the clean white W126 and I am happy my wife gets it and lets me go crazy sometimes.
My younger 3 years old son is also “cars only” boy now and it is natural. I see how he plays with the cars toys and I see myself. Nothing I can do, he came pre-programmed like his daddy!
I liked cars from a very early age. I always had car posters on my wall. The first time that I really started on a car though was when I purchased a 92 eclipse gsx for $300. If you know anything about a dsm you can imagine how quickly I had to learn how to work on it. The guy had quit driving it because the timing belt pulley had started making noise and the second gear synchro was on it’s way out. This was the first time I had done anything harder than an oil change. It took a few weeks but I finally got everything back together which was amazing because this was before youtube. Amazingly, everything worked and I drove that car for a couple of years.
Really young, as in still-wearing-diapers-young.
No doubt, I was born a car person. As others have said, in most pictures of me as a toddler, I was carrying around a couple toy cars instead of something typical like a teddy bear or favorite blankie. Near savant level obsession wouldn’t be far off from whatever my thing was back then.
One unique thing I remember is as a pre-schooler is I really enjoyed crawling underneath the neighborhood cars just to see what was going on underneath them. There, I leaned that exhaust parts were often hot, and everything else was dirty or greasy, much to my mom’s disgust as she had to get the stains out.
It’s a wonder I never got run over.
Things progressed with my fascination, resulting in me eventually getting a real job working for a Big 3 manufacturer, and not surprisingly, occasionally getting grease stains on my suit while looking at some malfunction on a car up on a lift.
It still hasn’t let up, hence my daily visit to The Autopian.
Probably around 10. I was very interested in things that went Vrrom. Always knew about what my parents had. Even had a mini bike (Sears) for a bit until the engine just up an died.
I blame my parents, not because they drove “cool” cars – early childhood pictures showed a progression of domestic station wagons in the driveway – but because I had a steady diet of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, and a big woven rug in the living room, and building blocks, that served as roads and racetracks. I kept most of them, too. That purple McLaren got away, though I just picked up an orange one to replace it.
Better yet, that big shoebox of my childhood diecast collection sat in a dresser drawer at Mom’s house for 40+ years, untouched. What a treat to rediscover that part of my childhood.
The same answer as many already have mentioned here: Matchbox cars, books, TV shows (Dukes, CHiPs, etc.) movies, etc. Later on there were many trips to the mall to buy car posters for my room. And then Dad bought a repossession agency when I was in the 7th grade, I learned to drive a stick at 14 and was the lot guy up until college.
My first memory is sitting in my father’s lap, steering (thinking I was steering. He actually had a hand on the wheel that I never saw) his 1970 Buick Skylark convertible in the parking lot to my preschool.
I loved that Skylark and the day he traded it on a 1981 Regal was a sad, sad day. That car became my baseline for what a car should be. From there it was countless matchbox cars and model kits, subscriptions to car magazines, where I tore out any pictures that I liked and turned them into posters.
Honestly I think I’m late to the car person club. I’ve always been very practically minded when it comes things, as in if they were not useful to me I didn’t care much to learn about them. Didn’t really get into cars till I got my driver’s license, though as a young teenage I thought the LM002 was a very cool car hence the username. Ironically enough the LM002 is a POS and currently I’m only really interested in BEVs.
Playing with my sit-n-drive while watching knight rider, having a sea of matchbox cars for my older brother and i to play with, going to kindergarten on my dad’s motorcycle gas tank and him letting me work the throttle, going to star speedway in epping and shivering to the sound of the super modifieds…etc.
My dad was always working on, driving, and helping with other people’s cars. We drove from MA to CA when I was 6. Always some of the most fun we had, included cars.
Lost dad a couple months ago. Still enjoy working in his garage, in between the tears. Gotta finish fixing the brakes on the 2002….take mom for a ride in it. Make more memories, help more friends, work on more projects.
The spring of 1960 (yes, I’m old as dirt) in Sioux City, Iowa. My dad was a contract aircraft mechanic and one of his co-workers was was a German immigrant who bought a brand new Triumph TR3. I went for ride in it and was amazed that I could see over the low-cut door and watch the street surface flying by as we drove. The snick-snick gear lever and growling exhaust note made me a car guy then and there.
When I was 7, my parents gifted me a copy of The Observers Book of Automobiles, a small hardbound English publication that ostensibly illustrated and described every significant automobile manufactured that year. I memorized it and soon impressed my family and friends by being able to identify any car on the road on sight. A couple of years later I went to my first big auto show which started my automobilia collection of brochures, ads, and owners manuals.
It must be in my blood. My earliest memory is playing with Matchbox cars, and even as an 8 year old I recall my parents friends challenging me to identify cars on the road. Then my family moved from Australia to America and my parents thought the American cars would stump me, but nope.
I dunno where it came from. My dad isn’t a gearhead at all. I have uncles on both sides of my family who were mechanics and into cars but I never interacted with them much.
At age 3.
When my Dad made me eat my cereal out of a VW Bus hubcap.
There never wasn’t a time. It was baked into me from the word go. I had no chance.
When I was 17, I would rather spend my Friday nights fixing my old Mustang with my father than hang out with my then-girlfriend. She even broke up with me over it. The nerve!
there’s a bunch of events that could’ve sparked my obsession from my aunt sending 4 year old me a USDM hyundai brochure with an absolutely stunning yellow veloster, to my grandpa getting me a ride on car. I don’t think I will ever find out why I love cars for sure anytime soon, or ever, but I don’t really care, all I know is that I love cars and always will.
Richard Scarry. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I was like, 2.
Richard Scarry books were how I viewed the world for a long time. Sad to say I grew up—the reality is much different. I’d rather live in Busytown and drive an apple to work.
Our child has long since moved out of the house and become an employed adult, but my wife and I still have Busy Busy World around
I contend this to be one of the highest quality children’s books ever.
Would you like a banana-mobile? Hell yeah I want a banana mobile.
I was probably about 7 years old. My dad was taking me for a ride in our crusty 1971 K20, when he put his foot to the floor. The sound of that small block V8 screaming awakened something in me that will never die.
Show of hands for the Gran Turismo Gang
I think the definitive point, which also made me a Mopar guy, was the CNY Mopar Madness car show I visit like every year; the first time was 2013 IIRC. Of course I played racing games a lot growing up, and had my favorites cars from them, but going to that car show was like the bulb going off in my head. It implanted the love right then and there, particularly with how open people attending the show were about the other cars they owned, but how they could still love their Chrysler products.
Definitely the highlight of my childhood.