I have no idea where my love for old cars came from, but I've always liked the old stuff. Nobody in my family was into cars when I was little. I know the fascination grew with the introduction of Hot Wheels cars when I was 5. The ones I liked the most were the street rods...Hot Heap, '31 Ford Woody, '32 Ford Vicky, and the '36 Ford Coupe.
I truely do not know where it came from.....My dad is a NEW car kinda guy, can't fix a damn thing himself. I built bikes, go carts, minibikes up until I got my License, then it was cars. I worked into the old car crowd, and liked the people there better than the minitruck crowd. So I stayed.
My dad , and his old 32 Ford 3 window , olds mill, cheater slicks.He's let me sit in it and pretend to be driving when i was 4 or 5. Repeating the cycle ,my 19 month old grandson drives my 39 and 38 Ford coupe's regularly.
Id say my dad and hot wheels. Dad used to drag me to car shows from time to time. He was in the army so ive seen some shows all over the place while growing up like Germany. They have an awsome car and military musuem over there. Cant remember the name of it but remember it being huge and took about all day to go thru both.
a friend of my parents "Ol' Earl" got me infected by letting me reassemble his 1946 Indian motorcycle back together...then letting me get my motorcycle license on his 1948 triumph 500!! after i got that reassembled!! We were going to work on his 49 Packard deluxe with that big 8 in it. but sadly he passed away before we could get started on that..and like it had been said in another topic his kids needed money and sold all those wonderful toys!! R.I.P. Ol' Earl!
well my dad got me started but hes more of a street rod guy (more so at the time but now hes starting to love the whole traditonal look) but i would have to say that BenD is the one that really got me started into the whole Traditonal way of doint things so THANKS DAD AND THANKS BEN!!!
I'd have to say it was my dad, he raced a Bantam roadster at El Mirage in the mid to late '40's and in the mid 50's let me work on all of the family cars when I was old enough to get dirty. He built us kids a battery operated go kart in the mid '50s and gave me a running Hiawatha scooter on my 8th birthday, but had me tear in completely apart and rebuild it before I could ride it, but he did the major massaging of the engine to hop it up a little. He gave me a '47 Ford Woody when I turned 16 with a slightly modified flathead 8 in it with Offenhauser heads and 3-2's - so , yeah, it was my dad
Definitely dad. Grew up in SO Cal going to the Pomona drags from about 5 years old. All dads friends brought their sons but I'm an only child so he got to bring me. Grew up watching him work on the 57 Chevy, 64 Corvette and 65-67 Chevelles. Still haven't owned a new car to this day.
I'd have to blame that guy down the street with the '68 Chevelle parked at the end of his driveway. That car sat there for two or three years and everyday I drove by it I tried to think of a way to make it mine. When I got my license it didn't take long to realize that old cars were WAY cooler than new and WAY cheaper too. The die was cast when I got the ok from my folks to buy my first Nova... Jay
it was my dad and his buddies, if it wasnt street rods, it was race cars, they were always taking me and my brother out looking at cars, going to the races, any thing cars. in portland i got to meet all the hot rodders in town. i was hooked, i love my father thanks dad for steering me into cars it kept me from getting into trouble as a kid.
My dad and uncles helped but the first time i saw the California Kid i was hooked for life! It is still possibly the badest car of all time!
a guy my parents rented our upper flat to. He had a 57 chevy, a 40 ford two door sedan, and a show winning 40 plymouth coupe. The coupe was interesting in that it had 40 coats of hand rubbed black lacquer, and white tuck and roll interior, trunk and running boards. If memory serves, both 40's ran 371 olds tri-powers. Two motorcycles too. A Triumph and a BSA. And thanks to understanding parents, and back rent due, I was the only kid in my neighborhood with a BSA.
Hot Rod Magazine and Devils Bowl Speedway off Buckner Blvd. in the early 50's. Also Joie Chitwood at the state fair.
My brother Bill who came home on leave from the Navy in his "new" Corvette when I was just a youngster, and my late brother Tom who took me out of a small town in Mississippi in 1973 to the Yellowstone Rod Run, Of course, it doesn't hurt when you learn to read from Hot Rod magazine before you ever start to school.
both of my grandpa's, one was a fabricator and lead smith, the other just always had cool cars. sonny barfield, an old guy that owned a garage next door to the shitty little house we lived in when i was tiny, they worked on roundy cars at night and kept me up. the good kind of up. Terri kennamore, was a big influence, i lived next to him when i was 7 8 9, he is still one hell of a builder here locally and actually pays me to do some of the stuff he cant or don't want to do. that means alot, like dean Jeffery's has me work for him. and the old man who welded the frame of my go cart back together when i was 10 and went on to teach me the art of building an air plane from wreckage in the desert kind of building that actually got me in this bizz, Harvey Morris. thanks and i love you guys, RIP. paw paw, pa pa, and uncle Harvey
my grandfather got me into customs and hot rods. He would take me to car shows when I was quite young and tell me all about the similarities of the cars his buddies had in the 50s and 60s. He had a few himself including a root beer brown 40 ford with shaved door handles. When I got to be around 10 or 11 my grandpa would let me help him in the garage on his farm usually to service machinery or to fix the family cars. Thats where I saw for the first time the inside of and engine. When I was 12 Grandpa convinced my mom and dad to enter me into 4-H small engines. I won the age category as well as the overall for the small engines, that was it, I was hooked on mechanics, after that I spent all of my time with my nose in hot rod magazines, grandpa would even pull out his little books on occasion. By the time I was 14 I was well on my way to having my first hot rod on the road and drove it to school everyday after I got my licence.
Well it seems it was genetic. We never had a car when I was a kid. Bought my first car at 15, 1955 Ford Crown Victoria. Yes I wish I still had it!!!. I loved old cars then as I do now. I just havent changed. I am 61
Couldn't have said it better myself. No one in my family or anyone I grew up with was into old cars, ever. Thank god this place exists or I'd be a lot more in the dark than I already am.
My Dad had always wrenched on his own and friends, relatives and neighbours cars, and my big brother (10 years older) is a gearhead and built his 70 Fargo pickup with a 383 and then a 400 and had fun street racing it with me in the passenger seat. First vehicle I can remember pushing me back in the seat and catching rubber going into second and drive. Once you experience a howling big block, you are stuck, thankfully.
First was my dad, he owned a Goodyear store and I grew up there climbing the tire racks and bugging the mechanics. Dad loves cars, he just hates working on them. He always encouraged me to learn though, so there we go. Dad always talked mom into letting me bring home one more project.... Second was my neighbor, Richard Van Guilder. He taught me the real ways to work on cars (I'll never forget learning how to fix and oil can dent with a blow torch and a cold water rag). Years later I realized he filled in for the grandfather I never had as a kid. Great guy, I need to catch up with him.
Cars, my dad; though he developed an appreciation for hot rods only after I did. Hot rods? It must be Tom Daniel. We lived in Rome for about a year around 1970, when I was seven. I remember passing a toy shop one evening after dinner, and seeing the Tijuana Taxi kit in the window. I'd never seen a hot rod in my life, but that box art had me hooked. My dad could hardly tear me away from the shop window. I wouldn't rest until he bought me the kit a few days later - and then I'd copy the box art from memory in art class at school.
my uncle Glen built a 26 "T" roadster at our farm in '62 I was 8....my oldest sisters boy friends had hot cars....my old man was a mean S.O.B.!!!! still is!!he worked me like a dog, I learned to rebuild farm equip. and could out weld most at 15. there was no "ball" only work.....I got a beater car and it was a escape from reality...had to work on it when he was away, change engines , trans, and he'd be pissed!!! LOL!!!
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