Customs What car first got you excited about customs or rods as a kid?

Not quite a teenager in 1958, I got hooked by the AMT/SMP 3 in 1 model kits. I just could not get enough of them and trying out all the options. ...and then the AMT Trophy Series came out! The '32s, the '36, the ala kart double kit, and the greatest, the '29 Model A Tudor sedan.

Then as a teen, I started building my own Model As in 1:1.

 

Sorry to be so "blaze" but mine would be John Milner's Coupe

Still stuck on it.

 

I meant blase'

 

Red baron Hot Wheel as a kid.

 

Growing up in So-Cal, My dad had a Model A, a 68 Corvette, a 70 Challenger so I was around cool cars as a kid. My best friends dad was a part owner of a Top Fuel Hydro drag boat in the late 80's to mid 90's so I went all over California and to Firebird in Arizona watching all the boat drags. It was cool being in the pits and watching a fuel boat be torn down and put back together then fired in a short period of time. Ever since then I have been into old cars and fell in love with vintage hotrods and drag cars and lakes cars.

 

I loved all kinds of cars from a very young age...but when I saw Sam Foose's chpped Ford coupe and Curlys Merc in the same issue I was hooked big time on kustoms..

 

There are to many to choose from. I remember having a Toy car with flames on it when I was about 6 or 7. That thing disappeared. Can't remember what car it was. Never knew what happened to it.

 

My buddies brother in law Brooke DeShaw had the first hot rod I ever sat in, a stock bodied 31 Chev with a multi carbed Olds V8. But the real impact was when I was about 12 driving through the Canadian National Exhibition and there was a car show on. At that time they had not covered the windows and all I saw was color and chrome. Never forgot that glimpse of hot rodding.

 

The box art for Tom Daniel's Tijuana Taxi, seen in a shop window in Italy in 1971. I was seven at the time.

 

right here, the summer of 1967

 

the 51 ford 2dr in my great grandmas garage, was my great grandads and after he died it just sat, she never even had a drivers liscence. i used to play in it when i was a kid and pretend i was racing. my uncle still has the car and is slowly restoring it

 

This is what hooked me as a kid and I still like it today because if brings back the cool memories of the many times I drooled on it.
A Bill Hines black masterpiece constructed of lead and cigar ashes.

 

57 chevy, and ironically the most over-rated and over done car in my opinion now, funny how 33 yrs changes you.

 

I love that truck!! And that says a lot because I was never much for customs.
I fell in love with hot rodding back in 1954, because a neighbour who was a few years older than me had a '47 Chev that he had shoehorned a 301 GMC into. That car was immaculate and went like hell. As a result, I started going to the magazine store and buying all the hot rodding books that I could afford.
When I was fifteen, I bought my first car, a 1939 Ford coupe and never looked back. I was totally hooked on hot rodding. My mom said that if girls had wheels, I would have been married by the time I was 13.
Bob

 

50's & 60's amt model kits and my uncle's 53 studebaker coupe

 

Would have been a 56? nomad in Tulsa Ok. in the late 60's. It sat in a parking lot around Skelly dr. and Harverd . I'd ride my stingray bike to see it all the time. Green with lace and the custom plates read ''SO RARE''. AnyTulsa guys remember or have pics?

 

For me it was the SWC '41 Willys coupe on the cover of the May '65 Drag Racing magazine. Something about that car just spoke to my little eleven year old brain. I had never really been too interested in cars or hot rods before this as I grew up at airports helping my dad rebuild his airplanes. I had to have that magazine and ran home and returned with a wagon load of pop bottles to cash in for it. I was blessed to have been able to own a 1941 Willys coupe in high school in the early '70s but as so often happens life seems to interfere and change your priorities. I still have it to this day; the magazine that is, unfortunately not the car.

 

My dad's Muscle cars. We had a slew of them when I was growing up. That mean a lot of time at the shop he worked at and a lot of time breathing in bondo dust and paint fews from a young age. We went to all the world of wheels shows here in MD and my dad would take me around and show me the cars he did paint and body work on. Good times!!!

 

I remember watching "The Munsters" with my grandfather. The Munster Koach and Drag-u-la was what got me interested.

 

As far as rods and customs, my dads spotlight book with pics of the Jade Idol, Zocchis Pontiac, and Kassa's Duece. I'd guess I was about 3.
The first thing I saw that really grabbed me, and was hot rod related was the Car Life cover
with the Dragmaster Dart with the chute open, and a small b&W shot of the Ratican & Stearns Fiat racing Walts Puffer T. It was the Fiat that really grabbed me.

 

The late 50's a girl dating a guy in my town cruised thru the neighborhood in a primer gray '37 Ford 5wc with a 303" Oldsmobile in it. They burned rubber from every stop sign for blocks.
I became totally smitten with rods at a very young age.

 

Customs..... 2 brothers with similarly customized Ford shoebox convertibles. One was outhouse aqua the other arrest me red.
Both nosed, decked, Olds wheel covers, clean smooth pair of drop tops.
The image of those two cars are burned in my mind forever.

 

The 60s at Sanford Drags this coupe did it for me, The original builder got it back and its been all redone via that era..

I built a coupe but not that awesome

 

My dad's '55. When he put chromed, reversed rims on it in '62 I was hooked.

 

In about 1957 a guy that worked at the Lincoln Mercury dealership that my Dad worked at had a lowered, lemon yellow 1953 Ford 1/2 ton pickup, it was being driven in a parade and the bed was heaped with go-carts, they were just becoming the rage then, I'll never forget it!

 

There were three, lil coffin, the orange crate, amd the alacart. Here locally there was a 40 deluxe coupe with an early hemi, and a 30 -31 model A coupe with a small block chevy, and a chopped 36 coupe with a decked out flat head. Finned heads, can't remeber if it had 2 or 3 carbs, but it really got me going

 

DAd's cars gave me the bug at an early age.

 

My uncles 55 Chevy he frame offed in the early 90s. First old hot rod I ever worked on.

 

Whenn I was a kid in the late '70s in my dads bodyshop ready for the paint both was a green '55 Chevy 4dr, I said to myself "wow, I have to have one of those". Years later ('84) I became the proud owner of a '55 BA 2dr sedan, and still have it and more oldies to keep it company!

 

My first model car 1955 chevy gasser around 8 yrs old. Never was around alot of hot rods growing up but between the model cars and car craft i new i wanted when i got older.