What's the first car that ever lit your fire?

It was 1958, I had just turned 16.

The car was a '55 Chev Belair HT, 3 on the tree, white over gray, continental kit - the kind where the bumper wraps around the tire.

The continental kit didn't do much for me (they still don't) but the 3 carbs on the engine fascinated me, as did the rumble from the dual exhausts.

The car was owned by the publisher of the local newspaper and professionally built.

 

Mid fiftys. I'm selling newspapers on the corner in front of the Post Office. Across the stree is Healey's Pharmacy. The soda jerk drives a '32 Chevy five window. Red with black fenders. The vent doors in the hood are chrome. He has a military surplus GMC in it still painted olive drab. I am in love with that car. When he went away to college he tried to sell it to me. Talked to my dad about how much I loved it. But no. I was too young. Never saw it again.

 

I when I was a kid it was the ford in the movie The California Kid. I loved the flame job on that car. Later it was 77 SE Trans Am aka "The Bandit".

 

I know this car, it used to run around the Fairfield area in the late 80s. It had been painted a different color, but how many big-block opel GTs with tubbed rears are cruising around Cincy. My buddy Ben, lived by the dude. We could stop over sometime and see if he still has it...

 

For me, it was prolly the Smokey and the Bandit T/A when I was young and later the '50 Merc from Cobra...

 

erik maaskes 52 ford. i seen it parked in front of his shop in fullerton when i was 18, since then ive had this horrible addiction to cars.

 

my big brother had a 56 nomad , i was maybe 10 or 11 , he took me for a ride and we ended up on the edge of town (corn & bean fields all around) and he stops and says "check this out !" does a hellacious smoky burnout ...very cool , the car wasnt sealed up real well and the whole car filled with tire smoke . he also had a nova ss , and a v-8 vega and a couple more tri-fives

 

My first was not any particular car or even a real car. When I was probably four, an older cousin showed me his model collection. It was all early style hot rods as this was in the late 50s. To this day, there are still no cars that light my fire aesthetically quite like a traditional, fenderless hot rod, not even my beloved Corvette.

 

I'm with Notorious on this one.
The model car kits and the art at the time was the start of a 45 year hobby.
The Green Hornet T-Bucket, The Black Widow, The Sizzler Dragster, Monograms Big T, The Slingshot Dragster, Double Dragster, The Visible V-8, and all of the AMT Trophy Series, Ivo's Four Engined Dragster, Mickey Thompsons Challenger, etc., etc. Beautiful artwork on all the model kits back then....the next 45 years is a trail of cancelled checks and broken parts....and smiles.

 

Might have been this one from Simms, Inc in Aurora Ill. I'm pretty sure it had a top and windshield at one point but I have no memory of what it looked like then. Wish I could find one in better shape - this one's kind of beat.

 

For me it was my dad's 64 galaxie. Was his first car and never sold it. Started workin on it when I was 7, taught me brakes at 10 and actually finally got the 390 which we rebuilt when I was 13 running last week cuz he put his car aside to help me build a c10 for my first car when I was 15 and then went off to college.

 

It took me a minute to figure out what really gave me the Sickness... I think it was the model building snapon dragsters back in the 70s I did with my pops and I think American Graffiti made a huge impression on how cool a hotrod is. I also saw this low RPU in Long Beach around 01 with a duval windshield and headers that totally got me to start a new project... then it was the Jimmy Shine truck that was sitting at Von Dutch in Hollywood ( I was there makin fun of all the fags buying $100 hats ). Anyway I guess its a couple cars that "got" me. Now days its probably the shit that comes from Cole Foster that makes me want to just shit me panties.

blake

 

When I was in 8th grade my sister was going with what was to be my future brother-in-law. He came over to the house one day driving a brand new 1962 Galaxy, 406/4 speed. He gave me a ride over to the local A&W in it. As we were pulling out he punched it, and that was it. Not going anywhere just smoking up the tires. I was hooked. Five years later I'm in the Army and come home on leave. I go over to my sisters house and there sits a brand new Couger XR7. 390/4 speed. My brother-in-law had excellent taste in cars. He let me take it out while I was home. Never lost a race in that thing. Beat Roadrunners, Chevelle 396SS, GTO's, Corvettes, and the only car that came close was a Charger. That was one fast car right off the show room floor. The only thing he did to it was put on cheater slicks. Wish I had either one of those cars now.

 

52 years ago....it was the '32 - '34 coupes with the hopped up flatheads that raced at the local bullring dirt track that got me interested in fast cars. Then, a few years later when I was a sophomore in high school it was the Lyndwood chassis/Latham-blown Chevy dragster that a local guy had.

I ended up buying that digger later on....it was my first attempt at building.

 

I may get flamed, but if I'm going to be honest, it was the first time I saw the Duke buys sail across the television in the General Lee. I might have been three or four, but I remember eventually parking my ass in front of the T.V every night with my plastic General Lee and Roscoe's cop car, making all the sounds as best I could. I carried that flame for years. In my party years after high school, I had a giant pickle jar with a "General Lee Donations Gladly Accepted" sticker on it. The jar would fill with pocket change and the jar would get robbed to pay other bills and keep cars I actually owned alive, but I always swore I would own the General.
I've mellowed a bit and migrated to cars with REAL style: 50's Hot Rods and Customs, but there is still a tiny pilot light burning for a Charger. Not orange, not a 69, no rebel flag, no racing numbers, no friggin cattle pusher - but a bone stock 68 R/T.
Who knows, if I ever do get one, I'll probably throw a Dixie horn in it for old times sake.

 

No apologies necessary. My son was about the same age as you were in that show's original run. Needless to say, he was a fan and I'd sit and watch it with him. I remember being blown away by the fact that when he was about five, he'd see some of the stunts on that show, turn to me and say, "They couldn't really do that, could they Dad?" I still laugh, remembering that. I suppose that's about the point when I realized that he was not only smarter than me, but scary smart!
When he was not quite yet three, he looked at an STP promotional sticker that was on my tool box of a Petty car, a '71-'74 style Charger stock car. A friend of mine had a '73 Charger at that time. He said, "That looks like Andy's car, Dad."
I still have that tool box in my shop and that sticker's still on it. I can't look at it w/o remembering that moment.

 

When my Dad was stationed in Nurnberg Germany and we moved there, he bought a 1951 Pontiac woodie wagon which had been in Europe since 1951 passed from GI to GI. We needed a big car with 5 boys in the family, 6 when we left 3 1/2 years later.
On a car lot in Furth(the suburb we lived in) was a 1932 Ford V8 B400 Convertible Sedan(one of the few German Fords sharing a body from the US). Price tag 500DM, $125 US. You can't imagine how crazy a 13 year old gets when something so unusual is so cheap, even then. But Dad was probably making about $500 a month then, and was not even a car guy!
When we return to the US in 1964 we were stationed in Fort Sill OK but lived in Lawton. We go to register for school and what's in the parking lot of Eisenhower Jr-Sr High School with a "For Sale" sign in the windshield?? A chopped and channeled 32 Ford 5W Coupe with a J2 Olds engine with 3deuces and a 3-speed, Austin-Healey Sprite or MG Midget buckets seats, no hood, and 41-48 Chevy taillamps! Asking price $250! So now I'm 15 1/2 and we're only gonna be there for 6 months...$250!
So there it is, I was hooked on cars in Europe, stung by the 32 bug coming and going, and still have never owned one except the Junk one I scrapped at a swap meet in 1974 or so. Did talk my brother into buying one when he was bucks up and I wasn't and he still has it, unfinished but all there. Maybe...

 

I was a 14 yr old Air force brat in upstate NY. A kid we hung out with had a dad who owned a 70 440/6Pac Challenger. He used to give us rides and scare the hell out of us. I knew then that I wanted to own a car that was fast enough to scare people. Later, I saw "American Grafitti". Then I knew what TYPE of car I would use to do it. A Hot Rod.

 

Scary smart is right! I must have been 17 before I realized they destroyed all those poor cars for those silly stunts. (No one in my family gave a shit about cars, not enough to teach me anything especially). It's great that you are able to share something so simple yet important as cars with your son. Thanks for the memories.

 

The car that got me into cars, so to speak, was my dad's '73 440 Charger, which he still owns. When I was 8, I thought it was the fastest car around. When I was 16, I was pleased to find out my '71 Charger 383 was quite a bit faster haha.

As far as hotrods go, I'd have to say AA/FA's. I love those crazy things, and a hotrod is pretty much as close as I can get on the street.

 

1949 Mercury 2dr!! Bought it when I was 16,with out my parents knowing about it.Drove it for a couple of months,then they found out and made me sell it! ! Bought another when I turned 62. Drive it to the coffee with the boys on the weekends They are still cool to look at!

 

My dad's 68 Mustang gt fastback w/ a Boss 351 in it. I remember he ran in the 10's with 10" tires. I loved that car. Last I heard it was hit by a train...

 

Nobody in my family are into cars, but my Mom, realizing that I was into cars from how many Matchbox cars I had, took me at a young age to local cruise nights. There was one cruise that we went to on a pretty regular basis, where "Wild Bill" would show up with his 56 Ford 2 door Club Sedan and throw fire for the crowd. The car was kinda hokey, etched glass and lots of 50's doo dads, but being 7 years old I thought that was the coolest shit on earth. I finally met him 2 years ago at a local show. His 56 was parked a few cars away from mine...it was sort of surreal.

 

my first car and only one right now is my 65 galaxie 406 tri power.

 

I swear I can't nail down the exact instant I grew to like cars. I can go back to perhaps 5 or 6 and knowing I liked cars!!!
BUT...I can nail down the instant I discovered the TYPE of cars I was most interested in...and that was in grade 5 when I discovered some HOT ROD magazines from 1962-63 that someones Dad had given to their child to bring to school for an Art project.
Before that discovery I didn't even know car magazines existed.
I dug thru the pile of discarded scraps that covered a table in the class room and found 3 coverless car mags.
I asked the teacher if I could bring them home in trade for some magazines from my Moms stash of womens mags.
She said "sure".

Talk about Teachers being influential on the rest of your life!!!

T buckets...coupes...engine swaps...no fenders...pie crusts...Go-Carts...Flatheads...my head was in a spin...and my future decided.

 

My dads 66 Chevelle that he raced at Connecticut Dragway in the late 60's and early 70's. I have very fond memories of the time at the track.

The little kid in the pic is me in about 1974.

 

I grew up in Arizona. It was when I was 16 and a friend took me to Squeege's shop

 

This one.

MEMORIES OF A 15 YEAR OLD.
It was back in 58 as I recall,
Leon's next door neighbor started it all.
We was watching Leon's dad work on his 36 ford,
Not much to see so we was kinda bored.

About that time Leon's neighbor hollered at Leon and me,
He say's com'on over boys I've got something for you to see.
Now the neighbor's son was older than us,
And we thought he was cool cause we'd heard him cuss.

So we wandered over and hopped the fence,
Then winked at each other cause sometimes his neighbor didn't make no sense.
It was getting dark and kinda hard to see,
This better be good Leon say's to me.

The neighbor took us in the back door to his garage and turned on the lights,
And there before us was a magnificent sight.
His son Terry had been working on this old Ford sedan,
We hadn't paid much attention cause when he got it it hardly ran.

What I saw that night burned a spot in my brain,
And since then it has been the cause of a lot of pleasure and pain.
It was a black cherry shoebox ford with fresh laquer paint,
And at that moment I thought Terry was a saint.

I stood there speechless with nothing to say,
That black cherry shoebox is still in my mind to this day.
There was three sixty watt bulbs and one neon light,
The sides looked black but the top of the fenders glowed red that night.

When Terry opened the hood it took my breath away,
A full dress flathead laid in that engine bay.
Finned aluminuim heads and three stromberg 97's,
I thought I was looking right into heaven.

White tuck and roll and appleton spot lights,
By this time my throat was feeling kinda tight.
Then Terry asked what do ya think now boys?
Let's start her up and make some noise.

There was a knot in my gut that I can't explain,
When I tried to breath I almost doubled up in pain.
When he fired that flatty it was music to my ears,
It almost brought this 15 year old to tears.

Till the day I die I'll never forget that night,
That awesome sound and that beautiful sight.
It started a sickness for which there is no cure,
And I relive that night everytime I drive Ol Blue that's for sure.

 

I'm gonna guess that it was the gray '50 DeSoto moredoor that my parents brought me home from the hospital in. Even though my dad traded it for a new DeSoto in late '52, I can remember the '50 believe it or not. All that I can tell y'all is that I've loved cars ALL of my life..