What was your first hot rod experience?

Mine was back in the early 60's when a new highway was put in across our property. Four lanes, a center turn lane and emergency parking on each side. Plus, no cross streets or entrances for 3/4 miles. Our tree house was on a small hill over-looking the highway, and the area soon became the "local" drag strip. The only problem was that the racers sometimes lined up too far down the road.

So, to help them out, my brother and I would grab some white paint and a roller and put a starting line in just below the tree house. As soon as we heard loud cars, we were out of the house and up the hill to watch the races. Damn, that was fun!!

Occasionally, the state would come out and sandblast our starting line, at which point, we would roll out another one, ready for the next nights races. I remember one afternoon watching a supervisor telling his crew to get the damn stripe off the road. They did, and we put it back. We even "liberated" a 5 gallon bucket of ground glass to spread on our new starting line. It looked good!!

The next day, the highway crew was back, and the supervisor was yelling at his guys to clean up the damn stripe. They cleaned it and as soon as it was dark, we replaced it. I guess we won, because the stripe stayed there until it wore away.

I watched Corvettes, GTOs, 442s, even a new '66 Toronado line up against a '55 Chevy with a 283 and a 4-speed. The Chevy won, but it was cool to watch.

We didn't play video games or talk on the phone. We just kept the "track" open behind the house. No one ever had an accident that I know of. This was on HWY 199 heading west out of Grants Pass, Oregon.

 

Great story. I just like old cars. Have since I started likeing cars when I was 13 or so.

 

Been brought up with classic cars so it a part of my life. Got more in to it all when I started helping my uncle build his A roadster. Then I got my early falcon. But my first ride in a hot rod was in a 32 roadster a few years back.

 

Back in the 60's We had this alley mechanic that lived at the end of the block,he worked on everybodys car on the block,he had a 57 chevy gasser called Irritation.
I would go hang out by his garage and I was his gofor (go get go get that)he and his brother in law and their friends had some of the coolest cars out there.
His brother in law Charlie had a 63 Belvidere with a 426 max wedge and a stright axle,there was so many cars that would show out there by his house all the time.
There was a street by the house that they would race race on called root and race towards the rail tracks I watched all of them race and just do shake down run's over there,he always said one thing a hillbilly could do is build cars drink beer and make babies!!

 

riding in a moris minor pickup with a blown small block in it. going down the road sideways in a cloud of smoke. i've tried to do something like that for as many kids as i can.

 

When I was a lil kid (born 1975) my pap always had a line of 10 or 12 old junk mustangs on the back side of the property that he would take parts from to sell or rebuild a car or two as he had the time. Took a 69 and a 70 fastback, one wrecked in front one wrecked in rear, and pieced together a good runner. I still have a picture of that car and thats why I have my 70 now.
My Uncle John put together a Hemi powered T bucket in the early 80's and my Dad and I would go the Rod Runs (York PA, and Cumberland MD) with my Uncle and cusins every year til high school. Uncle John put together a 40 Dodge sedan (late 80's)and a 34 Ford Delivery (early 90's). He still has all three in Florida, and thats why I have my '30 A.
Dad was a body man and painter just shy or forever. When he and my mom were first together, he put one of those Phycidelic '70's Lace/streamer/fade/panel paint jobs on my moms 65 Mustang that they brought me home from the Hospital in. Guess you could say I was born into being a car guy.

 

I dont remember a certain event that got me started, but I do recall 1 car. I had to be about 10 and a neighborhood JD down the street had a 55 Ford Crown Vic w/the Merc tailights in it. Loved that car. Manderian Orange & White with glasspacks on it. Dont know how fast it was but it sure looked & sounded cool.

 

I've been told my dad introduced me to mom in the back seat of his 56 chevy!

 

First time experience was riding in a 66 Impala SS, built 427 4 speed with 4:11s. My friend lit em up out of the hole and the car didn't even move until it was in 3rd gear, then took off like being shot out of gun and scared the hell outta me. I think that was 1968 and I've been hooked ever since.

 

Drag racing on the TV in the early 70s. Wide World of Sports... on Saturday mornings. I was a little kid, but was eat up with dragsters.

 

My babysitters boyfriend had a 440 Superbird

 

Paul Brewer took me a ride in Pencils Red Eraser in about 2003. That cammed Y block sounds so wicked. Being hooked on hot rods before that, It was a religous experience.
I grew up around restored model A's and classic cars. The guy around the corner had a 34 Ford coupe that was a hot rod when I was a kid and I'd chase him on my bike whenever I saw it driving through town.

 

My folks had a 28 model A pickup when I was born, so it was given that I would like old cars. My dad bought a 56 nomad when I was a few years old. He found a corvette duel quad manifold and carbs and put it on the 327, He tells me when he would rev the motor it would make me cry.(what a puss)

 

I grew up in Long Island, N.Y., and very close to race tracks in what seemed like every direction. Friday night us kids, the cool ones anyway, would sit on the corner and watch all the stock cars go by on the open trailers. The same types of cars, 50 years later, that we here on the HAMB go gaga over every time we log on. A few years later, Baldwin Motion opened up right down the street. My mother and I would walk past every few days as we went to the grocery store. My Dad's best friend had his and hers 57 Chevy's, for him and his wife, both 4 speeds. Later on this guy had a 59 Vette for the wife and a 60 that was the " work car " and daily Driver. We spent a lot of time at thier home. My Dad was heavy into Buick's and always had the model with the biggest and baddest engine they offered at the time. I mean with that kind of childhood, how could you NOT grow up a Hot Rod guy, TR

 

My Dad was into airplanes and we kept a couple at Tulsa North Airport in the early to mid sixtys. This airport also happened to be the dragstrip on Sundays. One Sunday we were going to go flying and as we taxied to the runway/dragstrip and waited in line to take off I got to see my first "slingshot dragster" with the tires smoking the whole length of the strip. Man was I hooked at age nine. I built my first engine at ten (a Briggs & Stratton 2 hp) then my first V8, a 283 Chev I bought at a garage sale for $2.00 at age twelve (with my Dad's help). I've been ruined every since.

 

When I was 12 years old my older sister went with a fellow who had a '49 Merc convert. Lowered, skirts and a hopped up flatty. His friend had a similar '50 Merc convert.
Not sure why, but my sister and her boyfriend took me for a ride in it!
Wow! I wanted one.

 

1958, age 13. Zero hotrodding in any of my family at the time. At a magazine rack in a drug store in West Hartford, CT, for some reason a "little book" caught my eye. Picked it up, and addicted ever since. I've tried a few times to kick the habit - ain't gonna happen. It's a sickness, for which there is no cure. I'll be thinking about hotrods on my deathbed.

 

I'm an old man now, but mine started when the preacher at the Baptist church (THE church in that town) stopped in the middle of his sermon and said "would someone make those two boys in the back stop giggling and reading magazines (little page hot rod books)". Needless to say, after that day ( and the severe child abuse heaped on me by my parents and my best friends dad) we were known as "hoods, car hoods".
cooger

 

See this picture? That's me standing by the rear wheel, I was about 4 years old. My Dad took me to my first day of kindergarten in that car, and when the class had to draw pictures with crayons, all the other kids drew typical little kid shit. I drew my Dad's hot rod coupe. I've been nuts about hot rods my whole life...

 

Dad was a settled hot rodder - I was the 4th kid some times called "oops"
Dad lived like this and told fun stories - its hereditary

 

GrandDad was a Dearborn Ford body man; Dad was a Model A nut. Dad built a Comet/Falcon hybrid/bastard daily driver for Mom out of two nearly new junkers he bought, and rebuilt a '67 Mustang 2+2 289 4v,4spd from a rolled over wreck in 1968.... he restored A's, hated rods.... but he loved that Mustang. i had a serious incident at 9 years old and he drove me to the emergency room in that car; Friday afternoon rush hour traffic... that 289 sang out LOUD as he pushed his way through 8 or 9 red lights never lifting his right foot. had a Va state trooper try to pull him over, but when he saw ME in the passenger seat, he lead the rest of the way to the ER.

so... i loves me a smallblock Ford.....

that was 1972, right after New Years. i been a car nut ever since then. brain damage? probably.

 

First hot rod ride: 1932 Ford tudor, cycle and bobbed fenders, big cheater slicks, chopped- 6" windshield- 409, dual quad, 4 speed, wild paint, I remember the front wheels being splyed out at the bottom....I found out why....who wouldn't get hooked!

 

Well gee,
I guess I was about 3 days old. Nailhead powered '41 Willys pickup. I don't remember a lot about it though.

 

I started quite late. I married into it. Have always liked cars, especially old cars, but outside of looking at them, figured I'd never have one. Had never worked on cars either at that point. I started dating my wife when i was 18, and her father built cars. Started hanging around with them, going to car shows, watching him in his shop and became more and more interested in them...started really wanting my own. Over the years, my FIL became very interested in Willys...pickups and Jeepsters. He had built a Willys panel and a jeepster, and found another Willys pickup in a creekbed and gave it to me to build and to learn on. But for somebody who had never even changed his own oil, I found out that i was grossly over my head and quickly abandoned the project. Father-in-Law took it over and built a beautiful flatbed out of it. I tried to get it back stating that it was still mine, but that didn't work.

First ride in a street rod was his 50 Chevy Pickup that he drove when i first started dating his daughter. My first open wheeled roadster ride was at Cruising the Coast when we tagged along with them a number of years ago. Was a '27 T-Roadster and I fell in love with that, even though I was way too tall and fat for it.

About 5 years later (2 years ago), I built my first car - a '27 T-Roadster. Still too tall and fat for it though.

 

I've always been paying attention to cars, but my first memory of some kind of rod was in the late 50's, I might have been 12, & some guy working with the church group had an early 30's chevy coupe, no fenders, highboy, small block I think. I got to sit in it & got a short ride around that part of town. It was an in progress car & that has stuck with me all these years. Not much has changed.

 

Paradise Drag Strip San Diego mid 50's
The Bean Bandits, Crower, The Prowlers.

 

My Dad's '27 or '28 Essex hot rod.

Hooked from about age 3.

 

Hey, I hear ya, Bluedot, it's an addiction for which there is no cure.

 

Early 1970's, still in primary school, aged 10or 11, my schoolmate and I went looking for another friend, we knocked on the door and were told he's down in the garage with his brother, so off we went to the row of lock up 1 car garages behind the house and there it was, half in and half out of the lockup, a black Jago bodied fad T, Daimler V8 Hemi engine, side exhausts,Jaguar back axle, beer keg fuel tank and wide wheels ( don't remember, which style}.

In rural Wales this was different to say the least, the nearest thing I had for reference would be, the Munster coach as seen on TV. I remember being allowed to sit in it on a crate, the steering wheel in the bus driver position, asking,way, way too mant questions.

The car was registered on a P registration 75/76 as was used in summer for some years, the car was then sold on, it's builder still a petrol head now has a Mustang V8 transplanted into a Ford Sierra with uprated Cosworth underpinnings. Say no more.