Its a tossup... my Dad has had his 31 Chevy 5-window in his garage since 1970... since before me... he never really worked on it much either. But he talked about it and told me stories of my Uncle Nick's cars and how he wanted a hot rod of his own. (seems like raising 2 kids put a damper on that...) Uncle Nick has a 32 Ford roadster (that used to be a coupe) he finished in 1972... hot tri-power SBF and independant front suspension (which I guess was pretty innovative in 1972) THAT car helped cement the fact that I would ignore schoolwork and dream of cars all my life. (I'd post pictures, but I have none at work)
My father is responsible for my obsession. I used to be wide eyed and totally transfixed( that was about the only time I wasnt bouncing off the walls) while my dad would tell me stories of his misguided youth going up through the fifties and sixties in LA. I was never interested in what everyone else was doing in the world of cars. I never read any car mags as a kid except for cartoons. I would just ask my father to retell some of his stories. My father would as have some type of project in the garage at one point or another. Whether it was a hopped up sand rail or a 60 chevy biscayne he always was tinkering on something. I wish I would have spent more time with my father when I was younger and learned a lot more, but when your a kid such things dont matter at the time. Jonney
Goober, Thanks for the link to the song.........Few remember the Show, let alone the song. I was able to snap my fingers just at the right time........ I saw the "Kookie Car" a few years ago. A friend of Lownrusty's owns the Car ( he's Norms friend) It's in a warehouse, that's really more like a Hot Rod museum...So many Club Jackets and Plaques I gave up counting.... Original Von Dutch stuff too. A real mind blower........
The Eliminator coupe. And the dude round the block had a tri-power sbc '39 Chevy hot rod. Red w/steelies. Real loud, real fast, real cool.
Car magazines and cartoons from the 60's and the styrene models done after the real thing. That was when glue was real. And beleive it or not flat track dirt motorcycle racing was the first smell of fuel that I got. Eyeing my buddy rogers Chevy orange 57 vette with fatties and Crager s/s. Wanting that red 63 Impala with the 409 and one again crager S/S Driving my Chevy Orange 57 to school everday. Snapping the tranny mount on my 340 Dart and having it buck from the hole. laying in the dirt and fixing any undercarriage. Listening to my dad explain that cars were to get you from point A to point B and back again. Being besiged by RATFINK anything hillbilly hats and key fobs. Lastly watching my dad in the garage trying to fix the family Pontiac Safari wagon while he smoked cigars and swore marine core style at the family rides. All of this so he could have something to go to work in on Monday. Like one of my buddies said who raced NECKCAR from KY. If you did not learn to fix it you were not able to go anywhere..... That was some motivation when it came to get out there and meet those chicks. Who cared about anthing as a teen except...beer money & gas money?
I remember as a kid under 10 years old spending time at the farm. Machinery, trucks, cars, etc would almost always break down. I'd watch in slack jawed fascination as Grandpa fixed whatever it was. I'd watch as an oil can full of gas and a "hot battery" would start a car that had been sitting for a number of years after a little tinkering. I'd watch as people would either give or practically give him cars just to be rid of the mechanical nuisance. Fast forward a few years. I read every car magazine I could get my hands on. Studied old shop manuals. I studied new shop manuals too. I took Automotive classes at the Vo-Tech in highschool. Fineally I started getting practical experiece behind the theories and 2 dimentional learning I'd been doing. The more I learned the more I decided to stay with it. I got my associates degree in Automotive Technology. Then dropped the wrench bending as a profession and stayed in college. I still have no free time and no space to work, but greasy knuckled forces beyond my controll are calling me to begin a project. I won't be able to resist too much longer. I'm hooked
a 1973/74 issue of Custom Car Magazine in the UK, Featured cow palace custom show (GNRS i think) one look and I had to have a rod. It took around 28 years of building cars I didn't really want but got there in the end. I now have an all steel 28A roadster that was at the Goodwood Festival of speed with 24 other top european rods............
Like several others here it was when I was around 12-13. The guys in cool cars always had girls with them. I was VERY interested in girls even at that age. Then the sound of a neighbors 47 Ford coupe with a hot flatty and Smithys set the mood for life. That was in 1954-55 or so. By the time I got my license I had my own hot flatty, a 49 Ford 2 door with a full custom treatment thanks to by best friends dad and uncle who taught a young kid the tricks of the trade at their body shop.
My older brother took me to Lions Dragstrip when I was about 9 or 10. He went to school with alot kids whose folks were the big speed equipment manufacturers at the time. I thought it was so cool. I've been turning wrenches on one car or another ever since.
I grew up on the back of a 49 Flatbed dodge 1 ton, and 50 Dodge 1/2 ton box. My grandpas pickups. If it wasnt that it was the 72 F-100. Or it was playing around my uncles collection at my farm of classic cars & trucks that were just "parts cars" for him. So by the time I turned 13 and started thinking about what I wanted for a vehicle, I never read hot rod magazines or anything yet in my life, I knew I wanted a classic truck. We had our tree business then and would drive by this 49 Chevy 3600. Had surface rust but for the most part was complete. We would drive about 10 dumps of trees past it everyday and I just stared at it everytime. I told our hired man thats what I wanted for my first vehicle. He mentioned it to my dad, and we stopped by there and talked to the guy and he went and started it for us. Told us he had a guy coming to look at it the afternoon and he wanted $600 for it. My dad told him $300 if the guy didnt take it. So a couple weeks go by, and this is almost cruel, we were getting ready to go to my grandmas cabin for a week, and my dad pulled into the yard with the truck. Well by the time we had gotten it the fuel pump had gone bad, but my neighbor had a grain truck with the 216 in it and gave me the fuel pump. Put it in and had it running. I like the story but dont like it because it reminds me that the only thing I have done with it for the past 9 years is drive it stock, no mods done to it at all.
I had always been interested in mechanical stuff and "engineering" stuff (i.e. building legos when I was younger, and taking my toys and stuff apart and then it was my bike and then it was a go cart and then cars when I turned 15 or so.never really had anybody to show me so I hung out with a couple of motor heads in high school and we worked on our trucks when they broke down. I started working for a guy who build 1 street rod a year or so to sell and the rest of the time he did motor jobs/paint/body any mechanical etc. etc. @ that point I was really into the Muscle cars...Chevelle's, Nova's, Camaro's, OLD Stangs..Pre '70 etc. etc. But always staaayed interested in Trucks - especially older ones Then one day we went to a rod run out in the woods of Maine and - I saw real HOT RODS!!!!!!!! I was in love. I saw this orange truck and that is where my sickness began: Then I found a magazine "Street Rodder" A Guide to Building Street Rods in 2003 and found Ken Rollins' Lime Green '34 and Knew I was going to build a Hot Rod Truck
What got me hooked was a television show "HIGHWAY PATROL", in 1956 I think. On one episode featured two hiboys. At the time I was 13 and since then I've been hooked. The older I get, the worse it gets!!! A wise man ounce told me you can't die ultil all your projects are finished!
I did not have a choice. I was pretty much born and raised at the race track. Dad and my uncle were racing a gasser and a rail when I was born, and the house always had a race car project going on. I used to use the roll cage of an Anglia (gasser car with a big block running hilborn injectors) as my jungle gym. And I was building models with my dad from a very early age. I was raised with the "do it yourself" attitude, and that "hooked" me into the traditional rods and nostalic drag racing cars of today.
Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb... Best friend's older brother had a black deuce coupe. HIS buddy had a yellow 55 chevy... George ALMOST got it right Who knows where it all started. everything before the 2nd grade has pretty much faded away... Just remembered. Billy and I got to pull the chain on the hoist when they pulled the flatty out of the deuce. They took the 265 and rear end from the 55 chevy and put them in the Deuce. Then the 55 got a Caddy or Olds engine, I don't remember for sure. Not alot of brand loyalty back then.
I can't really remember when I started liking cars. I guess I always have. what got me hooked into the hot rods and customs though was about 15-16 years ago I noticed this chopped '35 Ford tudor slantback runnin' around town with a 2-tone (navy blue top/turq bottom) base coat paint job. It was for sale later on and I tried to sell my pickup to buy it but no luck. The guy that owned it had his own shop at his dad's. The whole family was into hot rods, street rods, and customs. His next project was building a custom '50 Lincoln in '91-'92 for his grandfather. It's one of my all time favorite cars. I would stop by the shop every now and then and check out the progress on the chop. It was pretty cool watching this thing come together.
I think just being in the right place at the right time. Three major events and a bazillion minor events got going and I never looked back. First, my dad exposed me to the Santa Ana Drags in 51 when I was 5. Next it was me going through the windshield of my uncles hot rod 40 coupe. Hey I had to stand up on the seat to see where we were going right? I think I hurt something. And last was my 14th birthday present, a 1929 closed cab P/U. I still have it and it still looks like it did when I was in high school. I never had the money to rod it, now I cant bring myself to change it. I do have a hemi setting in the garage though, hmmm
For me it was my Uncle with his full race 48 Ford Convertible. I died when he traded that on a 58 Chevy convertible with the 348 tri power. I was 10 or 12 at the time. Then I bought a 49 Ford club coupe at 16 and my girlfriends cousin gave me some speed equipment for it. 2 duece mani, shaved heads and a cam. What a guy!! Then it was a long dry period going to school and raising a family, now it is full tilt. I love it. Something to live for every day.
i was born into it, dad was a hot rodder, so was my uncle. me and my brother (dueceburnout) spent most of our time at either the Woodburn dragstrip in OR, or at one of a number of swap meets around the NW polishing chrome emblems, and the rest of the time at car shows. Our dad was one of the go to guys around town if you ever had problems with ur rod, specifically carb problems. It was just pounded into to us and we loved every minute of it. Were both into hotrods more than ever now
Thanks for the credit Mark. However, You have it in your DNA, all I did was throw some gasoline where there was a spark. Your dad needs all of the credit. (he did admit to me that he was worried you'd go in the "wrong" direction until I took you for that first ride in the roadster)
I was hooked at a young age. When I was 7 or 8, I remember walking to school and seeing a '36 coupe with awesome pipes go by every morning. When the weather got warmer, the car would go by with the hood sides removed. I could see three carbs on the engine. Later, I would learn that it was a Merc flathead. Then my next door neighbor brought home a 33/34 pickup. A week later he brought home another. Before I knew it, there was another. Soon he started to make a beachbuggy out of one of the PU's. I started hanging around his garage when he was working there. At first He wouldn't let me thru the door. Then one day he needed someone to hold a wrench on a nut he couldn't reach. From that day I was hooked. I helped him build the beachbuggy and then helped restore another back to original. I came close to becoming a restorer. When I was 15 he sold me the third PU along with all of the leftover parts. I turned it into my high school hot rod. I drove it for 13 years until my second daughter was born and I needed to by medicine and milk. When she was a senior in college I started on my AV8 that I'm driving the wheels off of every chance I get.
mine had to be from when i was 10ish playing street hockey and i saw a primer grey, early 40's chevy chopped to hell and back coupe, with and engine louder than a tank, nearly dragging itself off the ground and shooting flames out the pipes..obviosuly i started waving at the old bad ass man looking guy smoking a huge stoggie. so put his arm up from resting on the door and gave me the devil horns... not possitive. but that seems to be what did it to me. kind of thing that changed a little wiener boys life for good hahaha keith
I don't post much, too dang busy! But I can still remember the day it hit me. Early 70's, my old man had a 40 Zephyr parts cars and had it stored in my uncles shed up in Kankakee, we were visiting for the summer from Texas, and my dad was going to pull a few peice for his 41 Continental. Well it had been years since we'd been up to Illi. and my uncle had failed to mention to my old man that the roof on the shed had collapsed under three feet of snow one winter....needles to say my old man flipped out!! But I'll never forget helping clear broken up wood and rusty nails off that car ....the smell still come to me once in a while. I remember thinking Cars are very, very important even parts cars with crap all over them!
the earliest car mags. I have I bought when I was 9. Then along came American Graffitti in the theater.
I'm not hooked at all... I just use the car to pick up nice women. Here cruising outside the local Elvis-shop with Donna Presley (Elvis' cousin)....
When I was 8 ( in the early 70's ) starting up my grand fathers 40 convertible in a tiny alley garage for my dad . Listening to & watching that dual carb Olds twitch & rumble while I got yelled at for blipping the throttle hooked me for life . Grandpop died , Dad got divorced , still got the car . Grandpop got it for 400$ as the story goes from a guy shipping out to Vietnem . The twitcy overcammed Olds motor disappeared before I had any say , but I got to see & feel at least one good burnout in a south Philly alley before the funeral . Pop-pop put it all back to stock before he died suddnley in 76 or so . Still have it & won't change a thing . Memories
Can I join this,I was born into the hotrod hobbie,my dad has always built hotrods.He had a 200 dollor glass 32 roadster body,that he bought 30 years ago,he decided that he wasn't going to build it,so he gave me the body when I was 6 years old,I'm now 25,and just finished the car this past May,and have put over 3300 miles on it,and it took 5 years to build,so yup I'm hooked.
It was probably in the mid-fifties. The "teenagers" as my parents refered to them, used to hang out on a nearby street corner singing acapela and one of the guys had a 49-51 Ford painted flat black with wide whites and "Duke of Earl" painted across one side of the trunk. I used to take my dog on the longest walks at night, just to go look at that car. Still love those shoeboxes!
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