Yeah, I know, I'm nosey. I want to know if there was a definitive point in your childhood or other point in your life that got you into cars. I alluded to mine a little. I can remember being no more than 6 or 7 years old and this teenager down the street name Chris had a beautiful, white 69 Chevelle SS. It had classic cragers all around. I had never heard a car sound like that before and I was mesmerized as he throttled it up and down our street. About that time we also had book fairs at our elementary school. About the only things I would buy were the old hotrod pictorials. I was hooked looking at all those crazy hotrods. I asked Chris if he would get me a picture of his car sometime and to my amazement, while taking a bath after playing outside all day, I heard him pull up. My mom came up the stairs a few minutes later to hand me a polaroid of his car which I still have today. I also remember having my window open on those warm summer nights and I could here Chris racing others cars on the road that goes around our little town. The sound was heaven to me.
Two other cars that solidified my obsession when I was young were my older sisters boyfriends car -- a souped up orange 69 Roadrunner and her other friends 69 GTO. He later painted the Goat in Candyapple "huge" metalflake red with metalflake flames. It was the baddest looking car around. I was extremely sad when he totalled it about 6 months later. I even road my bike to where it was sitting and stared at it for a long time. I took a big chunk of the metalflake paint and also kept that for many years.
A few years ago, I thought it would be awesome to acquire the first car that got me into hotrods. I knew the hands that the Chevelle had gone through and my mother was still friends with the mother of the son who last owned it. Sadly, it was reported that it too had been totalled and sent to crusher heaven about 17 years ago. Oh well, it would have been nice.
On a side note, I still have all of those old hotrod pictorials and yes, I still have every single car magazine I have ever purchased (wife thinks I'm crazy). I have never thrown out one. I was also lucky enough to get about 3 or 4 years worth of Hotrod magazines from 1967 or so until about 1971 from a friend of mine in Georgia. I found them in his shed in those big red Hotrod binders. They weren't really being protected by the elements much and I was stunned when I saw them laying there. He said " Oh those? You can have 'em if you want." Snag!! These are gold as they have all of the original articles and advertisements of when these beasts first came out.