Where Did Your Automotive Life Start?

[brobradh77]

Boy do I feel like an odd ball...lol I had a 2000 TA was honestly the first time i got into the go fast mode but nothing major...I honestly first got into "heavy" modding when i got my SS and joined this site...I loved my stock SS until I saw what everyone else was doing ..lol .... I may have not have been a lifelong gearhead by any means but i feel i'm starting to turn into one.

[mcwarren]

Two things happened in 1956 and 1957 that launched my lifelong love affair with the Automobile. First, my parents gave me a book titled “The Red Car” by Don Stanford, I read this book over and over. Second, an older cousin gave me boxes and boxes of car magazines from his collection dating from 1951 through 1957, I read these magazines (Hot Rod, Car Life, Sports Car Illustrated, Motor Trend, Speed Age, Hop Up, Car Craft etc) over and over. In 1957, my freshman year in High School I failed the second semester of typing and my parents told me I had to go to summer school. I chose to take a course in auto shop and I was hooked. I transferred to a Vocational High School for my sophomore through senior years and graduated in 1961 with a diploma in Auto Mechanics.

 

My first car was purchased in 1957 when I was fourteen years old. I paid $15.00 for a 1939 Pontiac that some older kids in the neighborhood couldn’t get running. I had it running about 30 minutes after I got it home (they had the firing order wrong). I was too young to drive but I just wanted it to take it apart and put back together again, to learn how to fix cars.

 

I got my first job at a new car dealer in October 1961, a few months after graduating from High School and worked for dealers up until my retirement in December 2007. I have been involved in performance and racing off and on as an enthusiast, mechanic or spectator during the last 51 years.

 

51 years later at the age of 65, I still find cars the second neatest thing on the planet.

[shawnss]

I cant remember how i got started on car. it just happened Nobody in my family cared about cars. i have always wanted a nice car so my first car i bought was a 82 camaro it had a 4 banger in it so i pulled that the 4 banger out.And put a really built 350 in it and it. An it was all over after that. I bought the SSS 2 years ago with the turbo already on it. I bought it off ebay and took a chance without ever driving it and its turned out to be a good deal after about 12000$.

[diggerdan11]

Mine started when i was fairly young and started to go to the local car cruze. My grandpa use to race stock cars so i remember going to the track to watch him. then my Dad decided to restore his 69 chevelle he got brand new when he was 16. I helped him work on it as much as possible and from then i was hooked. I have only owned 3 vehicles in my life but none of them were stock, i had to mod every vehicle. I did not even have my SS for a week before i stated to mod it. Im a performance junky all the way

[wody]

common sense. i was a senior in high school and was just looking to fill a class. it was between "cooking" and "auto shop." guess which one i took. it all made sense to me, just after i graduated, i moved to vegas with a job offer at the shop im at now. no long stories, or dad stories (since my dad is a douche), only the fact that my grandpa was and always will be badass and i got his genes.

[dmf21209]

I always had an interest for as long as I can remember, but when I actually started learning a little bit was in high school. Both of my vehicles I had in high school I bought not running, fixed and sold them, making me a little bit of money. Really started learning when I went to japan in 2006, on the three nissans I owned over there, learned about motors AND turbo systems at the same time. So all my knowledge comes from nissans, and I am still itching to do another project.....

[F1SSS]

no long stories, or dad stories (since my dad is a douche), only the fact that my grandpa was and always will be badass and i got his genes.

 

 

My grandfather purchased this truck for me after I took care of him when he had terminal cancer for 2 years. I was never into hot rods or trucks, just BMW M3's and M5's. Now I have an obsession with this truck and its time to take down some M3's and M5's. Dad was a douche also and grandpa was the "father" in my life. RIP poppa.

 

Sorry for an old post.

[misterp]

It's funny how many of you mention the influence of your grandfathers. My *first* vehicle I got from my grandfather, I was 15-years old in high school in southern Oregon and I got called to the office one day, the principal told me that apparently my grandfather (my dad's dad) had called the school and said he left a '73 GMC parked in the school parking lot next to the auto shop for me to have; the principal then handed me a set of keys and told me to get an adult to drive the truck home. I had only known my grandfather for 1 to 2 hours of my life, and the only thing of consequence I remember him telling me is that a man needs to have a good set of wheels lol. My mother hated the man, and the expression on her face was memorable to say the least, she was totally deflated that I now had a truck. My grandfather passed a few years later, and I kept that truck for well over 20 years, in fact I sold it after I bought the SSS.

 

I was also told a story by Pimp SS, a very similar story about his grandfather also.

 

Mr. P.

Edited January 11, 2009 by Mr. P. (see edit history)