Car Guys: Born Or Bred?

[LaserSVT]

I was just curious due to the amount of people I see that are not even the slightest bit interested in cars. You know the kind. "Hey, wanna go for a ride to the store? I have a Bugatti Veyron!" "Nah, there is a special on TLC about recycling your toilette paper."

I know I was born a car guy. Often hear stories of the only way to stop me crying was a car ride. I remember at 3 having a NASCAR electric race track and 100's of Hotwheels. Now mind you nobody in my family is a car person. They buy Fords because Uncle Jerry worked there 50 years ago and that's it.

I know by 5 everything was car related. If the toy was not car related it was never played with. Till today my only REAL passion is cars. I like all kinds of cars for different reasons. Not a brand loyalist, I just like cool or weird cars. GLH? Kick ass! RX7? Love the sound. Fox Mustang? Just always cool. Anything with a 4V Modular? Favorite sound in the world. Aston martin? I could just sit down and stare at it for hours.

I realize being a car guy is most often a trained thing from early age but at what age is that person no longer trainable and when did most of you become car people?
And I don't mean the kind of car people like "Corvette is the only real car and all others suck." or show a Fox guy any car and get "Yeah but a Fox with $5000 will kill it!"
I mean when did you really start your love affair with the automobile or do you even have one and just found this place because someone else with a Mustang told you about it?

[talisman]

My mom told me a few years back that they woke up one night about 2am and I wasn't in my bed. I was about 2 years old. Apparently I was in the garage, playing with a slot car track. The first thing I remember seeing on TV was The Dukes Of Hazzard in the 70's. The only toys I ever remember playing with at my earliest age were cars. No GI Joe, no Star Wars, just cars, and Legos, which I made into cars, then cities for the cars to drive around.

I wanted my first car to be '57 Bel-Air, but had to make that wait. Just after I turned 20 I bought my third car, a 1984 Mustang SVO that will haunt me until the day I die with nightmares of walking home for miles from a broken down car in the days before cell phones. 18 Mustangs later, I still love them. It's always been there as far as I can tell.

[SonicblueGT03]

I'm pretty sure I was born this way, but it wasn't from my parents. Dad had a hot rod '51 Ford that he won a trophy with at Paradise Drag Strip in San Diego back in 1952. Trophy says it was the 426 B/S class and he ran 73 mph. Guess it was enough to win that day. I keep it on my desk. Other than that, he never really talked about cars, and only had "work" type rides that I can remember. He was a Veterinarian in Burleson, so mostly trucks, but he did have a '67 Catalina 2 door for a while and that's the car I first "steered" (I was 4). Standing in the seat in front of Dad, I worked the wheel and he worked the pedals. I've always thought that was the one that did it. I was modifying Schwinn's and red wagons and riding mowers after that, pinstriping flames on his '75 Ford F150 (that one pissed him off! LOL!). Haven't even ever considered being any other way. Cars keep me sane in an insane world. Cheapest (relatively) therapy on the planet.

[LaserSVT]

Very cool guys.

[dsrtuckteezy]

i'm not a car guy per se. i like cars very much, but mainly anything that's fast, sounds and looks good. motorcycles are my real passion, there's just a very real connection to the world when youre riding imo.

[Chas_svo]

I have a picture of me being held by my mom while she held my brother's hand standing on the starting line at Penwell helping stage my dad in '68. I was ~1 and my brother was 3. I was ruined. Dad won, and not long after that I met Don Garlits there as well.

[91CoupeMike]

My first memory is looking out the window and seeing a trans am and saying "that's badass"

I always had power wheels and if it wasn't cars then I didn't want anything to do with it.

[fastwhite99gt]

My first memory of a car was my dad's 70 Camaro. He was going to the parts store and of course I had to ride along. I remember the rumpity rumpity sound lol. On the way home from the store, one of dad's friends pulled up beside him and I remember dad telling me to sit back and hold on. Next thing I know, I was planted in the seat and was looking at hood lol. Now he wonders where I got it from rofl!

[JC316]

Born a car guy to a family of car people. When I was 2, I got out of the house and into my moms 65 thunderbird, pulled it out of gear, rolled down the street and landed in a neighbors yard. It was all hot wheels and electric cars when I was a kid.

Not surprising that I have had over 13 daily drivers in as many years.

[Chili]

I think it's a little of both. I believe that some people are more likely to be "drawn" to it, but it requires cultivation to really develop.

[351Coupe]

Born. No one in my family has ever given a shit about cars. I'm so eat up with them that I figured out how to have fun making aliving off of them.

[Cooter]

I'm another product of Dukes of Hazzard...

I have loved anything that burns dead dinosaurs and makes cool noises since the day I was born. I have also had a certain distaste for the norm and those who dictate the norm

drive fast, take chances, fuck the norm, don't fuck Norm (he'll hold it against you) (and by "it", I mean a samurai sword

[2011GT]

I'm not a huge car guy anymore (more into atvs/dirt bikes) but my first word was "car"

But I loved coming home from school and watching knight rider and dukes of hazard. Turned the tv off when Mash came on. Granted I'm not old enough to have seen the episodes new but I did watch the reruns.

This very day I still have a passion for machinery. I'm an aircraft mechanic working on corporate jets and I've been licenesed for 10 years and I still love it.

Neither of my parents were into cars...

<- manufactured 1984

True story

[fitzwell]

my mother used to say she'd like to find out who bought me my first model car.... I remember how I thought the tree shook in mom's 49 ford. then fond out later it was the car he killed himself in. Remember my step brother & his friends had a FED in the mid 60's. I got to polish the zoomies. His 65 GTO, first Tri Power Goat in Omaha & the run out by the Kelloggs plant. WFO & screaming for Jesus.. My Step dad's 62 Galaxie 406 3x2 car. He had a long drive to work & needed to get there in a hurry. It worked. My first engine rebuild, aided by numerous copies of hot rod magazine. My first engine swap, my first back seat romp. My first straight axle, no brakes 56. I remember the sheer terror of a wing sprint car, and taming that beast. I remember seeing a vette heading at me at over 100 mph & thinking " this is gonna hurt" It did. Most of my so-called adult life has been based around cars, and car guys. Made money, made friends. Lost money, friends drifted, but it always rotated back to cars. 58 trips around the planet, and it's still about the cars. My tastes have changed somewhat, as has my attitude. I no longer care ( not that I ever really did) about what anyone else thinks about what I build. I have a formula, and it works. All of my really close friends are car people, and they get it. My wife understands that is who I am, and she digs it. Yeah, i'm a gearhead. I was born this way, and nurtured along the way. FWIW, My son is a gearhead as well. He just plays with two wheels..Pisses Ex #1 off big time

[Scott Mc]

My draw was more out of spite. I remember in 4th grade I got made fun of for not knowing makes of cars. I vividly remember desire to say, "Fuck you! I will learn more and be back!" FYI I kept my mouth shut and hit the library lol. I also come from a background of my father being kinda handy, but by far nothing to brag about. He was a people person. My Grandfather was a retired A&P from General Dynamics, the time my family talks about knowing I had the "gearhead" in me was when I got bored with the dinner at the grandparents and snuck off to my grandfathers shed. Being bored I put his lawnmower together and started it. That was the end lol, I got my first dirtbike in a box and put it together without instruction. I think its a combo of life and genetics, how would a person know they are a gearhead if they have never been around it?