What started your car addiction?

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Sexyhaggis

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Mar 7, 2021
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Location
Scotland
Car
W211 E320 CDI
always nice to hear what kickstarted peoples love for cars/bikes/trucks/mobility scooters,

from a young age I always remember my dad watching the F1 and rally on the tv and I’d sit watching it listening to all the noises of the cars and the day my uncle took me to knockhill in his white Peugeot estate which i remember feeling like a rocket ship 😂 but the biggest memory of that day was how bloody loud the touring cars were and I loved it, weirdly enough my dad and uncles (5 brothers, my poor nana 😂) never really had any fast cars but were always messing around with cars and especially vans swapping lumps in transits and such but the passion was definitely there,

yes I know this will sound like your typical roughian ned choice but from about 14 year old after hearing a Subaru burble in real life and not just on the tv I knew I wanted one as did my older best mate but even ten years later they still seemed to be out of our reach money wise untill 1 year later at 25 I decided the time had come after working 12 days on 2 off 12hr shifts for months and didn’t have time to spend money at that time (wife was heavily pregnant and online shopping wasn’t huge then thankfully) so I found money was stacking up so I decided a nice family car would be a white 1995 WRX import and I still remember to this day the guy meeting us at the ice rink and we heard it coming round the corner and we couldn’t stop grinning, we done the deal and me and my mate had our first even drive in a Subaru, I drove home then let my mate have a run in it and it’s a day we both still remember very well,

15 subarus later I still have one outside but can’t deny I do enjoy the merc E320 for comfort and long drives but every now and again just getting in the Subaru and hearing it just takes me back to where it started for me.
 

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I think Dad usually has the blame, my earliest memories are being in his v8 mgb gt and the shadows were always on the stereo, then he rebuilt a 1970 455 pontiac trans am over 3 years with my 'help', as much help as a 7 year old can give anyway, he would have probably finished it in half the time without it!!! The usual family bus was always something big and american with trips to Santa Pod drag strip thrown in for good measure. All these years later and the medication still hasnt worked, im still addicted!!!!!!!
 
I’ve loved cars quite literally for as long as I can remember. From a very young age I could recognise and name the manufacturer when I saw a car, then models, and in no time I could do it at night - and that was long before light signatures were a thing.

My parents must have helped me when I was very young because it started before I could read, never mind read a car manufacturer or model name. I learned very quickly though, and as soon as I could read badges I could name any car if I had seen one even once before.

When I was a little older, whilst my Mom was shopping I would stand in a newsagent reading any car magazine for as long as I could. Owners/staff would let me do it sometimes for hours in end, until I had to meet my Mom again - or she would come to me because she knew exactly where I would be!

On a Saturday morning I would spend several hours in WHSmitth first reading car magazines, then reading car books. I loved the Observer Book of Cars and I-Spy cars in particular, as they were crammed full of information and statsistics which I would memorize and recite when I saw those cars.

My parents couldn’t afford to buy me magazines and books, but I remember the day I bought the Observer’s Book of Cars. It was a big day, a huge day, despite the fact that I had already read it from cover to cover countless times in WHSmit. Later I bought the I-Py Cars book, both prized possessions which I still have.

We don’t know how I developed my passion for cars, as my parents weren’t interested in cars, and weren’t in a position to even own a car when I was young. My Dad had a few small vans over the years, but would have to sell them to pay for Christmas. There weren’t expensive vans, and they were very basic Christmases.

I think my passion for cars came from a Fisher-Price Multistory Car park toy, which I had for my first Christmas present: I now know it was secondhand but obviously at that age I had no idea, and I absolutely loved it, playing with it all the way up to being maybe 9 or 10 years old.

I could go on, but that’s how I developed my passion for cars. It’s surprisingly all-consuming. If I’m not doing something with my family or working, then I’m doing, thinking, reading, or watching something to do with cars. It’a strange what a moving lump of metal can do!
 
Cracking memories folk,

and the good old days eh when you could pick up a mag and wait for your parents without judgment sitting yourself, I remember when neighbours used to send you to the shop for milk and let you keep the change and no one cared and my elderly neighbour used to give me a sweet from the tin for tapping her door and giving her her newspaper that she always got delivered and left on the doormat and as an adult I realised she purposely didn’t get it herself cos she knew I felt helpful and got a sweet 😂, place I grew up was an absolute shithole with new burnt out stolen cars every week (genuinely 😂) but strangely enough when it come to neighbours and trust there was never any issues 90% of folk all watched out for each other
 
Using the bus and finding mixing with the masses didn’t agree with me .
Realising that cars came in different qualities took decades to learn and has left me the owner of two MB’s .
Onward and upward
 
My Dad was an MT sergeant during the war, and a company rep (with a company car) by the time I was born in the late 1940s. So I’ve never known life without a car.

My parents bought me an Excelsior Consort motorcycle for my 16th birthday, very old and very cheap, and my first car, at 17, was a hand-me-down 1937 Morris 8 tourer, both of which, out of necessity, taught me vehicle care/maintenance.

My hands-on interest was rekindled in my 50s when I built the 3 wheeler in my avatar pic
 
When I was young, my dentist used to park his car in our street as it was near his surgery. This was in the 50's when no one in my street had a car😭 This car was a dark green Jensen 541, what a looker, just like a space ship. That started it for me ,along with writing down car registrations in a wee note book & seeing who had the most numbers. I know, you will all be dead jealous of my lifestyle. Those were the days😊 The sun also shone every day in the summer👍
 
Collecting car numbers was fun when the last two letters told you where the vehicle was registered. They were all listed in the back of my 1957 Observers’ book of Automobiles.

And there was the small matter of nine hundred and ninety nine 1, 2 and 3 digit numbers to collect as well. (Plus the occasional 4-digit one)

And as you say, the sun shone all summer...
 
Bit like Bobby Dazzler, just always had the love. My parents had an MGBGT when I was born and (days before child seats) the carry cot I was in would wedge in perfectly between the boot lid and the back seat - I was then driven around with a lovely engine note beneath me looking up at the trees whizzing past.....I used to try to lie in the boot when I was way past the carry cot stage.

There was also one of my parents’ friends who had a Jensen Interceptor - all I ever heard was about what an awful car this was, would never finish two legs of a journey, steering wheel coming off when reversing out of the drive etc., but it looked like a million dollars and sounded even better....hooked!
 
My parents never had a car nor wanted to. My older brothers got cars after leaving home so I didn’t see much of them either, certainly not enough to spark any particular interest. I started off with motorbikes purely as a means of getting to work and back, then on to cars as soon as I was old enough because I was fed up with getting cold and wet (even during those long, hot summers!). I guess my passion slowly grew out of many hours spent working on my cars just to keep them running, then progressing to a desire to make them better.
 
We never had a car when I was a kid, but I loved my toy car's, and knew pretty much every car on the road as a kid, I was particularly taken with a Black Granada Ghia with Wolfrace slots, it looked fantastic, passed my test at 17 and got my first car, a Vauxhall Viva HB, and have been obsessed with cars all my life, and always will be. :)
 
Family as poor as, my Dads first car was a 1936 Morris 8, and as shocking as it was I loved it. It had a smell that I can still sense to this day ... those leather seats smelled divine, well to me anyway. When we’d got enough money we’d travel across London to my Nans and even taking the cobbled streets in dockland into account, I loved every minute of the journey. That Morris plus an obsession collecting Dinkey and Corgi cars I guess started it all off, and boy have I owned a few. My two daughters a while back say on investigation that I’ve owned more than twenty Golf GTI,s alone. Nonsense. 🤔😉🤣
Photos of all time favourites might be an idea. 😎
 
We never had a car when I was a kid, but I loved my toy car's, and knew pretty much every car on the road as a kid, I was particularly taken with a Black Granada Ghia with Wolfrace slots, it looked fantastic, passed my test at 17 and got my first car, a Vauxhall Viva HB, and have been obsessed with cars all my life, and always will be. :)
Passed my test in an Viva HB. 👍👍
 
Father was the first influence, of course, an engineer who loved his Ford Pilot. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

My undergraduate employer, Metal Box, sent me all over the UK for six years in the 1970's, with a generous mileage allowance, and loans of Car Pool Marinas and Princesses, back in the days of empty motorways and "A" roads. Then it was tax-free company cars as a badge of status in the 1980's. Different times, different times.



Pilot.jpg
M
 
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Not sure what, if anything, sparked my interest other the fact that when I grew up in the 70's bikes spelt freedom. When I hit 17 in 1981, cars more so.

I was always fascinated by them. Used to go to car shows, used to collect brochures. Knew a lot about them.

I still do. I keep daydreaming about buying some sort of toy for when I retire in a few years. I'd love to have something interesting enough to park in the guard of honour at Bicester.

Maybe by then a CLS55 would do the job? Any excuse to get behind a 55k....
 
We lived next door to a chap who always had bangers he got from the auctions to fettle up. I was often found under something he was working on. I was buying tools from my early teens and would fiddle with anything mechanical, fifty years on and nothing has changed apart from the tools are better quality and the tool boxes are much bigger.
 
I’ve loved cars quite literally for as long as I can remember. From a very young age I could recognise and name the manufacturer when I saw a car, then models, and in no time I could do it at night - and that was long before light signatures were a thing.

My parents must have helped me when I was very young because it started before I could read, never mind read a car manufacturer or model name. I learned very quickly though, and as soon as I could read badges I could name any car if I had seen one even once before.

I loved the Observer Book of Cars and I-Spy cars in particular, as they were crammed full of information and statsistics which I would memorize and recite when I saw those cars.

My parents couldn’t afford to buy me magazines and books, but I remember the day I bought the Observer’s Book of Cars. It was a big day, a huge day, despite the fact that I had already read it from cover to cover countless times in WHSmit. Later I bought the I-Py Cars book, both prized possessions which I still have.

I think my passion for cars came from a Fisher-Price Multistory Car park toy, which I had for my first Christmas present: I now know it was secondhand but obviously at that age I had no idea, and I absolutely loved it, playing with it all the way up to being maybe 9 or 10 years old.

My story is very similar actually taking an interest in cars I was in and being able to identify most cars on the road through my younger years.

Then of course collecting Matchbox cars with pocket money or Birthday/Christmas money.

Loved the garages, mats with roads on them, and the odd book too which I sometimes got for Birthday/Christmas.

I had the cars and car numbers i-Spy books (pretty sure one was brown) with an affiliation with David Bellamy. I even remember one of the stories in it.

Remember my grandparents teaching us number plate-spotting games as well to pass the time on journeys.

Then as I approached the age of learning to drive and driving, I was on it as soon as I could.

Took me a bit of time to save up for my first car though so I didn't buy it straight away after I passed my test when I was 17.
 
My story is very similar actually taking an interest in cars I was in and being able to identify most cars on the road through my younger years.

Then of course collecting Matchbox cars with pocket money or Birthday/Christmas money.

Loved the garages, mats with roads on them, and the odd book too which I sometimes got for Birthday/Christmas.

I had the cars and car numbers i-Spy books (pretty sure one was brown) with an affiliation with David Bellamy. I even remember one of the stories in it.

Remember my grandparents teaching us number plate-spotting games as well to pass the time on journeys.

Then as I approached the age of learning to drive and driving, I was on it as soon as I could.

Took me a bit of time to save up for my first car though so I didn't buy it straight away after I passed my test when I was 17.
Oh yeah I forgot about the toy cars - Matchbox, Hotwheels, Dinky & Corgi. Plus I was forever making cars out of Lego. Used to draw them too. Plus I had the Eye Spy books. I remember being gutted when my old man bought me a train set when I was desperate for Scalextric. Ended up trying to race the trains.......
 

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