Biggest old car "impression" left in your mind...

[keiser31]

I was just wondering what made one of the most memorable impressions in your mind that may have led you to admire cars?

Mine was one day when I was about 8 years old. A tow truck showed up at our neighbor's (Mrs. Hepler's) house directly across the street from our house in Royal Oak, Michigan. My dad and I were out front watching and wondering what was happening. Pretty soon, Mrs. Hepler came out of her little house and walked down the narrow driveway to her garage. She slowly (she was in her 80s) opened up the garage door to reveal a great old beast of a car! It was all shiny black, with a light coat of dust on it. It was very, very tall. The chrome looked to be rather dull. Turned out to be a 1920 Pierce Arrow! I was in awe of the huge machine and knew right then that cars were to be a big part of my life for a VERY long time. This is similar to what was in the garage...for all I know, this could be the very car.

[Guest moto826]

mine was when i saw my grandpas that he jest parked was running when it was parked. he finally gave it to me the only rule was i had to keep it original

and now here i am

[DAVE A]

I have come to love almost ALL old cars so much that my biggest moment seems to come at every show I go to. How can you not love those big old cars with names like Packard, Duesenberg, Pierce Arrow, Locomobile, Jordon, Cadillac etc. etc. This past November at Hilton Head had so many beautiful big classics that I swore some day to have one for my own. First I have to fulfill my commitment to my children to restore a Crosley for every grandchild they produce. I am on number 5 restoration and they are ahead of me with 6 grandchildren!! Anyone got a quick restore Crosley to get rid of????

[keiser31]

I have come to love almost ALL old cars so much that my biggest moment seems to come at every show I go to. How can you not love those big old cars with names like Packard, Duesenberg, Pierce Arrow, Locomobile, Jordon, Cadillac etc. etc. This past November at Hilton Head had so many beautiful big classics that I swore some day to have one for my own. First I have to fulfill my commitment to my children to restore a Crosley for every grandchild they produce. I am on number 5 restoration and they are ahead of me with 6 grandchildren!! Anyone got a quick restore Crosley to get rid of????

This '49 may be up for sale soon.

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

I think the "car bug" bit me when I was 8 or 9 and watching our local 4th of July Parade when what did I see a bit behind a National Guard Sherman Tank but an Auburn Boat tail from the collection of the guy that owned a small chain of parts stores. From that moment I was seriously infected with Classic Car Disease. We all know it is incurable and thankfully no money has been wasted on Medical research to find a cure.......

[Guest Skip Jordan]

I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and back in the 50s at the Tulsa State Fair, a car like this Rolls was always on display somewhere ( a model with the horizontal grille vanes).

Also, growing up in Tulsa, it was the home of Glen Pray's Auburn Cord Duesenberg restoration facility, where he manufactured the 8/10 Cord replica. He let me climb all over his just-finished restoration of a Duesenberg SJ Speedster.

Those were my initial triggers.

At about the same time in my childhood, my Dad and I, on our way home from church, used to pass by a hole-in-the-wall used car lot that had a car exactly like this on sale for $1,800 for over a year. I always used to make Dad stop so I could go look at it. It was a Graham Paige with the same body shell as the Cord Beverly/Westchester, except it had a Cadillac engine and 1950s hubcaps, and the headliner was falling down. Horrible vinyl seat covers.

Edited January 14, 2011 by Skip Jordan (see edit history)

[Shop Rat]

The biggest old car "impression" left on my mind....was the mark the arm rest left on the top of my head when my dad closed the door of our 1965 Dodge Dart GT and I got hit on top of my head with the arm rest. I was getting out of the back seat, it was a two door, and Dad thought I was getting out on Mom's side. The arm rest hit me square on top of the head and nearly knocked me out cold. :eek:

I fell in love with the 1935 Auburn boat-tailed speedster used in the TV show Remington Steele. Then I found out it was a replica but I still love those.

[Bill Harmatuk]

I think it had something to do with my Dad throwing the old wash machine out in the back yard for me to take apart and beat to pieces.

It might have had something to do with being around a LOT of rotating machinery at a VERY young age. My Dad ran a veneer mill and that was where I spent my summers. I also rode in a Norfolk Southern engine at a young age.

Down the street was another veneer mill that was run by a huge steam engine.

Then there was Elmer Waters that collected parts and bits and pieces all over Eastern North Carolina and built a GORGEOUS 30 Model A with my help when I was 12.

I'm 55 now. I think of Mr. Waters from time to time.

Bill H

[R Walling]

The oldest recollection of a car that is emblazoned in my mind is an open touting car with luggage racks on the running boards. I was about 8 or 9 and my neighbor used to drive it to Florida every year in the fall and return in the spring in the late 40's.

I don't know the make but it was in the early 20's. I was amazed that you could drive an old car that far.

I fell in love with old cars with that one.

[PONTIAC1953]

1973, i was 17 years old, i went to look at a 1953 pontiac for sale, i had no idea what the car looked like, i walked down the side of the seller's house to the backyard, and there, parked under a big shade tree, parked so that the back of the car was closest to the back of the house, was this 1953 pontiac two door hardtop, two tone paint, driver's door had a spotlight, spinner hubcaps, and a continental kit. i thought, oh yeah, i really like this car, i paid $150.00 for the car, without even a test drive, back it out of the backyard, down the driveway, and up the hill to where i lived in santa monica,calif. the seller called me up two weeks later, saying come back and pick up the original hubcaps, that was when i found out the spinners were 1953 oldsmobile fiesta hubcaps. i still have this car today, i'll be 55 later this month. charles coker, 1953 pontiac tech advisor.

[JohnD1956]

Great stories. For me there is one defining event. I can't recall the exact year, nor my age but I think it has to be about 1959. Dad had a 55 Special white over green, at the time and bought my oldest sister a 53 Special 2 Dr Riviera white over red, as her first car. Both cars were ideling in the driveway side by side and I recall going from car to car comparing the sound of the exhaust and the engines. Then our next door neighbor shows up in a white 59 Invicta convertible with a red interior. I was hooked!

[John_Maine]

I don't remember a time when I didn't like cars. My mother has told me that from the first toy car I had, I wouldn't go anywhere without my cars. I remember taking them to bed with me. By the time I was 5 (in 1955), I could name any car from the late 40's to 1955. My first matchbox was a green Ford Zephyr and my first promo/friction was a yellow '54 Ford Sunliner. I loved to cut cars out of magazine advertisements; my mother subscribed to the Post so I could cut out the pictures. I just wish when I was younger that I had somehow gotten into the car business in some form.

[keiser31]

I don't remember a time when I didn't like cars. My mother has told me that from the first toy car I had, I wouldn't go anywhere without my cars. I remember taking them to bed with me. By the time I was 5 (in 1955), I could name any car from the late 40's to 1955. My first matchbox was a green Ford Zephyr and my first promo/friction was a yellow '54 Ford Sunliner. I loved to cut cars out of magazine advertisements; my mother subscribed to the Post so I could cut out the pictures. I just wish when I was younger that I had somehow gotten into the car business in some form.

Speaking of moms and impressions, my mother still tells people that when I was 4 years old I was pointing cars out and saying stuff like, "That's a Ford...that's a Chevy...that's a Dodge". The cars themselves did not impress me then. It was my mom who was impressed. Uh oh....I think I just figured out how I got the bug in the first place...and why I still have it.

[Guest billybird]

I too have loved old cars ever since I can remember. I do remember one instance circa 1967. I was a young child and this fellow who lived up the road from us was always riding by in this old car. My mother told me his name one day when I asked because she worked with the mans wife. My mother arranged for him to suprise me one day with a ride in that old car. It was a 1925 Dodge coupe, black, original. I remember there were flower vases on each side in the interior. Also, it had solid wheels. He lived to be a very old man and I kept track of the car untill his death. Then I don't know what happened to it.

[Dave Henderson]

My first star-struck sighting of a '37 Cord before WW11, and later, one of an early XK120 roadster, resulted in my acquiring these marques many years afterward. On the negative side, a most depressing sight was that of a magnificent Isotta Fraschini beside a WW11 scrap metal donation bin in Arlington Virginia. It was a Tipo 8A, destined to be returned to Italy and other war torn places in the form of weaponry, bullets, and shells.

[trimacar]

My disease...uh...passion for old cars started in the early 60's, when I chanced upon an issue of Hot Rod magazine...with a red touring car on the front....and I was hooked on old cars...ironic that my purist attitude (i.e. keep them original) started with a rodding magazine....I was 13 and talked my parents into looking for an early car...looked at a ton of Model A's (you could buy a decent car for 300-500 dollars at that time)....finally, a guy that worked with my father said, hey, I'll trade you my 31 Chevrolet for a nice .22 rifle...my father bought a new rifle (30 bucks or so) and we made the trade...still have the car 47 years later....

[stock_steve]

We were already into old VWs (mostly Beetles, that is) for a number of years at that point, but attending an old-VW meet in Orangeburg, NY back in the late 1980s or so, a friend of ours who was showing his incredible wartime VW Kubelwagen (similar the one shown in the image below) offered to give us a ride around the block in it. Wow, what an experience. We never forgot it, and often think back to that day, and talk about it.

Earlier than that, my dad drove VW Beetles back in the late '50s and early '60s (he successively owned '57 & '61 Sedans, and a '63 Convertible), and as a little kid, I wonder if perhaps a subsconscious seed may have been planted...

Edited January 15, 2011 by stock_steve
(fix spelling mistake) (see edit history)

[Dandy Dave]

It was all Floyd Clymers Fault. Two Books I could not put down easily at even 5 or 6 years old was "Those Wonderful Old Automobiles, and "Early American Automobiles"

I always liked the look of the early brass era open roadsters. Dandy Dave!

[Restorer32]

I broke both knees in an auto accident in 1967 and was confined to bed with both legs in full casts. Always an avid reader I soon read everything in the house. Neighbor man, out of pity, gave me a small stack of Hemmings Motor News when it was about 50 pages. Dad had somehow ended up with a '24 Cadillac in a business deal and I convinced him to attend Hershey in '68. We joined AACA and one of our first issues had a Packard 745 Roadster on the cover. It was love at first sight. When healed I returned to college and grad school but kept thinking about those "old cars". When I realized that my desire to become a professor of Anthropology, Archaeology and South Asian Studies likely was not going to happen I returned to my hometown and took a random job to support wife and I. After a year or two I rented a barn. My intent was to work on my meagre collection of antique cars and do a little sandblasting out back to help pay the rent. Our business grew from there. Still haven't completed restoration of any of our own cars but we are beginning our 32nd year in business and have been allowed to "play" with cars I could never have hoped to own.

[Dandy Dave]

"All unrestored, shoemaker's kids, you know?"

Your Dad Got that 24 Caddy for fixin a pair of Shoes??? :eek: ...... ... Dandy Dave!

[Restorer32]

Actually he took it for a bad debt. Remember, in 1967 or so a '24 Cadillac with a frozen motor was only worth a couple hundred bucks at most. Antiques were almost free for the taking. Was more a question of where to store them than price. At Hershey in 1970 we paid $1450 for a complete and driveable '48 Lincoln Continental Convertible in the flea market but I digress from the intended topic of this thread.

[Restorer32]

Wait, I'm wrong. Dad was in the tire business and sold scrap tires to a local pig farmer to fuel his boiler in which he cooked garbage to feed the pigs. The Caddy was payment for a large pile of worn out tires.

[rick60]

It was about 1961. My sister and I were walking home from a small neighborhood grocery store on a warm summer evening. My older cousins were out cruising with their friends. They saw us and stopped to give us a ride home. It was a 1953 Chevy convertible. I stood up in the passenger side rear alternately peeking over the side and looking up at the sky. It was blue with blue and white interior. There was rust around the rear wheel opening. The inside was dirty, as was the outside. There were no dents on the Chevy. The front tire was a black wall. The rear was a wide white. It was just an old beater back then. Now it would be considered a "survivor". It was my first ride in a convertible! I vowed that some day I would own a convertible. Since I was eighteen I've owned a convertible as a driver or a collector car. i'll never forget that first ride with the top down!

[rocketraider]

Like Keiser, I could identify cars very young. Now that I'm in my 50s, I can barely tell one modern jellybean from another!

You may have heard me say we were an Oldsmobile family, and there were a bunch of 50s Oldsmobiles around when I was a little kid. The Oldsworld and Rocket imagery on their hoods and trunks made a great impression on a kid growing up in the nascent Space Age.

One uncle had a Buick Roadmaster and the "Buick Eight" blazoned across its grille also made an impression. I had no idea what it meant, but thought it immensely cool.

I count myself lucky to have grown up when car brands had individual style and identities. There were some cars I thought were uncool back then, but as I've grown older, I can't think of many old cars I don't like or wouldn't mind owning- even though I know a lot of them are now waaaaay above my station in life. Thankfully many are still affordable for an everyday hobbyist who isn't obsessed with the investment angle of their collector car.

And I honestly feel sorry for the new generation of kids who are stuck with uninspired cars who may perform well but have the styling and personality of a turd. If all I'd had to aspire to was a washing machine on wheels...

Edited January 15, 2011 by rocketraider (see edit history)

[auburnseeker]

Like most on this forum I can't recall not being hooked on cars but a defining moment might have been when this photo was taken. 1980's Rosie Ogrady's Church street station in Florida. Mom must have been impressed as well as she got a better shot of the lamp post than me! I'm not sure if it was an original or replica. Still very impressive. Especially to someone my age. I'm still saving my pennies but I haven't quite got enough yet:D

[keiser31]

Like most on this forum I can't recall not being hooked on cars but a defining moment might have been when this photo was taken. 1980's Rosie Ogrady's Church street station in Florida. Mom must have been impressed as well as she got a better shot of the lamp post than me! I'm not sure if it was an original or replica. Still very impressive. Especially to someone my age. I'm still saving my pennies but I haven't quite got enough yet:D

Maybe you should call yourself "duesenbergseeker"?

[Marty Roth]

During WWII I was naming all the "driver-cars" on the streets of New York City, including the 1937 Roadmaster 80C Phaeton (Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's Parade Car) which I now own.

After the war, when Dad returned from the SeaBees 6th Special Battallion in the South Pacific, we moved to Linden, NJ where I hung on the back fence of GM's Buick-Olds-Pontiac Assembly Plant to see the new cars. Dad was on the Linden Fire Dept and when he took FireChief Miller in on inspections, sometimes I got to come along.

One day Dad's cousin from New York visited in a brand new 1947 or '48 Buick - a yellow Roadmaster convertible with red leather interior - at age 5 or 6 it was love at first sight!!!

In the mid-late 1950s I was pedaling my Rollfast springer home from my trumpet lesson over in Roselle Park when I met Herb Singe who was driving his Palmer-Singer -- it was (and still is) absolutely magnificent - I knew that someday I would have an old car, but for the time being, a 1949 Pontiac red convertible was more on my radar, followed in quick succession by a black '54 Mercury conv., yellow '54 Ford conv., Crocus and Onyx (yellow and black) '56 Bel-air conv., white '58 Impala conv, red '58 TR-3, brg '48 MG-TC, red '59 Alfa-Romeo Giuletta Spider Veloce, and about 17 differing models of Citroen of every description from the lowly Deaux Chevaux (2CV) to the Maseratti-engined SM and the Station Wagon, all three of which were traded to TRIMACAR for a '27 chevy Roadster and a '17 Franklin 9-A Touring over 30 years ago.

In the interim, a chance meeting with Bruce Woodson in Richmond, VA in the early 1970s resulted in rekindling my excitement in older cars when we shared a passion for the Citroen models as well as instrumental music. Bruce got me involved with a local dance band, as well as the concert band and the AACA. He also introduced me to his collection of Auburn and Cord models, and taught me to drive his Model-T. He and Virginia were especially generous and kind to Dale, myself, and our 2 babies - I still think of them often. It was probably Bruce who is most responsible for my return to the depths of old-car insanity, and I will forever appreciate that.

Last month our 14 year-old grandson drove the LaGuardia Roadmaster Phaeton - the future of the hobby is likely in good stead.

Edited January 16, 2011 by Marty Roth (see edit history)

[Scotts_DG8]

I think I was 7 or 8 year old when the cars made their first impression on me. I was skipping along on a tricycle on the sidewalk at a pretty good clip that belonged to a younger sister staring at the ground when all of a sudden I hit the neighbors Cadillac the was parked across the sidewalk head first. Knocked me out for a minute or two. And cars still continued to be at the forefront as I grew as once again a year or two later I was cruising home on my bike from a friend’s house way back in our subdivision, again at a pretty good clip. This time though to make it interesting I decided to have some fun and decided that I could get home by following the centerline joint in the pavement with my elbows on the grips and my hands next to the gooseneck and my forehead resting on my hands steering my way home following the cracks in the pavement. This time I didn’t catch the crack that ran off center and I ran directly into the back of a Pontiac and flew up on the roof. I know I was out again for a moment or two and the lady came out and got me down and called my mother who came and picked me and the bike up. Both of those incidents really were the first old cars to leave an impression on my mind. Don’t ask me who paid for the damages for either car, I don’t recall how that worked out.

Those bit of fun true facts aside, I guess though my real interest in old cars first began after watching the movie “The Great Race”. It also helped though to grow up in a Chrysler family, from Fleet Managers to Engineers my interest in cars and all things mechanical sprouted at an early age. It didn’t fully take off until I had met Keiser when I was in my early teens though that my true old car interest grew. Some of my best times were to help put his ’31 Dodge together and later when we would cruise way out in the back roads of Michigan in his ’31 Dodge looking for old cars on Farms and such. Scott…

[auburnseeker]

"Maybe you should call yourself "duesenbergseeker"? "

I tried to set my sights more realistic with my budget. Still great styling and engineering but a notch lower on the scale and the price tag. Anyone have an Auburn for sale? Still looking:D???

[addicted to cars]

I remember when I was 16 years old, my dad has a 50 Olds 88 coupe, He let me and a friend take it for a spin around town, it was pretty fast! it was one of my favorite driving memories, I also remember vividly when I was very young probably 6 or 7, a guy in our neighborhood driving around a 37 Chev coupe hot rod, it was metallic dark brown, mag wheels and black diamond tuck Naugahyde covered running boards, I wish I knew if it still exists.

Darren

[ksparks]

Hello, Comparable for me also when my dad took me to Hershey in the late 60s. Plus the weekends chasing car leads that my dad would learn about, going through barns, dad´s friendship with atk miller started a love for all stutz and hcs, finding first antique car project 1922 auburn beauty six in 1970 next to barn on new hampshire border, picking up 1941 packard henny ambulance for 5 dollars, 34 packard coupe with blown engine, 29 packard roadster body with golf door, 1910 odd make wooden touring body, 1924 studebaker special six in barn and purchased, brass era parts, flea markets, 1919 indian complete,t models, stutz parts, frames, parts, auburn, pierce parts etc etc parts, perfect rickenbacker tail light, going to an old junk yard a week late after crushing to feel sad and see what great twenty, thirty era cars were crushed etc. purchase of barn full of teen and 20 era harley parts, found the same 1922 auburn after 28 year search, the old timers of the 60s and 70s who knew the independent makes etc. a great hobby and the experience of a life time.

Keith

keith123451@live.com

1922 auburn

1923 moon

1926 auburn

1928 to 1931 auburn parts, frames, engines etc

ETC................

I broke both knees in an auto accident in 1967 and was confined to bed with both legs in full casts. Always an avid reader I soon read everything in the house. Neighbor man, out of pity, gave me a small stack of Hemmings Motor News when it was about 50 pages. Dad had somehow ended up with a '24 Cadillac in a business deal and I convinced him to attend Hershey in '68. We joined AACA and one of our first issues had a Packard 745 Roadster on the cover. It was love at first sight. When healed I returned to college and grad school but kept thinking about those "old cars". When I realized that my desire to become a professor of Anthropology, Archaeology and South Asian Studies likely was not going to happen I returned to my hometown and took a random job to support wife and I. After a year or two I rented a barn. My intent was to work on my meagre collection of antique cars and do a little sandblasting out back to help pay the rent. Our business grew from there. Still haven't completed restoration of any of our own cars but we are beginning our 32nd year in business and have been allowed to "play" with cars I could never have hoped to own.

[Dandy Dave]

Wait, I'm wrong. Dad was in the tire business and sold scrap tires to a local pig farmer to fuel his boiler in which he cooked garbage to feed the pigs. The Caddy was payment for a large pile of worn out tires.

Sounds like a deal I would make. Gettin rid of my unwanted trash for something good. The deal of a life time. :cool: Dandy Dave!

[Guest quadfins]

My Old-Car experiences are like a kaleidoscope - each individual occurrence interacting with the others to create an ever-changing but attractive picture. And like a kaleidoscope, there are too many individual events to really describe. But I'll mention four that stand out the most…

<O:p</O:p

I grew up in <ST1:pSouthern California</ST1:p, but my Mom was from Arizona</ST1:p. Every Christmas and summer, we would go to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:pTucson</ST1:p</st1:City> to visit my grandparents. At that time period - late '60s/early '70s - there was an exterminating company named Truly Nolen. Their advertising gimmick was to have obsolete cars, painted in their colors, and with a giant termite mounted on each roof, parked at seemingly every street corner in <st1:City><ST1:pTucson</ST1:p</st1:City>. They must have scoured the junkyards, because I remember a huge variety of cars, from wooden-wheeled jalopies to cigar shaped <st1:City><ST1:pHudsons</ST1:p</st1:City>. Sometimes we would stop and I would peer inside and inspect the cars. Although I really did not learn anything specific, it did raise my awareness of old cars, and sparked my interest. I always enjoyed being on the alert for Truly Nolen cars.

<O:p</O:p

Next, back home in <st1:City><ST1:pHollywood </ST1:p</st1:City>(this was about 1967), we had two neighbors whose cars became of particular interest to me. Mrs. Alber, next door, was the typical dowager who drove only to church on Sunday, or the occasional expedition to the grocery store. Sometimes I was invited to accompany her. As she would raise the garage door, revealed to me was her absolutely pristine 1950 <st1:City><ST1:pPlymouth</ST1:p</st1:City> sedan. If I remember right, it only had about 12,000 miles on it. The thing that always caught my interest was the mysterious third pedal on the floor, and how she used her left leg while driving (I had never seen a manual transmission clutch pedal - of course, I was only 6 years old). I also remember the cloth upholstery, which seemed so old-fashioned compared to our cars with "modern" vinyl upholstery.

<O:p</O:p

The other neighbor, Don Graham, lived across the street. He and his wife had no children, so I was "adopted" as their surrogate. He was a courier for a delivery firm, and drove extensively throughout the <st1:City><ST1:pL.A.</ST1:p</st1:City> area. He was also building a stone wall in his back yard. The result was that he had a car that was designed to cruise, and on weekends he liked to drive it to <st1:City><ST1:pPalm Springs</ST1:p</st1:City>, where he would load the trunk with rounded river rocks to add to his wall. I would often be invited to "help", such as a 6-year-old can do, but I suppose it was mostly for the company. I remember he would open his garage and start up his car. It was a deep maroon, with white upholstery. I was in awe of the smooth rumble it made - a deep reverberation that evoked raw power. No other car in our neighborhood sounded like it. That car would really fly, and it seemed as if we made the trip from <st1:City><ST1:pHollywood</ST1:p</st1:City> to <st1:City><ST1:pPalm Springs</ST1:p</st1:City> in about an hour, although I know it could not have been that fast. At the time I did not know it, but my dad later explained to me that it was a '64 or '65 (I forget, now) Falcon 2 door, with a V-8 and supercharger. I wish that I was more attuned to cars at the time, in order to have paid more attention and ask better questions.

<O:p</O:p

Finally, for the purpose of this story, I will mention one more (although there are MANY others). In 1965, my dad bought a new Mustang. For Christmas, 1965, I was installed in my own matching Mustang pedal car. I still have the photos of both the cars. Dad kept the "Red Bomb" for 4 years. Within a few months of trading it in, he developed seller's remorse, and regretted letting it go, especially when he would see it driving around the neighborhood. He often mentioned what a mistake it had been to let it go.

<O:p</O:p

When it came time for me to get a car, he steered me into a '66 Mustang (I wanted the '61 Chevy…) However, having "settled" for the Turquoise '66 Mustang fastback, I learned from his mistake, and have had that car since my senior year in high school in 1979 until the present. Today, in fact, I took my daughter for a spin in it, resulting in the usual One-Man Car Show at every stoplight and parking lot. She plans to drive it during her senior year. I hope the car and I both make it…

<O:p</O:p

Thanks for reading my tale.

Jim

[nzcarnerd]

From rocketraider;- "Like Keiser, I could identify cars very young. Now that I'm in my 50s, I can barely tell one modern jellybean from another!"

Exactly the same for me. I have been told I could identify cars from an early age. My earliest 'old car' memory is of a 1916 Briscoe that a family friend restored about 1960. I rode in it several times as a child and still recall how the front fenders moved around as the chassis twisted over the bumps in the road. My grandparents owned a 1934 Buick, which by the time I was old enough to learn to drive, had become a second car. I probably first drove it around the farm at about 13 and when I had my licence I used it occasionally to get to school. In those days (1968) I could buy three imperial gallons of fuel for a dollar (it is near enough to NZ$2 a litre at present). The Buick is still sitting in the shed waiting for me to restore it. I remember one day when I was about 14, a teenaged neighbour had been given a beautifully original 1928 Rugby sedan (Durant to you in the US). He took a bunch of us for a wild ride around some of the local backroads. I don't know what happened to the car but I imagine it did not last very long.

[John_Maine]

One thing I forgot the other day when I posted - as much as I loved cars, when I was just 3-4 years old in 1953, my uncle had '37 Plymouth coupe. I hated that car. I can remember screaming my head off every time I had to ride in it.

[Shop Rat]

One thing I forgot the other day when I posted - as much as I loved cars, when I was just 3-4 years old in 1953, my uncle had '37 Plymouth coupe. I hated that car. I can remember screaming my head off every time I had to ride in it.

Why did you hate it so much? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Dave Mellor NJ]

I grew up in Deptford,NJ near Woodbury. In Woodbury there was a Repair Garage called "Tony's Service" owned by the Rizzuto family who also had a farm near me. Over the years they accumulated a whole field of cars that were unrepairable or unpaid for and towed there to rot These cars gave me and my friends uncountable days of fun climbing through and over,pretending to drive or race,finding coins under the back seat,etc. I don't remember specific cars but that is one place I would love to see again, even a picture

[Sweepspear]

First time I came face to face with a Duesenberg is something I will never forget.

It was at a CCCA Grand Classic held in Milwaukee. I think it was in '75? I was around 14 years old at the time.

Standing in front of it's massive glory sent a chill down my spine.

[Guest Skip Jordan]

First time I came face to face with a Duesenberg is something I will never forget.

It was at a CCCA Grand Classic held in Milwaukee. I think it was in '75? I was around 14 years old at the time.

Standing in front of it's massive glory sent a chill down my spine.

Ditto. I was about the same age when I saw the SJ Speedster at Glen Pray's ACD restoration shop. The most massive car I'd ever seen, and resplendent in black and burgundy with impossibly shiny chrome.

[Marty Roth]

I think it was September, 1969 when the GLIDDEN TOUR stopped for a night at the Fountainbleau Hotel in New Orleans -- Fantastic !!! was the only thing I could say -

This was a progressive tour, starting in Florida, I believe, and going west along the Gulf Coast. I met several people who would later influence my life, as well as my participation in our hobby.

Edited January 18, 2011 by Marty Roth (see edit history)