The term Curbivore was coined by CC old timer Bryce in this post just over five years ago. It aptly defines people like you and me, feeding our endless automotive hunger and community through CC. But what first turned you into a Curbivore, rather than a more general petrolhead, gearhead or motorsports fan?
In my case, I trace it to a book I got as a birthday present in January 1975. The Olyslager Auto Library series was unknown to me until I went to a favourite book shop with my grandfather, to choose a birthday present. A budget was set, and I choose above it, inevitably. A negotiation followed and I closed the gap with pocket money, and a few days Olyslager’s American Cars of the 1950s would be mine.
Looking at it now, 40 plus years later, it is unarguably a very simple concept. A year by year summary of the cars of the America, illustrated exclusively in black and white with publicity photos or promotional artwork, and some period advertising copies. The pictures had, effectively, what can be best described as long captions, summarising the key features of the cars and the changes over the previous year or previous model. There was also a short piece (perhaps 100 words), as an annual summary of the industry.
It introduced me, in 1970s West Yorkshire (coal strikes, power cuts, economic gloom, Allegros and Avengers, and school homework) to a presentation of 1950s America, to Thunderbirds, Corvettes, Chrysler 300 and be-finned Cadillacs, to strange names like Desoto, Willys and Kaiser. Not to mention Edsel.
There are few things that say “optimism” more than a late 1950s American car with fins, chrome and a V8, and this book carried that over, as well showing that old cars could be more interesting, when seen with a perspective of hindsight and historical context, than the latest and greatest. There’ll be plenty of time to get to know them.
Back in the summer of 2000, there were two unfamiliar cars in our office car park on the same day – a new BMW 528 and a 1983 Austin Ambassador automatic. I was more intrigued by the Ambassador then, and would be now, and I blame this book.
I went to gather a collection of Olyslager Auto Library volumes, covering American cars from 1930 to 1969, British cars from 1930 to 1959 (2 volumes for each decade!), trucks, wreckers, the Jeep and fire engines, some 20 books altogether, and there’re still on the shelves behind me now.
But, what did it for you?
What made me a curbivore?
Dad’s 1973 Cutlass Supreme coupe. I was born in 1977, Dad always buys used and it is the first car of his that I can remember. It was this shade of blue but he got it re-painted silver. My earliest memory is toddling out (in diaper about 3 years of age) into the two car garage of my parents newly constructed house. Dad had just finished washing and hand waxing the Cutlass – it was likely the repaint was so fresh that this was its first waxing.
Stifling hot summer day, garage door open a crack. Cement floor wet. Car ethereally glowing like it was supernatural. That is burned into my brain.
Here’s an image from the web of what it would have looked like pre-repaint.
An elderly neighbor of ours had a used 73 Cutlass Coupe in a maroon color….I used to help him out by washing and waxing that car…..This had to be back around 1980 or 81…….He sold it and bought a used 1975 Cadillac Coupe Deville in a powder blue color with white half vinyl roof…..I washed the car once a week and waxed it monthly…..The interior got the amoral treatment.
The ‘amoral’ treatment? You mean you used to bring “ladies of the evening” to the back seat of your elderly neighbor’s Caddy to, uh, frolic? 😀
Or did you mean the Armor All treatment?
My first sight of a ’48-’49 Cadillac, A sedan no less! It was the late ’60s, at that point just an elderly used car. Fron that point on I was hooked on just about any car as long as it was older than me! I wonder if a ’95-’96 Caddy would inspire a love of old cars to a modern kid?
To a certain extent it was inborn. I can recall being able to ID the front of an Edsel or the rear of a 60 Mercury (never really common sights) before I had any idea what they were. Eventually, I met a best friend whose Dad was a car guy and who would patiently answer my questions about all things automotive.
But the final push was after meeting my new best friend Dan in 1972. His father had a black 47 Lincoln in the garage and, more importantly, a subscription to Special Interest Autos beginning with issue no. 1, which I was permitted to borrow. And here we are.
I feel the same way. I was calling out brand names almost as soon as I could talk and walk, according to my mom. My family having been in the car business certainly helped – I remember lying on my great aunt’s living room around 1970 looking through a ’61 Chrysler dealer album (I wish I knew what became of that one!)
Living on Carnegie Avenue in McKeesport certainly helped – it was CC heaven. My neighbors on either side had a ’67 LTD and a ’65 Electra 225 4dr hardtops; across the street, Mrs. Blank had an immaculate black ’56 Sixty Special, while another great aunt next door had a ’70 Electra 225 2dr ht, white w/black vinyl., with a pair of ’64 DeVilles around the corner. People in my neighborhood tended to buy good cars and keep them.
And it was the cc’s I was drawn to, then and now. The TR-3 across the alley and my uncle’s raspberry ’73 911 interested me, but not as much as the boat tail Riviera Joey Toth drove, or the Galusick’s mint ’63 Impala sedan.
And like you, books played a big part. I come from a reading family, and car books were always a big part of birthdays and Christmas. I asked for and got the Automobile Quarterly Cadillac book when it came out in ’73, and it’s still in my library. Plus George Zaffo’s great transportation books for kids, which had the added benefit of being about 10-15 years old when I began reading them.
Moving from Tompkins County to the West Coast and eventually Multnomah then Washington County a few years back.
Inborn best describes it with me as well, I don’t ever remember a time in my life I didn’t have cars on my mind, and like J P Cavanaugh I’d ID makes and models practically as a parlor trick. So the line between petrolhead and curbivore are somewhat blurry. I’d say growing up in the 90s, home video and access to old VHS movies heavily fueled that already burning fire, lots of looking at cars in the backgrounds – it’s funny when I see one of those movies now, and realize I took in absolutely zero of the story due to the distracting cars! – Plus late 70s cars were still relatively common daily sights and they just looked so removed from everything else, and in a way that instantly resonated with me. There was a time I’d read Road and Track (which my dad a subscription to) and look at all the then new cars, but at some point I got more excited about the free paper old car magazines at the exits of the local grocery stores.
Third thing I suppose, my parents both had cars a full generation behind, and genuine CCs, My mom had a stickshift 1985 Jetta from the time I was born until 1997, and my Dad had an beige stickshift Saab 900 sedan, replaced by a black Audi 100 in the same time. I was pretty aware of the newer generations at the time since dealer visits were common… And I just wasn’t particularly enamored with the NEW 90s successors of any of their cars. I thought the Audis, the A4 in particular, looked cheap, which appropriately enough most current Audi fans would say is when the brand hit their stride.
InbornX3.
Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and Micro Machines!
1967 Custom Fleetside in purple ‘Spectraflame’.
Good day! Growing up in Detroit, folks would have thought something was wrong with you if you did not have an interest in cars. “Fords are better than Chevy’s” was my mantra. My dad was a working man raising 9 kids on a single income. We rarely had new cars and my dad was often in the driveway or garage wrenching to keep it running. I wasn’t very close to dad but I would often go out when he was working on the car, ask questions, hand him tools, etc. I found myself as an adult, raising three kids on a single income, having to do the same things. This is when I really find-tuned my swearing ability.
Growing up around them, my affinity for 55 thru 65 American cars has been unwavering.
I first discovered “Curbside Classics on TTAC. When Paul disappeared from there I googled the term and found this site. Quite a few years ago, actually. I have been camping here ever since.
Other than having the basic truth of life, the universe and everything backward (Fords better then Chevies? NFW!), you grew up in the right place.
“Fords better than Chevys”? Yeah, right. Tell me another tale!
John Wayne said it first and best: “That’ll be the day”!
‘Nuff said.
Well, funnily enough, seeing as you asked…
🙂
And this one. Published in 1970, it was an immediate retrospective of the decade. Highly readable (Doug Nye, it would be), if scantly illustrated, it underlined how much had changed in that decade. I bought my copy second hand in about 1974, and despite several shelves of subsequent titles, still refer to it today.
It must have been my environment, or perhaps some genetic thing that had skipped some generations. My father never learned to drive; my mother had (supposedly) learned on a farm tractor, or perhaps a Dodge pickup, possibly both, at Black Mountain College in North Carolina where students had to work on the farm. Their first car was a Hillman Minx, somewhat unusual here in the US, bought before I was born. They sold it when I was barely 3, yet I have visual memories of it, and there are pictures of me holding a die-cast ’50’s Pontiac wagon when I look under two years old. In 1960, when I was just 3, we lived in England for about 6-9 months, where I was exposed to Matchbox cars, not to mention a curbside environment which must have been very different, even to a 3 year old, than the tail finned country I had left. The UK experience, with a Continental (Europe, not Lincoln) excursion added on, was repeated in 1964 when I was already quite auto-literate. But why a curbivore, rather than normal gear head? I think partly because of these trips, plus growing up in Berkeley California, where Borgwards and Isettas mingled with Fords and Chevies on the curbsides, exposed me to unusual but ultimately mundane cars, literally daily drivers. Even when my sister and bought our first cars, in the mid-70’s, hers was a Cortina, and mine a Volvo 122S, not the VW’s or Darts our friends bought. My mom only owned two makes of cars (and just 4 cars) over 60 years – the Hillman, and 3 Volvos. And living in mostly rust-free California, has kept me exposed to more of this type of car over the next 50+ years. Also, there was something in my upbringing that didn’t see cars as status symbols. So, when the whole collector/exotic car craze came along in the ’80’s or so, I was not interested. A Ferrari was interesting for its engineering, or for Enzo’s personality, not because it was expensive or “sexy”. And ultimately, a Cortina or Pacer could be just as interesting, in that respect, as a Ferrari. Despite living 40 minutes away from Monterey, I’ve rarely attended any of the “historic” events associated with the Pebble Beach Concours and Laguna Seca races, because the auctions and dollars seem to get all the publicity. Last year, though I did attend the Concours de Lemons (think Pinto, Gremlin, Isuzu, and yes, Hillman Minx) and enjoyed it immensely. On the other hand, I’ve become pretty lazy about major and/or messy mechanical work, so my curbside obsession is really vicarious; the oldest vehicle in my stable is a 1999 motorcycle and my personal daily driver is a 2016 Toyota, so I’m perhaps more a curbophile than curbivore. Or, with an Anglophilic nod to that seminal Hillman, a “kerbivore”.
I’d say my dad is partially to blame for my interest in cars, mainly because he owned older ones and always (and still) talked about upgrading at some point, which rarely happened.
It wasn’t until after I got my first car that I truly wanted to know about the automotive history of individual model lines and the companies that developed them.
Ditto to inborn. Identifying cars before I could walk. Growing up in Manhattan, with engineering students and Ft Riley officers bringing obscure cars from Europe, helped. I was reading those ‘Catalogues of World Cars’ and seeing a lot of them in the metal.
Incidentally, a beautifully restored ’39 Champion sedan appeared in the neighborhood a few days ago. That’s a car I’d never seen in person before, even in the ’50s!
For me it started with my love of old VW vans. I always seemed to pick up heaps that the previous owner had neglected for 20 plus years. I would fix them up as time and money would allow to keep them in daily driver condition (mostly). No trailer queens for me and eventually rinse and repeat. Later when the rose coloured glasses wore off I switched to older Japanese vehicles. My limited budget and skills fixing old VW’s have kept my vehicle choices in the last millennium so far.
I really like this site for featuring cars I own or have owned. I also like that the comments are usually respectful an informative, unlike some other sites that quickly devolve into pissing matches.
Keep up the good work and wierd car profiles!
I probably got into cars at a VERY young age through a combination of factors: inborn, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, and computer/video/arcade games. (Anyone else remember Cruis’n USA?)
But what got me into Curbivory? A combination of the above plus a penchant for useless* trivia.
* “Useless” to the Average Joe, not to CC!
I just like cars collecting model cars Matchbox Majorette etc when younger than 1/24 scale cars as well what got me into taking pictures of curbside cars I am not really sure just having a camera and a love of cars and seeing neat old cars even old car racing games too were something I enjoyed Nascar Racing Nascar Racing 2 Nascar Legends even the truck series game they also made some cool indycar games too
Growing up in the Chevrolet dealership, dealing with a lot of these cars when they were new, or at least fairly new trade-ins. Going back to my first memory at three (riding in a ’53 Corvette), cars have been as much a part of my life as breathing. And later, sex.
Like many others, I don’t remember not being interested in cars.
I think the two specific influences growing up, would be the “Consumers Guide” books, which I think were similar to the Olyslager series, and the many, many 50s-60s cars available as plastic kits from AMT & others.
I blame my father and the neighbour hood, Dad was company secretary of a Chevrolet, Vauxhall, Bedford, Mercury Marine, Massey Ferguson and Morrison mower & Cycle dealership, across the styreet lived the Hillman/Commer dealer over the back fence the Simca dealer resided, walking to school with Dad when he went to work took us past several garages and panel shops and as in inquisitive child I asked about every car I saw and got answers Saturday were often spent with my Dad at his work where I got a fairly free reign to explore the parts shelves workshops and showrooms it was great,
The neighbour across the street had a brand new Hillman Minx 3B in about 61 I always liked the shape as a child and still drive one as a pet car
This one, here its shown feeding juice into my Xsara, left the GPS on and didnt drive it for four days using the Minx instead
Really through models, primarily model railways. Cars, buses and lorries all help set the scene, so I started to learn more about them. I bought three of the Olyslager books about 35 years ago (British Cars ’55-59, ’60-64, ’65-69) along with a lot of small P.Olyslager ‘Sunday Times’ motor manuals on various cars (some were really comprehensive right down to the colours for the different years) and started improving the limited number of 1:76 scale cars then available, converting some to other types and even building some of my own.
It’s quite useful for helping date unknown photos too.
It’s very hard to pinpoint any specific moment.
First, I could name everything on the road at about the time I could talk.
Second, I was given a book, “Collector’s History of the Automobile” by Bonanza Publishing for Christmas in 1981. I was nine. It focused on cars the world over, with a heavier than usual focus on French cars. I spent hours with that book and now have a hankering to look at it again since I just located it on the shelf to verify its information.
Third, it’s been genetic. My paternal grandfather, who died in 1966, is likely the source of this. He bought, sold, and scrapped cars for years, having owned a vast array of them over time. Stumbling upon his old Motor repair manuals was simply fuel on the fire.
Fourth, I simply enjoy driving and savoring the differences among cars. The entire experience is simply divine and I even enjoy the different sounds of starter motors.
Fifth, I stumbled upon CC in November 2011 when preparing my house for sale. While I no longer remember what car it was, I googled one and up popped a full-blown article about it. Looking further, I realized the steady stream of content onto the site and was hooked. When Paul put out feelers for contributors in February 2012, I thought “what the hey” and submitted something. Nearly 400 articles later, I’m still here.
Sixth, as I enjoy history of all types, automobiles fall into this quite well. They are such a reflection of their time and what was important at the time it was made.
There are likely more reasons, but these are the biggies.
Roger, if you ever get the chance, obtain a book by Crestline. They are quite similar to your book and cover specific makes and/or years quite well. I have one for Ford from 1952 to 1970 – some range close to that. Wonderful books that will compliment yours in a terrific way.
+ 100. My first Crestline book was 70 Years of Chrysler, and they are a wealth of knowledge. Not to mention print production – I work in advertising, and I remain amazed at what it took to layout all those pages in a pre-digital area. Here’s my current collection. Still missing Studebaker!
That is a great collection – you have me drooling on my keyboard!
+1 plus the hint of a substantial AQ selection as well
Mostly just my love of cars made me a curbivore. I actually right now have a Buick somerset regal that I just got at an auction. I used to have a lot of Oldsmobile’s and my dad had multiple cars when I was growing up I forget most of what he had because he sold them. Cars have always been a thing to me and I grew up in a big car family so yeah just that.
I grew up in America during the muscle care era in the ’60s. My oldest brother bought a ’63 Impala SS with a 4 speed and a 327. When he had nothing better to do he took me and my other brother out for some very memorable rides. The rest is history.
I -think- for me it must have started in 1962 when our next-door neighbors came home in a Chryler Imperial. It was like nothing I had ever imagined – big as a ship with those freestanding gunsight tail lights and and stand-alone headlights in their chrome bowls. Wow. If not that car, then their next one definitely sealed my fate -they traded the Imperial for a Citroen DS, which promptly blew my mind: one spoke steering wheel, rubber ball brake pedal, and then our neighbor made it do it the kneeling trick. My dad, sadly, didn’t have the money for that kind of car so he bought a SAAB 96 two-stroke; he and my mom owned matching SAABs for most of the 60’s. So I got an early exposure to the amazing possibilities of car design at a pretty young age and I have just never outgrown it.
Inborn. None of my family had much interest in the subject. Like Jason, I stumbled upon CC (time and time again) when goggling obscure cars.
I had the 1960s Olyslager book which was much treasured and was purloined from my collection about 15 years ago.
I was born that way. I pressed my nose on driver’s side windows to see the top speed on the speedometer of any car since I was tall enough to do that.
I found this particular site when I looked for pictures of a Renault 4 TL, my dad’s first car.
For me, my automotive obsession was as much taught as it was a natural evolution of my nature. My father was a mechanic when I was a child, and many of the hobbies people around me enjoyed were of a mechanical nature. Some raced dirtbikes, others tuned ATVs for drag races, some built rock climbing machines, and in the case of my across the street neighbour, he maintained a 1932 Ford Model A sedan all hocked up in the 1950s hot rod guise. Between all of these things, my family feeding my increasingly problematic addiction to collecting model cars, and the plethora of racing videogames, it became something that formed a large part of me.
What made me a curbivore specifically was the sort of personal touch quite a few of the vehicle histories on this site have. You’ve taught me that everything can be a classic, as each car has its own merits worth looking it and praising. As someone who used to only like the mid-to-late 1960s ideal, you guys have opened my eyes to all sorts of things. Even brought me into the Great Brougham Cult and got me to love cars like the ’74 Plymouth Fury and ’72 Buick Electra 225.
I was born this way.
It helped that my father was a car enthusiast, and nurtured my interest in cars. Like others have said above, I could ID virtually any car on the road by the time I was 5. In elementary school, I consistently got in trouble by wandering off the playground and walking though the teachers’ parking lot instead.
My interest continued into adulthood, in increasing levels of detail. I loved studying model-year changes, options lists, etc. No topic was minute enough for me not to care about.
Eventually, my interest waned. New cars became similar and uninspiring to me, and the demands of family and work took precedence anyway. But then I found Curbside Classic, and this site almost instantly rekindled my enthusiasm, because it combines history (another one of my favorite pastimes) with an appreciation for cars. That’s when I became a full-fledged Curbivore.
I was mildly interested in cars when mom and dad bought the 1955 Dodge. 2 door hardtop, white roof, black middle and pinkish/rose lower. It was a sharp car, but ultimately a piece of junk, and dad put me behind the wheel a few times on a shopping center parking lot on Sundays “so I’d know what to do if something happened to him while driving”. Yeah, sure…
Now when I came home from school one day in May, 1965 and saw this magnificent 1960 white 4 door hardtop Chevy Impala, well, that did it! At 14 years of age, I became an instant car nut for life – and still driving Impalas to this day!
Thanks, Dad!
The american TV series, movies and magazines like Popular Mechanics, Car & Driver, Motor Trend etc. And of course the car of my Dad; a ´61 Dodge Dart. Due to that, today I´m an Industrial designer and a car model collector.
Nothing! I always loved cars since I was a little tyke. I don`t remember, but my mother told me that when I was about 3 or 4 years old, I would go for walks with my father, and when he pointed to a car, I knew what it was .My two younger brothers were the same. Although we pretty much didn`t have too much in common, we all loved cars, and our dinner conversations always centered around them. This is a life long interest. Either you love them, or you couldn`t care less. Fortunately,most all my friends were car nuts too. There was always something to talk about when we hung out.
Like many here, this is a childhood thing.
As a 3-y-old, I would always turn the toy cars on their roof and ask anybody what make it was. Apparently, I also tried to do this with real cars on the street — trying to look underneath to see if anything was written there, much to the amusement of my family.
I remember being impressed by any Alpine A310 and Citroen SM I would see (six headlights!) as a 5-y-old.
For some reason, we had one motoring book at home, an annual from 1957. It had everything: American, British, French, German and Eastern bloc cars, Italian coachbuilders, the F1 season results, etc., and I read and re-read that book for years. I knew what an Imperial, a Chaika or a Borgward were before I started getting visits from the tooth fairy.
But the 1st true ‘curbside classic’ I ogled extensively was a black Peugeot 203. I was 7, we lived in a town in Burgundy. That 203 had me floored. The interior. The column shifter, The little roaring lion on the front. The suicide doors. The massive, round fastback shape. It was there often, and I was always pulled towards it.
Then, out of the blue, we moved to the US for a few years. Eight-year-old mind blown by the size and new varieties of cars. By then, it was terminal.
While I built a *lot* of models growing up (we counted over 300 between my brothers and I at one point), it probably wasn’t until 10th or 11th grade in High School that I really started trying to learn about cars (mainly since that’s what the other guys carried on about). But I think it was cemented when Dad gave me his old ’71 Vega at the start of my Senior year, and I spent Christmas break swapping engines with the sleeved/rebuilt 2300 out of our ’73 Kammback (which had been sidelined in an accident). Getting my hands greasy on my *own* car, in other words.
I had an interest from day 1. I had an uncle who had a 24 Model T Ford. He worked in residential construction and his work truck was a 51 Ford F6. This was back in the 70’s. One of our favorite places to hang out was “the car dump”. It was an old farmers field growing up with saplings, that contained every car that this old farmer ever owned. We snuck in through the woods and the first car that you saw was a 32 Buick. Classic! The trouble was that it was parked in a barn and the barn caved in on top of it crushing it. Going past the barn were two Lasalles. One was a chassis with a body, no engine. The other a chassis with a V8 engine, no body. Both had wood spoked wheels. Likely late 20s to early 30s. There was a post ww2 Cadillac, 49-50ish Olds, a 58 Buick Limited convertible, one of only 800 someodd ever built! These are just the ones that I remember. They were all cleared out around 1980. The farm house and barns torn down. There are 4 yuppie Mcmansions there now. We snuck I through the woods to another old junk yard back then. It was full of 50s and 60s stock. It gave the illusion that this was just a pile of old iron. As a kid we would clip emblems from “junk”cars. I still have all of those emblems, and remember where I got them. Some of the emblems that I got from this yard around 76 or 77 were off of fenders that were tossed aside here and there among the old wrecks that had been there for years. They were off of Cadillac Seville, Lincoln Continental, Chrysler Cordoba and such. Looking back I think this” abandoned” junk yard was a front for a chop shop. Had we been found there I don’t think it would have bode well for our future.
my dad.
he was born in 1916. by the time I came along in 1963 he had run several garages and as I got older I got a first hand account of the ‘golden age’ of automobiles, rather than reading about it.
let’s face it. with that kind of background…did I really have a choice in the matter?:)
As others have said, it is hard to pinpoint something specific. But, in 1981, after buying and reading cover-to-cover the 736 pages of 8 point type “The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-1975”, I was aware I had a problem.
Proudly, I’ve never sought appropriate treatment.
That’s bad, alright. I have that very book and it’s an eye-strainer. Bought it for $1 a few years at a library clearance sale.
I was born in 1949, and the suspense and excitement surrounding those eagerly awaited September announcements of restyled, ever larger, more powerful, gadget-filled, and always unquestionably ‘newer’ new cars, was a significant part of my childhood and adolescent experience in the 1950’s and 60’s.
If ever there was a decade that could make one an addict to the mixture of fantasy and freedom that cars (particularly American cars) represented, I think it would have to be 1955-65. This was still a time when uncrowded 2-lane highways made exploratory driving more of an adventure, and the places you passed through seemed a little more different. It was also the time of rapid expansion of freeway and interstate highway systems, creating the new and exciting experience of cruising for hundreds of miles at 70 mph, punctuated by stops at futuristic gas stations, sparkling new Howard Johnson’s restaurants, and space age motels (with swimming pools!!). To a kid it seemed almost akin to interstellar travel, and watching the fleets of finned and chromed, two-toned spaceships flashing by (we had a decidedly unflashy Nash ‘Canadian Statesman’ in the 1950’s) made it all the more mesmerizing.
It’s still that sense of fantasy combined with an illusion of freedom that underlies my enthusiasm – no, obsession – with cars. The fantasy aspect of course is harder to conjure up, given the iron discipline of new car design. And experiencing a sense of freedom is somewhat laughable in day-to-day terms, given highway congestion, the increased sameness of all roads and all places, and the background dread of climate change issues.
Some of that hunger for adventure, fantasy and freedom has, for me, been satisfied by bicycle touring for the past few decades. Travelling under your own power on smaller more scenic roads, especially in foreign countries, comes closest to the sense of travel adventure I felt as a kid in the back seat of the Nash.
But the idea of a multi-province/state exploration by car, on two-lane highways where possible, still exerts a pull on my imagination.
You’re so right about 1955-65! I’m a few years older than you, and I remember so well being able to name every car on the road. It wasn’t that I was some kind of prodigy; it was the distinctive styling of each make. This was when you could spot Nashes, Studies, Hudsons–and of course Ramblers–every day. To this day, I can sing some of the advertising jingles that accompanied the new-car intros each autumn. They were the stuff of dreams–our family cars were used-GM, strictly utilitarian; Dad did all his own maintenance, and he NEVER bought new. Nevertheless, one memorable year we did go to a GM Motorama. What an extravaganza! Shiny new chrome-laden luxomobiles, beautiful models in evening gowns–wow. Many years later, post-college, we had a best friend–now, sadly, deceased–who had been buying and selling cars since his teenage years. He became a classic-car restorer/dealer, and could ID anything based on a hubcap or a taillight. Partly in his memory, I pay attention to this day, though I’ll never be the walking encyclopedia he was. Every time I see a big-fin Mopar or a bullet-nose Studie, I think of him.,
@rowbat:
Your story really strikes all the right notes for me. I was born in ’46 and the way you captured the “golden decade” carried me back there immediately.
My moment was the ’56 GM Motorama (in Boston) and then my dad’s succession of a ’55 Olds 88, ’60 Pontiac Catalina and a ’64 Olds Delta 88.
I was well and truly smitten by then.
Well done, sir, and thanks for the memories.
I don’t really remember it, but I have been told that when I was about nine months old I had an accident where I was in a baby walker and I tipped it over and fell out and face-planted the metal grill of a floor furnace. I cut all the way through my upper lip and mother took me to the emergency room and the doctors stitched my lip back together and then kept me in the hospital overnight.
When my father came to the hospital from work he bought me a cheap Golden book about cars and trucks in the hospital gift shop and I am told that I grabbed a ball-point pen out of my mother’s purse and started drawing circles connected by lines in the book. I was drawing cars!
After that I had lots of toy cars and trucks (Tonka, Tootsie-Toy, then Husky, Matchbox and Hot Wheels) and I liked drawing them. As a kid I rode my bicycle to all of the car dealers in our small town and collected new car sales brochures, one of everything.
Like so many, I don’t remember not being interested in cars. I was thinking it might be because I was given model cars early on but I’m not sure.
My parents had no interest in cars – although strangely, although I don’t talk to my son about cars, my dad tells him about the badges – he has been able to identify a Skoda since he was two (my dad has one) and now at 3 he often points them out.
Wolfgang’s post brought back a long forgotten memory – of walking through town with my parents when I was 3 or 4 and stopping every few yards and insisting they lift me up so I could see into a particular car.
My first automotive awareness moment came in 1965 at Dowlings Motors, the local General Motors dealer in Swan Hill Victoria.
I would have been 3 years old, my Dad was buying last years model EH Holden station wagon.
I knew it was last years model because I remember seeing the latest HD series cars on the showroom floor.
Like so many others here I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in cars.
In about 1974 or 1975, my brother gave me the 1973 copy of World Cars, published by the Automobile Club of Italy, this became my bible. I was absolutely fascinated by all of the cars made around the world, from the cars of Brazil & Argentina (the Dodge GTX a real favourite !!!) to the Mohs Ostentatienne Opera sedan, I was totally hooked.
It was the American Mopar products in this book that helped me select Chrysler as my favourite car company, I was saddened to learn in later years that the cars weren’t quite as good as they looked, but I still love em.
I still have this book and would love to find some more from other years, but the truth is Curbside Classic is even better !!!
As far as I remember, I always loved cars. At the age of 3 or 4, I was able to identify most of what I saw in the street.
Things got worse when I fell in love with 70’s US barges at age 4 when I saw a 4-door Gran Torino in “The Philadelphia Experiment” (although I thought for many years it was a GM B or C-body until IMCDB.ORG destroyed my child dreams…).
Then, it became really neurotic at the age of 6 when I discovered “The Dukes of Hazzard” and started a long quest to find the make and model of one particular sedan driven by Roscoe (found it 9 years later : it was an AMC Matador).
From here, it went downhill.
I felt nothing when I saw Michelangelo’s (sculptor, not TMNT…) David in Florence but I almost had tears in my eyes when I saw a ’77 Eldorado in the metal for the fist time.
I knew everything was lost the day I was watching at the first Spice Girl videoclip at the age of 15, with a bunch of hormones-running-on-high teenagers, and my only comment was “Hey, that’s a nice Continental” (got very strange looks that day from my fellow watchers…).
As a result, I’m more fond of bread and butter sedans and Curbside Classic than any sport cars and muscle cars (I had a poster of a 85 Plymouth Gran Fury on my bedroom walls instead of the mandatory Lamborghini Countach).
I guess I’m lost but I do not feel the need to be cured.
Helping my father work on engines: cars, boats, outboards, and lawnmowers. I probably became addicted to the smell of gasoline, oil, and grease on my hands before I was 10 years old.
This is no known cure. Who would want one.
And the smell of a 2 cycle outboard exhaust (now mostly encountered with chain saws and weed-wackers) still transports me back to my early youth.
Plus, I like the people who hang out around here.
For me the smell of 2 stroke oil brings me back to being a small child on the lake with my dad in the old Peterborough lakeside cedar strip runabout that we restored.
I have to agree with you on liking the people on this site.
I followed Paul here from TTAC.
For a glorious, wonderful couple of years, my parents lived “back in the hollow”, a little over an hour north of Pittsburgh in Butler County, PA. Summer ’66 – Spring ’68.
I was nine when we moved there.
Next door were Uncle Dick and Aunt Pat and their offspring, my cousins. Cousin Ron was exactly one day younger than me, and he would talk about ’57 Chevies and Corvettes.
Across the road from their house was the final resting place of a ’58 Plymouth and ’56 Mercury.
My dad was driving a ’65 Beetle, which piqued an interest in all things Volkswagen. It was an unusual move, our last three family cars were a ’65 Plymouth Fury III sedan, ’61 Chrysler New Yorker, and ’60 Ford Sunliner. But dad’s new job took him 50 miles each way, to Youngstown, OH. Saving gas became a priority, although a short-lived one. A year, and many repairs, later, he was back in form with a ’65 Mercury Park Lane Breezewood sedan.
As a foreman, he received a company truck: a ’66 Chevy Fleetside shortbed. 6/stick.
I was infatuated. I called it “a perfect truck.”
Dad and grandpa had just bought Aunt Dee and Uncle Ron, who lived in Nyack, NY, a red ’60 Chevy convertible. Ron was in college. Dee was working. Neither had a clue about cars but they loved that “beautiful red convertible.”
One day in February, someone came to visit Uncle Dick and Aunt Pat, driving a ’57 BelAir Sport Coupe with a V8. I don’t remember if the V was 265 chrome or 283 silver; the difference would’ve been lost on me anyway back then. I went out in the snow and cold with a pencil and pad of paper, parked my sled in front of it and began to draw.
I was in love. I built a couple ’57 models. Started reading Hot Rod, the April 1967 cover featured a red ’55 gasser.
Later that summer someone parked a Harbor Blue ’57 convertible under the railroad trestle in front of the creek. Either going fishing or swimming. I’d never seen such beauty on four wheels…
By the time we moved back to the main road, I was 11, a confirmed car nut, and total Tri-Five addict.
Grandad was a mechanic so that helped. And for some reason he always had oddball cars. My first car memory would be an Austin Morris, I think it was a 7 that everybody called Cathy for some reason. My old man wasn’t much different. First of his was a 1953 Kiaser, jet black white roof and bamboo interior. I loved that car stand up on front seat with my arm around his neck ” faster Daddy faster”. With a lot of cars in between he bought his first brand new car. A 1965 Pontiac 2 door hard top. It was a Cheviac of course being in Canada with a 283 IIRC. New cars haven’t made much of an impression on me,they all look the same. As another poster said you could tell cars by grills or tail lights. The sweep of a fender or hood. Now they’re pretty much cookie cutter for emissions and fuel mileage. Which is why I’m here at CC,for the cars of my memories for the most part.
My biological Dad was a gearhead going way back. His father was a mechanic for a large bus company. They both, as well as my uncles, always had something interesting in the garage. My father owned a Model A dump truck, which was sort of a mascot for his business, as he was in residential real estate development along with his brothers. Probably what imprinted on me the most though was Dad rebuilding our 1965 Pontiac Tempest in the garage after a rear-end accident. The car had been black, but after the repair it was painted a metallic red color. Its moniker was thusly change from “Black Beauty” to “Sparkling Burgundy” I was bout 3, and from then on cars became alive for me. When “Sparkling Burgundy” was replaced with a ’68 LeMans (referred to as “The Green Hornet”) the deal was cemented for me.
Coming into my auto-awareness in the late 50s-early 60s, I was heavily influenced by my gear-head older siblings who had some then quickly disappearing rides in the salt-encrusted climes of NW PA: a ’40 Cadillac; a ’51 Studebaker V-8; several late Flathead Fords; a 59 Cadillac; a ’56 Olds; a ’62 MB 220SE; a ’63 Porsche Super 90; and a few small window VW Bugs. Given that level of exposure, I’ll confess that I’m a hopelessly addicted curbivore and a staunch believer in the rule that “cars should turn heads.”
The demise of SAAB. Took me here while searching for the 9-4X. Ended up stumbling on Brendan Saur’s great post. A year later (early 2015) started visiting for curiosity and learned what the essence of the website was. Currently one of my favorites and the one that make me look a LOT more to the workaday cars around here. Hope CC lasts forever.
Didn’t get my Curbivore Complex until dad bought his new ’66 Beetle, which was the first car I drove at around age 13. My brother came back to live at home in 1970 after 4 years in the Navy, and be soon bought a ’56 VW Bus and soon I was buried in grease helping him pull and install the engine, and began my VW obsession. My first car in ’72 was dad’s 66 Beetle, and I went through about a dozen air cooled VW’s Bugs, type 3’s, Split window buses, and a Karmann Ghia. I rebuilt a VW engine in auto shop in high school, anlong with replacing reduction gears in my ’65 Bus. I’ll never forget my Chevy obsessed teacher told me to not add oil to the gear reduction boxes when I asked him if I should, him telling me oil from the gearbox would travel through the axle tubes. Turns out he knew not what he spoke, as the rear end locked up in a snowstorm up Angeles Crest Hwy at 2:00 am a couple of weeks later proved. It was a long, expensive tow back to the auto shop where the burnt up metal fragments on the reduction gear cases were oil free! “Guess you were right” and an A for the class was the result of this fiasco.
But my auto shop teacher went out of his way to set me up for an interview at a VW dealership just before graduation, which I got. I thought it was to be a mechanic, but turned out to be a parts dept. driver job, and started a 30 year career working in mostly VW dealerships.
I discovered CC in 2010 at the other site, and followed Paul’s website since the first day it began, as a lurker until around the end of 2013 when I started to comment. This is the only site I comment on. I really have come to appreciate old cars a lot more due to this site, especially well cared for, long term ownership cars. Automakers would be hard pressed to survive if everyone kept their cars for 20+ years before replacement, but long term ownership is now sort of an obsession with me.
A Chevy truck for 30 years, VW Jetta for 25, Yamaha motorcycle for 22, Nissan Titan for 12, still own all but the Chevy today. They have proved to be extremely durable over the years, with original drivetrain on all that I still own today.
The Chevy had most major parts replaced over the years except for shortblock, but it was worked hard and overloaded a lot. But parts were cheap, and life time warranty replacements and junkyards kept the easy to work on truck on the road for little money over the years.
Roger, I love that it is you posing this question, as I believe some of the very first articles I came across on this site were yours, as I researched British cars on the internet. I think it might have been your piece on the Chrysler 180, and I remember laughing at your line about how “It failed. It bombed.”
I’d attribute a lot of my being a Curbivore to growing up in Flint, Michigan in the 1970’s through when my family moved away in the 90’s. The birthplace city of General Motors has always always been steeped in car culture, and I loved passing many of the humming factories as a young passenger in Mom’s or Dad’s car… or when I was a teenager with my own drivers’ license.
There were so many trains running around the Flint area, with many hauling completed, new cars, just the chassis in some cases, and sometimes it would be what looked like everything but the front clip when coming from Fisher Body on S. Saginaw St.
Touring the factories was magical to this young kid. (I’m getting goosebumps as I type this…) It breaks my heart all over again when I think of most of the factories being gone. I’m sure some readers are sick of me writing about it. 😉 I did have great fun touring the Flint Truck Assembly Plant on Van Slyke Rd. both in 2011 and in 2015. They were building Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups in both instances.
Inborn here as well.
My first car memory is the front seat of my mom’s ’59 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 in a child car seat. You remember the type, they’d kill you if you actually had an accident. It had a little steering wheel on it and I’d help Mom drive around Los Angeles.
By the time I was 3 I could identify most cars on the road – right down to the year. My Dad had a ’52 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and I spent plenty of time in the couch-like cushy seats of that car as well.
In 1964 Dad went to work for a company that bought him a new car every year or so. That started my Pontiac love, as Dad chose Bonnevilles. 4 door, Safari wagons, he had several of them.
It was about that time that Dad and I started going every year to the Los Angeles Auto Show every year. All the new models just overwhelmed my senses. It was such a cherished tradition after I moved out and was on my own I would come back, pick up Dad, and take HIM to the show.
I still remember in September of 1970 my Dad called me down from my room. Said we were going to take a ride. We ended up at Mayberry Lincoln-Mercury in North Hollywood where Dad took delivery of a light green 1971 Mercury Marquis four door. Why is this so memorable? He took delivery of the car one week before the official model introduction, so for a week he was the only one on the road with a 1971 Mercury.
You know, come to think of it, Dad was probably a Curbivore as well. When he retired he bought a car dealership so he could have a new car change anytime he wanted it. Oh yes, and he brought it to profitability in 6 months. Quite the businessman.
Curbivore. I’ll wear the title proudly.
I really think there’s some sort of biological predilection, because I’d fall under “born with it” myself. Neither of my parents are “car people” and we never had anything particularly interesting in the driveway, other than the fact that our cars were older than many as they bought used and traded infrequently. There’s really no one in my family that’s much of a gearhead–my Mom’s brother did have a ’59 MGA as his first car but that was gone before I was born and he drove “sensible” cars afterward.
And yet. My parents maintain that my first word was “car”. Almost all my toys were car-related; vast fleets of matchbox and hot wheels, big metal tonka, ertl, and buddy-L cars to play with outside, I’d even build them out of legos. I drew them, I talked about them, I read books about them (I think I checked out every book in our local library’s modest automotive section multiple times). And it’s been an obsession ever since.
I’ve always been more into old cars, but as a kid I also really admired the exotics. Countach, Testarossa, F40, XJ220 were idols of mine. But as time went on, the latest F1-inspired carbon-fiber 200 MPH landlocked jet fighter exotic started to interest me less, but the everyday classics held more and more appeal. I guess it’s just that I’m getting old, but it started to happen that a clean obscure 80’s car that I hadn’t seen in years would get me more excited than anything else. That mindset plus an interest in digital photography (and the ever-improving quality of camera phones) got me involved with automotive groups on Flickr, and then I started encountering web sites related to old “ordinary” cars like the old “Down on the Street” series on Jalopnik. I found CC via a google search one day in 2013 or so, quite by accident, and the rest was history as there is no other site that comes anywhere close to the wealth of knowledge and quality, civil, drama-free commentary that distinguishes this site.
I think it was inborn for me also. My mother said that when I was two years old, there was no such thing as a quick walk to the post office, because I had to stop and examine every car we passed (in early-1960s Vancouver).
I can never remember a time when I was not fascinated by cars. Every trip was spent car spotting and naming them. My grandmother gave me The Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars when I was nine years old. That, and sending me her monthly issues of Ford Times, further fed my thirst for knowledge.
What made me a Curbivore? Well to some extent it was inborn, like many of the other comments above. Mum’s family had always had interesting cars (oodles of 1930s-60s Rovers, ’59 Belvedere, Simca Vedette, Wolseley 6/110, Hillman Imp, Renaults 8, 10, TS and Scenic, Audi 200T, Jags – XJ6s and XJS, Volvos 164E and 264), and Dad was a mechanic (Toyota in the 1970s, then British Leyland/Honda in the 1980s). So from the moment I was born, cars were in my blood.
My earliest car-book memory is The Ladybird Book Of Motor Cars – the 1960 edition, 13 years before I was born and a gift to my then 7-year-old Uncle. I still remember poring over the Mercedes Benz 220 and thinking it looked so…awesome!! But what really confirmed my Curbivoredom were the Daily Express World Car Guides. My grandparents had most from 1968 to 1984 in a cupboard in the back bedroom I slept in when I stayed with them. From about 7-8 years old I used to disappear into those marvellous guides for hours on end, dreaming about the cars therein, comparing their specs from year to year… Such a precious part of my childhood car education. From 10 years old, I used to accompany Dad to work on Saturdays and sit in the lunchroom which contained a couple of decades of Australia’s Wheels magazines for my reading pleasure.
Nowadays the joys of internet auction sites has provided me every issue of the Daily Express and Daily Mail guides; every issue of Wheels, most issues of Car and Driver, and a huge library of car books (including many of the Olyslager publications).
I still buy Wheels and Car and Driver, but find myself drawn to the cars of my childhood dreams – and Curbside Classic is the only website I’ve ever found that truly captures the joy, passion and intense interest I first felt as a little kid with a Ladybird car book.
The Ladybird Book was important (mine was a little later, around 64) and also the Observer’s book of Automobiles, which I used to get updated copies of.
First off, I love CC! Since I was a toddler I have never been able to sleep in a car because there is just too much to see on the road. I love the way cars LOOK! I have a small bedroom full of 1/64 through 1/18 die-cast model cars and enjoy them every moment. I drive an ’05 Buick Park Avenue and would never consider buying anything newer than a decade old. If I could afford it, I would have the Buick and a collector car.
Six decades in my favorite aisle in Walmart is the toy cars.
Like many others, I have an intrinsic interest in automobiles. Any member of my immediate family will tell you that from a very young age I have been fascinated by automobiles. As a child in the late 1960’s, I could identify almost any domestic car back to the early 1950’s. It was something of a parlor trick I would perform to entertain my elders and my friends.
I’ve always been a motorhead, interested in racing, race cars and drivers. As a adolescent, I was impressed by hot rods and drag cars, but my trip to Germany in my late teens turned all of my tastes around. I became a fan of Euro cars (when that really meant something) and followed that trend for a long time. Somewhere in my mid-late 30’s I started yearning back for the land yachts of my growing up years and that’s where the curbivore set in for me.
Oddly, there are few old cars I would want to put up with. Probably nothing older than the mid 1980’s, especially stuff with carburetors. Right now, I can go into any domestic dealership and get a pony car that even in it’s most basic form, would obliterate my V8 Mercury Capris. I still love old cars, but I definitely don’t want to daily drive them.
* I was into the sounds and textures that still existed on cars in the 80s. I noticed right away how the V8s in my grandfather’s cars made different noises than the 4 cylinders in my parents. And the different transmission noises, and how accelerators and gearshifts all looked different in different cars. Then there were textures…those ribs on the ’78-’87 Grand Marquis taillights, the hood ornament on the Caddy, the woven pattern on the vinyl in an ’84 Civic. 3/4 year old me enjoyed approaching cars and the parking lot and running my hands over the trim and tracing the cursive script until my parents shooed me away. Pretty sure the early 80s Park Avenue is how I learned to say and spell “avenue”.
Other influences were a similar (possibly same) 50s car book as in the article, a color book my parents got me “Classic Cars” by Roger Hicks, and the carting company president’s black ’59 Cadillac he drove around town on nice days
For me, it was growing up on the edge of a ‘cosmopolitan’ part of Melbourne in the fifties, and seeing lots of new American cars at the local shops. Mostly Chevies, Pontiacs and Fords, with occasional Plymouths, DeSotos and Dodges. Ford Customlines didn’t really count; they were everywhere. But those GM cars…..
The car that made the greatest impression on me was a ’59 Chevy, with the little amber indicator (required by local laws) hanging like a bat from the horizontal fin. Once seen, never forgotten. Then walking home and contemplating Dad’s series II Morris Oxford – were they from the same planet? There was such a disparity between the big American cars and the much smaller British cars most people in my extended family ran, that I just had to know more – why was it so? Why were British cars (except Vauxhalls) so old-fashioned and dowdy?
Also in those postwar years there were a lot of prewar cars (or cars that looked prewar) still on the roads. I walked past a ’36 Ford ute, a similar age panel, a ’49-ish Ford Prefect and a Triumph Mayflower on the way to the shops, and a ’38 and ’49 Chevy going to school in the other direction. The rabbi over the road had a ’37 Plymouth, while groceries were delivered next door in a ’41-7 5-ish ton Chev box truck. A local lady drove a ’31 model A roadster shopping once a week, and a family friend had a ’26 Studebaker tourer stolen from her garage. And a friend of Dad’s restored Bugattis for a hobby.
And you wonder why I’m a curbivore?