What Started Your Passion For Cars?

You follow Car Throttle. You post (hopefully) on Car Throttle. You may have met new friends through Car Throttle. You may have even attended one of our fantastic meets. And whether you like front-wheel drive hot hatchbacks, all-wheel drive racers, Euro sedans, boosted JDM missiles, American muscle, Italian exotics, go-anywhere off-roaders, or any and all of the above, hopefully you’ve found an online home here, in Car Throttle’s digital halls.

Regardless of your automotive tastes, you’re one of our awesome CTzens, an important part of our ever-growing community that literally spans the entire planet. We have opinions, we have disagreements, and we argue. That’s because we’re brothers and sisters in a global automotive family, and hey, that’s what families do. Our likes and dislikes are born from the passion we share for cars, and that’s worth celebrating.

We’d like to throw a big, worldwide Car Throttle party for everyone in the comments of this post so we can get to know one another properly, because cars are nothing without the people who love them, and those stories are worth talking about as much as the cars.

So let this be an open invitation to all CTzens to share your story of how you developed your passion for cars.

Share them with us and the world in the comments below - perhaps something more will come of your story in future Car Throttle features. If not, well hey, we want to hear your story anyway, because whether you’re a man or woman, a veteren petrolhead or young enthusiast just discovering the wonderful world of the automobile, your story’s worth knowing.

I’ll start. I was born and raised not far from Detroit, Michigan - AKA the Motor City - and in that part of America it’s hard to not have some kind of auto industry connection. My dad was a lorry driver (semi-truck driver for those of us in the States) hauling new cars throughout the Midwest, and one of my earliest memories is sitting on his lap, steering his car hauler loaded with nine brand new Corvettes up our long driveway. I think I was maybe three or four, but we had enough property to turn the truck around, so I was behind the wheel at a very young age.

I was a typical screwball car kid in high school, doing doughnuts and burnouts in the parking lot. The real car bug didn’t bite until college, when I got a part-time job cleaning cars at a BMW dealership. I taught myself to drive a manual on new E36 Bimmers, then left to spend six years at a used car dealer doing everything from cleaning to mechanical work and sales. I bought my first performance car, a 1995 Ford Taurus SHO five-speed, then started a car club. The deeper I went into the car scene, the more it just felt like home. Next thing I know, years have passed and now I spend my days writing about something I love. Not such a bad life.

I’ve lived through many other motoring adventures, but that’s pretty much the story behind my insane automotive passion. So what’s yours? Chime in: the world is waiting to hear.