It’s hard for me to really say when I got into cars, since I’ve been into them for as long as I can remember.  I know it’s cliché, but some say I was born with a set of car keys in my hand.

I got a stuffed toy schoolbus when I was 2. Despite losing it and somehow getting it back in Disney World, it still sits in my room by my desk, along with the identical one I got when I lost the first one (before the original was found).  That was Genesis for me.

But it took off like wildfire when I was about 6.  I picked up a copy of the DuPont Registry, and my life changed.  I couldn’t let go.  I saw cars that I’d heard of, but never seen pictures of.  I would stare for hours.

In second grade, I was allowed to take books out of the library at school, and being a bookworm with a high reading ability, I would take out books that Teacher said were for older kids.  Not like I cared.  I took out the car books on the top shelf, one by one, and began to learn about cars.  One was about Ferrari, one was Mercedes-Benz, one was Porsche, another was Lamborghini, and the last was Rolls-Royce and Bentley.  I took them out over and over again, read them till I memorized everything.  I learned about how they worked, what was so great about them, and how each company came to be.

I went to Fort Lauderdale, FL when I was 9, to go check out the Toy Store Group, in Florida, with my grandpa.  There, I got my first taste of seeing some of these exotics in person.  I’ve kept the pictures over the years.

So…what say you?  How did you get into cars?  How’d the bug bite you?  Comment below.

-Al