Since it’s the season of giving, I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to reminisce. There’s something about Christmas that can’t help but take me back to being a kid, and that’s been going through my head over the past few days.
Maybe my memories will take you back, too.
Growing up with a mechanic father who owned a gas station where I could play around, and whose hobby was building and working on race cars, it’s not surprising that I turned out the way I did. It was either absorb the car and racing environment, or run screaming from it. I soaked it all up.
Like any kid, Christmas was a special time for me. The reason? Because it meant I might have a chance to get something else car- or racing-related.
“Have you been a good little boy this year? And what would you like Santa to bring you?”
I have a confession to make: I never once sat on Santa’s knee as a child; I was kinda freaked out by him. Yes, I was scared. Here I was, from the age of five, wanting to be a race car driver, and yet I didn’t have the guts to go up to the old guy, sit on his lap, and ask for a present. I was so scared of him. I know I’m not the only kid to have felt that way, but I was pretty sure I was brave enough to drive a race car at high speeds as soon as I got old enough to reach the pedals—but not sit on the knee of the happiest, friendliest, most-giving old man! You’d think I would’ve taken the opportunity to ask Santa for a slot car set, a model car kit, or something else that would contribute to me winning Le Mans, Monaco, or Indy later in life. But no….
Somehow, I did manage to get a slot car set one year (although I had to share it with my brother…sheesh). I also got model car kits. And books about cars. I doubt there was anyone in my family who had to put much thought into what to get me for Christmas. If it had anything to do with cars and racing, I’d be the happiest kid ever on Christmas morning.
One year, an uncle gave me a book. I still have it, some fifty years later. A British publication, Carsports Book is its title. It has information about a sports car called a TVR; a fictional story about a race car that went missing; a piece on racing a go-kart; a cut-away drawings of a Lotus 47 (Europa) and 49 F1 car; technical information about the aerodynamics of a Lola sports racing car and Hewland gearboxes; how British race events are officiated; and my personal favorite: a map of Brands Hatch with the racing line drawn on it (providing some theory behind why the line was where it was). At the age of nine, I began to think about the corners my mom and dad drove around in our Ford Galaxie in a very different way. I imagined being in a Ford GT-40. I saw the vision of a pathway through corners, and understood why it was the best line to drive. If I wasn’t reading my Carsport Book for the umpteenth time, I was reading and re-reading the stack of Road & Track magazines that my best friend’s older brother gave me. And when I wasn’t reading, I was building models, or drawing cars.
I sometimes wonder if my crazy life of chasing the dream of racing cars wasn’t somehow related to the amount of Testor’s model glue that I inhaled in my bedroom (not deliberately)! I built models of drag racing funny cars, NASCAR stock cars, Formula One cars, and my favorite, the Ford GT-40. Ahhh, that GT-40 was not your typical AMT 1/24th scale model. No, this was a 1/18th scale model, and it had more pieces than three AMT kits put together. The detail was what I needed, because I wanted to actually understand how the monocoque chassis and suspension worked after putting it together.
I then went through a stage where I could not simply put a model kit together per the instructions. No, the second I got a new kit, I’d tear it apart and figure out what I was going to build from the pieces. I’d use it to build what I wanted. By that point, I was designing my own cars: first on paper, and then in plastic. I used a McLaren M8C Can-Am car as the basis for a wedge-shaped, side-radiatored Indy car, not that different from the AAR Eagle in which Bobby Unser won the 1975 Indy 500.
Thanks to my mom, I had some talent for drawing. But where she would paint landscapes, I’d draw cars: race car designs, an entire range of cars for an imaginary car company I had created (everything from an economy car to a luxury cruiser, and a sports car to a pickup truck), and eventually my own engine designs (a rotary valve inline-4 was my favorite; or the hydrogen-powered car that I developed in high school chemistry class). My research for these projects always started with the road test pages in Road & Track. I laid out a grid and input all the engine configurations, bore and stroke measurements, displacement, and torque and horsepower ratings for dozens of cars. This was well before Excel spreadsheets, so they were all hand-written, and I’d study them for hours.
Eventually, I’d notice a trend, and so developed a pretty good sense of what configuration, displacement, bore and stroke, etc. would provide in terms of torque and horsepower numbers. And then I’d design my own engine, drawing cut-aways of just about every component.
To say I was obsessed was an understatement.
Today, I would probably be diagnosed with some type of learning disorder at worst, or labelled a car nerd, at best!
Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, take a little time over the next week and go back in time to when you first either fell totally in love with cars and driving, or just felt the subtle nudge to learn a little more about it. Yes, I understand that not everyone is like me (thank goodness!), and that you may not have been immersed in the sport from an early age like I was. Indy 500 winner “spin and win” Danny Sullivan knew very little about cars until his late teens, and he didn’t start racing until his twenties; two-time Formula One World Champion, Indy 500, and Le Mans winner Graham Hill didn’t even have his driver’s license until he was 24.
What was it that made you obsess over cars and driving? Was there a single moment in time that made the difference? Was it the sight of one particular car, and its shape, sound, or performance? Did you have family or friends involved in racing? Was it a book, a movie, a magazine, an online forum or site? Was it something someone said to you? Was there a certain Christmas experience that brought your car fixation into focus?
Perform some magic, and replay these things and experiences in your mind. When you do, at least three things will happen:
Finally, if you were braver than I am, and you dug up the nerve to sit on Santa’s lap today, what would you ask for, now?
Happy Holidays!
