For a whole generation of kids, Lamborghini Countach posters became a fixture on the bedroom wall, along with a Farrah Fawcett poster. Or maybe someone else; I’m not very good with popular culture. So what about you; what car did you obsess on in your adolescence, or what graced your bedroom wall?
When I was in quite a bit younger, about seven and eight, I practically covered my bedroom walls with car ads, especially the dreamy Fitzpatrick and Kaufman Pontiac renderings.
After we moved to Baltimore, that all went away. When I was fifteen (1968), there were so many incredible new cars, especially out of Italy, that it was literally hard to obsess on any one for too long. But the one that I did obsess on the most was indeed a Lambo, but ironically the four-seater Espada, which arrived in that year (JPC’s CC here).
As much as I loved the exotic mid-engine super-sports cars, there was something about a full four-seater coupe that looked this good, that really grabbed me. Why couldn’t American cars look this good? This is what a 1968 Thunderbird or Riviera should have been, in my mind.
The Espada was pretty much the the only car I drew often at that time, in profile, and its lines deeply etched into my visual cortex, or wherever these lines are stored. Come on, Detroit; you could be building this! The closest they got that was probably the 1971 Sebring/Road Runner.
I might have had one on the closet door for a while, but what dominated my room at the the time was a large poster-board drawing I did of a Chrysler hemi engine cross-section. I copied it free-hand from a book or magazine, and figuring out all the relative sizes and dimensions in a much larger scale was a challenge, with just a ruler. But it came out pretty decent, and it dominated my room for quite some time. And the skills acquired in making it served me well decades later when I draw up plans for my houses. I still use a pencil and ruler for that; it’s just more enjoyable than using a CAD program for me.
I was fifteen in 2006, and I was obsessed with the E92 BMW 335i coupe and E46 M3.
Edsels. Seriously. Way back in 1978…
I was 15 in 1982 and was fascinated with limousines and funeral coaches/hearses…still am.
I was 15 in 1997. That was the year my parents bought their first Volvo and I became a lifelong Volvo enthusiast because of that car. I had posters of the 850 and 960 on my wall – something that confounded more than a few friends.
It may be the “old man’s car” of the BMW lineup, but at age 15 I was quite smitten with the bangle-butt 7-Series. I’d daydream of owning a 760Li.
When I was younger than that, my room walls were once covered in car posters, with the most prominent being the Dodge Viper and Ferrari 550 Maranello.
In 73 I had a poster of a 350 Monaro hanging up it replaced the XY GTHO Falcon poster that got torn
Well, I wasn’t quite fifteen yet, but while I was attending Brown School Elementary, I hung many magazine centerfolds in my bedroom.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Motor Trend, but I did love the classic car articles Michael Lamm wrote every month. Each article included a gallery quality picture, and I carefully straightened the staples and extracted the page. I don’t remember every car, but do recall several spectacular Duesenbergs, a Cadillac V-16, and a BMW 507.
Wow, I had not thought of the inside of my bedroom door in years – it was covered with an intricate mosaic of 1950s-60s ads cut out of various magazines. Plus, there were some two-page ads that rotated on and off of the closet doors, of cars from the same era. Believe it or not, the first set were a batch of posters that Chevy put out in 1970, including this one.
I’d forgotten about those until you mentioned them. I had them, too, and kept the red SS454 poster until it just about turned to dust.
After reading other responses, I just realized that I ignored the first half of the question. At age 15 in 1974, I obsessed on Lincolns. Lincolns, Lincolns, Lincolns. My best friend made a poster out of a photo of his dad’s 47 Lincoln sedan. I had that on my wall, too. I’ll bet I was the only one here with one of those on the wall. 🙂
I also ignored the first half of the question. Oops! What cars did I obsess on at 15? Well I really wanted a ’64 Galaxie fastback as my first car. Even found a good one for sale. Parents wouldn’t front me the $3000 or so between what I had saved and what it cost, which is understandable. But that was definitely taking up a large amount of mental real estate. Of cars that were current at the time (1995) I was really into the Mustang Cobra, Lincoln Mark VIII, Cadillac Seville STS, Jaguar XJR, Mazda RX-7, Alfa 164…perhaps a slightly oddball group of cars for a 15 year-old! Though I did get to realize ownership of one of those favorites at a later date.
Also realized I forgot one poster–I had a bright yellow Volkswagen Corrado G60 poster on my wall for a few years also. Nowadays that’s a mostly forgotten car, which is kind of a shame.
Lets see…say..circa 1968 -1970…? For sure I had a 68 Charger,on the wall, A 69 SS 396 Chevelle.. A poster of Frank Zappa sitting on the toilet titled “Zappa el Crappa”. A Peter Fonda, and Dennis Hopper “Easy Rider” poster. I remember that quite well. A great poster of the then “smokin hot” Gracie Slick. Oh yeah and 69 Swinger 340.
I was fifteen in 1968, and I couldn’t stop thinking about having a new 1968 Chevelle SS396. I still remember the first one I saw at the dealer. Although I’ve long since lost the desire to have a vehicle even remotely like this, I still get a rush when I see any 68-70 Chevelle 2dr hardtop. A collector car dealer in the South had an immaculate, unmolested Ash Gold ’68 a couple of years ago that almost had me packing my bags and grabbing my checkbook.
I was 15 in 1980, the family fleet was a Volvo 164 and a Honda Accord, plus fond memories of our BMW 2000. I didn’t have any posters on my wall but my 2 favorite car brochures were a circa 1973 BMW Motorsport book with the 3.0CSL and a Puch Pinzgauer catalog. I also probably wanted a Porsche 911 and a Ford Escort RS1800.
I definitely had a Countach poster, in black of course. Born in ’80 so the supercars of my youth were the Countach and Testarossa, with the F40 taking over as soon as I saw it (though I never did get a poster of that one). Also had at various points in my childhood one of a mosaic of Boss Mustangs, a blue ’57 Bel Air, a Dodge Stealth R/T, and around the top of the room, a row of centerfolds from Hot Rod Magazine. Most of them done up in the Pro Street style that dominated the 80’s and early 90s, tubbed out with bigs n’ littles and a big block with a blower sticking through the hood.
You and I must have been separated at birth, because that’s pretty much what I was looking at back then.
Centerfolds and rock bands, I hate to admit it, but no car posters back then. Have in the garage a couple of dealership posters of the 2004 Titan and a Lincoln Mark LT chopper by O.C.C. poster I got after the bike was put on display at a local Lincoln dealer from around 2005.
I was 15 in 1972 and had a poster of a Ford Capri I really wanted a purple Triumph Stag and would dream away Latin and Physics lessons imagining myself driving it to a job on Boot’s perfume and make up counters.
I also had a Marc Bolan poster as I thought he was hot(until I saw Mike Monroe 10 years later).A poster you wouldn’t admit to now was on my little sister’s(2 years younger) wall of Gary Glitter!
My brother(2 years older) had a poster of Marianne Faithful in leathers on a Harley from her film.(Don’t bother staying up for it if it come’s on TV again)
Gary Glitter the pædo?
Yes that one,unfortunately no one knew he was til a long time after 1972.
I lived near this used paper storage, I have no idea what all those papers did there or what the purpose was for that storage. But it was a large building, and the entire longer side was open, trucks was coming and going leaving stuff or collecting stuff. I guess it was a sort of mid transit storage facility for waste paper going to recycling or for being used at the power plant or whatever. The fun thing was the site wasn’t fenced off, so of course, at weekends, that place was a haven for us kids.
Those piles could be up to 15 feet high, mostly newspapers, but also a lot of car mags, and of course we were looking for the holy grail, porn mags. There was a lot of comics, I ended up finding a couple of binded Mad year books, cementing my interest in Mad. And also, lots and losts of car mags. We mostly used that place to browse for interesting things to find, but also as a playground, building tunnels and trenches and forts. We used that place to play war with all the other kids in the neighborhood. It’s just one of those things that was completely natural for us to do, but thinking back I wonder what the hell our parents were thinking at letting us being there? Oh, so much fun…
Of course, the entire place burned to the ground one day because some kids played with matches, and it was never built up afterwards. I guess they moved to some far away place fenced off for us kids. Anyway, I built up quite an extensive collection of car mags, this was in the early 80’s, so it was mostly 70’s and 80’s stuff. There was one I liked that was much about racing, and they had this special centerfold that you could put on your wall if you removed the staples carefully. So, of course I plastered my entire room wall to wall with those centerfolds. Hundreds of racing cars. And, sorry to say, I used those mags to cut pictures out of them with a scissor, collecting the pics.
I had a collection of several thousand pics at the end. I’ve kept them forever in storage, I have those boxes safely tucked away. Don’t know why, it’s just one of those things you do as a kid, it made sense to me then. Today, I cry over all the magazines I just cut up and threw away, it would’ve been so much fun if I had kept them so I could read them now. But yes, much of my very early interest in cars was cemented by that experience and all those mags I found.
By adolescence I’d moved on from cars. My car interest peaked around age 8.
There wasn’t any one car; what grabbed my attention was obscure little cars like Messerschmitt and Isetta, and details like gear ratios and overdrive and theft-proof ignition locks. I imagined driving a car with 5 speeds, which was impossible then.
Grandpa had a 1930-ish Peerless hearse converted to a panel truck, which had all sorts of strange levers and controls including a two-part starter pedal that I still haven’t figured out. Was it meant to give you separate control of the pinion and the motor?
I had several of the numbered Porsche ads, the “X in a Series” set that were supposed to look like technical papers. I especially liked the 928.
When I went off to college (1987), the “Justification for Higher Education” poster with several super-high-end cars featured (there have been many versions) was a must for one’s dorm room wall. I got the higher education, but I drive a Subaru…go figure. 🙂
I turned 15 in 1969 and was obsessed with the Citroen DS21 Palais. What a car. What an interior. I tried in vain to convince my parents to make it their new car. They bought a Buick instead.
I remember reading about the Lamborghini Countach of the 80s, with the rear spoiler. I thought it was the sexiest car ever. The only thing that ruined it for me was when they showed it with a sexy girl sprawled out on the front of the car. However sexy the girl may have been, I didn’t think she needed to be on the car.
I’ve gotta cheat this one just a little bit. I was 16 in 1966 when I first laid eyes on the Lamborghini Miura. Do I have to say anything else?
Aside from just about all Aston Martins, that is the most beautiful car ever built.
Don’t forget the Series 1 E-Type Jag. If the question had been which car caused you to instantly experience puberty, that would have been my answer (1961). 😉
Ah! I don’t know why I always forget that one. Please forgive my oversight!
I just dug through an old photo album and found a snapshot of my bedroom wall from 1970, when I was 13. I’m ashamed to say I can’t recognize all the cars (and the picture isn’t too sharp) but I see posters of a Formula 1 Eagle, a Porsche 908 at the Nurburgring, and a Ferrari P3 (I think) at the Targa Florio. Pretty much all race cars. The wall surface seems to be about 80% posters and 20% visible paneling.
In general, anything plush. I loved the Chrysler LHS, even though they were discontinued by that point. I really wanted a Cadillac Deville, though.
Earlier, I loved the 2000 Impala, but we got a lemon, so my tastes soured.
Yes, even then I was into Brougham barges! I still am!
My list:
Aston Martin Lagonda
Lamborghini Countach
Ferrari 308
1984-85 Corvette
Rolls Royce Silver Spur
Porsche 928
1987 Jaguar XJ6
Cadillac Fleetwood limousine
Rolls Royce Phantom VI
1981 Firebird
1982 Firebird
Vector
Lincoln Mk VII
1980-85 Cadillac Seville (really)
Also…Mercedes W126
I really wanted a 1996-99 Ford Taurus as my first car, I knew they weren’t too expensive used and I loved them. I recall printing out pictures to keep in one of my school books.
I also was fascinated with 1992+ Cadillac Eldorados and Sevilles. The former was one of the cars you could race in Midtown Madness 2 and I always picked it.
From @ 1973-1980, I updated my bedroom car shrine regularly. I used the upper 2 shelves so I could stare at them while I sat to do my homework on the dropdown desk. Often hand-built & painted model kits, bought dealer promo Jo-Han models, did drawings and used whatever else I could that was car related to display and dream about.
I found alot of my old car pics yesterday while digging around for the ’85 CRX pictures and ran across these car shrine photos. The others are off to the side in case I see a post here related to any of them, they’re old pics, (from’70s) but if you look closely, you’ll see a diversity of vehicles, (Dusenberg, Mercer, Rolls, T-Birds), but majority was always Cadillac. My Mom says I was obsessed with cars, specifically Cadillacs, since about 5yo. My nickname at school from 3rd grade thru most of high school was ‘Cadillac’
I had shelves filled with showroom brochures from most GM and Lincoln, but the Cadillac brochures go from 1957-2006, I still have them all. Once I started working at the Olds Dealership, I took whatever promo framed car pics the manager would give me and put them up on my walls too. Somewhere in storage, I still have a framed oversize picture of the silver/maroon Toronado XSR (production XS hot-wire wraparound backglass + power T-tops!), they only built a couple of these beautiful cars.
I even covered the walls in the shed outside with Cadillac wheelcovers from ’50s, ’60s & ,’70s… no blank wallspace was sacred 🙂
here’s a search result photo of the Toronado XSR prototype I mentioned having a large framed Oldsmobile showroom picture of stored away… what an awesome car!
I have the print ad of the XSR in my collection. Crazy they got as far as advertising it, only to axe the program. The same thing happened with the Beretta Convertible over a decade later.
On my list also but a little older than 15. My room mate in college at that time Dad was S.M. at an Olds Dealer in Dallas. Thought that car was so neat but never saw a real one at the time. Things dreams are made of!
“My Mom says I was obsessed with cars, specifically Cadillacs, since about 5yo. My nickname at school from 3rd grade thru most of high school was ‘Cadillac’
I had shelves filled with showroom brochures from most GM and Lincoln, but the Cadillac brochures go from 1957-2006, I still have them all.”
In my opinion, you just “won the thread”!!!
And I am beyond envious of your Cadillac brochure collection!!
Im the Countach generation but I never had one on the wall. I hated those cars. For me, it was always musclecars and torn out pages from Hot Rod, PHR, and Car Craft with the Street Machines and Pro Streeters of the 70s and 80s.
There was Daisy Duke and Heather Locklear too.
1962 Ford Fairlane with a dented hood.
Not.
From about 10 til 18 I had dozens of Porsche pictures that I had cut out of magazines. They were up so long that when I moved out and took the pictures down the paint behind them was lighter colored than the rest of the paint.
In one of the older houses that my parents had rented, I had a lot of wall space so I put up posters of many Dodge vehicles in the mid to late 90’s, from perhaps a 1995 auto show. I think they included a Neon and a Stealth, which was a contrast. They never went back up after moving houses. Ironically after that, still in my high school years, I ended up with a white Lamborghini Countach poster in a golden frame (which said copyright 1986), that my family got from a garage sale and hung on the wall beside my bed. I also put up a laminated poster of a yellow 1995 Porsche 911 Carrera placed on a wall at the foot of my bed. I felt that the Porsche might inspire me as I would see it every time I woke up in the morning.
The one I had of the Stealth was from a magazine ad in Hot Rod magazine–it was a multi-page ad that was stapled into the magazine with a single staple, and featured a page devoted to all the R/T models – at the time, the Spirit R/T, Stealth R/T, and Daytona R/T. Must have been 1992 as evidently that was the only year where the R/T versions of both Spirit and Daytona existed. If you removed the ad from the magazine it unfolded into a six-page sized poster of the Stealth R/T.
I went to my first auto show in Toronto in 1995, just before turning 13, and I grabbed whatever free posters I could get. Although I was more into GM cars at the time as my dad drove a Pontiac, I found the Dodge posters to be quite colorful and well-illustrated. They were each about the size of a sheet of paper with a full picture on the front and all the specs on the back, and I had picked up enough to create a nice gallery. I had seen a Spirit R/T on a recent TV show and it made a good sleeper sedan.
None. Mom would have never allowed posters of anything to be put up in my room. Statues and reliquaries of the saints, now that was another matter. Obviously, I did not decorate my room. My mother did. I only slept in it.
Lotus Esprit, as rendered by Bob Peak on ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ oz 3-sheet.
Now? 1968 Le Mans original, second issue after they changed the dates due to the student uprising. And a picture of Fangio above the bed.
I was 15 in 1981 and for the most part the new cars didn’t interest me. I collected CX brochures and XJ 12 leaflets from motor shows but all the items which were displayed came from 1960s Life magazines and National Geographics from 1950 onwards.
The Kaufman/Fitzpatrick wide track Pontiacs were a favourite.
These days I’m sorry I actually cut up the magazines, so hooray for scanners!
We’d had just moved back to the states from Europe. I’m not a performance car fan, but I was interested in every day economy cars from Europe. There were many many VW bugs in the states at that time. I wanted to be different, and was interested in the latest front wheel drive tech. So I got interested in Fiat 128s and then the new VW Rabbit . Wow !! A Volkswagen that’s different !!
The 1959 Cadillac both the Fleetwood 60 Special with the ice cream cone scoops on the rear quarter panels and the 6 window Sedan DeVille that had wraparound windows front and rear. And the 1980s Cadillac Brougham, which I actually got when I was 21.
This would be around ’97-’98
I did not have a poster but had a great book of pictures, “Classic Cars” by Roger Hicks. My posters were big band related.
The E-Type Jag (roadster)and the Studebaker Avanti. There was an Avanti within bike riding distance when I was in my early teens. That was something exotic looking and the E-Type was just sex on wheels (still is). I had a chance to buy a decent looking ’68 E-Type roadster when I was 23 (in ’83) for $12,000… That was almost half my annual salary then and I had no garage… By the time I had a proper garage it was more like a full year’s pay…
When I was 15 in 1996, I was getting back into comic books (my collection is in the many thousands now) and it was the X-Men (Psylocke in particular) I liked enough to hang on my walls. Car-wise, I had just gotten over an elementary school infatuation with the Lincoln Mark VIII and had begun coveting the Honda Prelude. I was a weird kid, man. European exotics never interested me. I’ve never been able to work up any kind of emotion towards them, and that still holds true even today.
You’re not the only one! I appreciate them, I respect them but I just have no connection with them. If I could afford an exotic European I wouldn’t go for the most powerful Lambo or best handling Ferrari, I’d probably get an Aston Martin.
Yup, I have a soft spot for them, but compared to the Italians, they’re so much more understated, subtler. Well, slightly older ones especially are. The DB7 is so, so pretty.
Turned 15 in late ’88, my poster of choice was a Lamborghini Countach. Red, natch. Next to it was the framed photo of my Dad and me sitting in a Countach at the 1986 New Zealand Motor Expo. I also covered my walls with various other brochures/posters, 90% of European cars, but the Lambo had pride or place. Good times!
Despite my strong interests in cars I never had one on my walls. In fact the only poster up on my wall, in 1966-73, was one of a Baltimore Colt linebacker representing Mike Curtis.
Didn’t discover car mags until I was 13, in 1977. By ’79 when I was 15 I was still smitten by the AMC Concord and the Lincoln Versailles (yeah I’m a strange bird I know). I also thought the new Caddy Eldo/Buick Riv/Olds Toro front drivers were pretty nice. Never had car posters on my bedroom walls.
I was 15 in 1966, So the 66 GTO was my Obsession. Aided and abetted my-Brother-in-law, who bought one. Still 15 when the 67 Goats arrived so there was that obsession also. Hayell. I loved GTOs form 64 through 70.
A 2×3 foot poster of a black 1930 Packard rumbleseat convertible was one of my prized possessions at that age. I had it until it got severely damaged in a move when I was about 30. I also had a 3 or 4 page fold out ad for a 1968 Mercury Park Lane. There was a 1956 Packard Carriibean, 1964 Cadillac Eldorado convertible and many more. Hub caps were also highly prized, and I had about a dozen on my walls along with license plates and emblems pulled off of junkyard wrecks. As much as I wanted to hang them up I kept the Playboy centerfolds in a box under the bed.
When I was fifteen:
Porsche 911 coupe
Mercedes Grosser 600
Shelby Mustang GT350
Those three cars were current then; I was a subscriber to R&T and C&D.
This in 2006.
I got a giant poster of that car from a friend of mine, who was foaming at the mouth over it too. I didn’t like the wheels much, and it needed to lose those stripes, but basically, it was perfect. I couldn’t afford an SRT, so I bought a Charger R/T instead. 3 years later, I got my Hemi Orange Challenger R/T Classic.
What’s next? An R/T Scatpack, in the best color available in late 2016. No stripes, please. If they’re on it already, they’re coming off.
I was 15 in 1989. I had the obligatory white Countach on my bedroom wall, along with a Corvette ZR-1 cutaway diagram. I think there was an Infinity Q45 as well, oddly enough. I was really into MLB baseball at that time, so I had more team logos and banners than car posters. All I read were the car buff magazines, though.
I forget which magazine it came out of but I had the centerfold of a ’38 Buick Y-Job on display. To this day the Y-Job remains in my Top Ten List of Favorite Cars. Wish I still had that picture. Later on I framed a drawn Vector poster; still have that one.
Being 15 for the bulk of 1988, I was prime Countach fodder, but I never had one. Instead, it was a 1967 Pontiac GTO, a 1987 Buick GNX, a 1955 Ford Thunderbird, and a Mercedes 380 SL (or whatever variety of two-seater convertible was popular at the time).
The Countach seemed so expected and it just wasn’t me.
However, had I seen the car and company in the upper left of the lead picture at that point in time, I might have felt differently. 🙂
I actually had the Countach with the naked girl poster in my high school years which my mom sneakily threw out at some point while I was in school. I grew up with the Diablo and Murcialago(sp?) so I actually went out of the way to find a Countach one, and damn did I find a good one!
Also had a 62 Vette Painting drawn by my Uncle Carl, a Porsche 944, a Ferrari 308 GTS, a 70 Roadrunner in plum crazy, an a 71 Hemi Cuda.
As to what I obsessed with though, it was probably the prototype Lamborgini Muira Jota and the slopenosed 935 Porsche racers. I went through a very deep obsession with those two cars at that age for whatever reason.
This. This right here.
I’ve never had any interest in exotics, as a teen my wall had a Mazda RX7 poster, a poster of all 1983 Honda motorcycles, and this centerfold out of a Hot Rod magazine with a 1967 Impala climbing Pikes Peak
Some 80’s F1 cars. Can’t remember. Not a Countach.
Nowadays… I don’t do that. I probably should.
However, I have a rolling collection of wallpapers. And there’s a bit of everything in there: tunerZ, ratrods, Aussie, Euro, Japanese, American, Vintage, modern, race, rally, trains (The Ghan picture I got is epic), Calvin&Hobbes, scale models… and it keeps growing. I’ve got an F40, but still no Countach.
I don’t really recall having much in the way of posters on my wall growing up (shared a bedroom with my next-youngest brother). I sure built a lot of scale models of my favorites, though – between me and my three brothers, we had over 300 on display by the time I finished high school.
See if you can ID some of the car models in the pic… (c:
Building model kits is always a good and lasting hobby. In the last semester for the technical writing course, the professor (around 60yo) fondly recalls the time he was assembling the model kits as a boy long time ago, and he worked in GM for more than three decades afterwards. Even though the instruction we ( a group project ) wrote is about assembling a Soviet model car, I can still see he appreciates it a lot and likes it personally. And I think the retro styling does some help too.
I am still vaguely envious when I see people who have really competently executed model kits with customized details and so forth. I tried building model kits when I was a kit, but I was always crap at it — I could manage the assembly okay, but the painting was always a disaster. I tried building one many years later, as an adult, and was no better at it despite being marginally smarter about it.
I had a whole lot more patience then than now.I found a 1/72 P40 Warhawk on the bus and handed it in when i finished work. No one claimed it after 6 weeks(I think) so it was mine.It sat around gathering dust unopened and I gave it to a friends boy.
I was only 13 but the 68 Thunderbird 4dr. would have been the ultimate car at the time. Dreamed about this picture many times. I remember how that name conjured up so many images in my young mind and nothing expressed it better than the picture on the link below for the whole family to travel in. To fly into Atlanta on a Lear Jet and then get picked up in this car and taken to the Regency Hyatt House downtown would have been heaven on earth. http://oldcarbrochures.org/NA/Ford_Thunderbird/1968-Ford-Thunderbird/1968-Ford-Thunderbird-Brochure/1968-Ford-Thunderbird-10-11
I was 15 in 1982-83. Don’t laugh too hard, but for me it was probably the GM A-cars, which were new at the time — especially the Pontiac 6000 STE and the Olds Cutlass Ciera. I even tried to get my folks to buy a Ciera, but they bought a 1983 88 Royale instead. Probably a wise decision! Other than that, I was still obsessing over the Toronado/Riviera/Eldorado, the 1979-85 versions that were in the middle of their run around then. I never got tired of them, and I owned a 1979 Toronado this decade that I’ve now sold.
This one will hit home for Paul – ’83 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. When we came up to Illinois from Texas for our annual Christmas visit in ’83 my maternal grandparents had the brochure lying around the house. They were thinking about trading their ’78 T-Bird and went to go see my great uncle Frank, a career Ford salesman. I don’t remember the reason why they decided to keep their old car, but in the end they did.
I couldn’t put that brochure down. The Aerobird just looked so different from anything on the road. The obsession continued all through my high school years. Every fall I stopped by the Ford dealer that I passed on the way to school each day to pick up the new T-Bird brochure.
Two years out of high school the dream became reality – an ex-rental ’88 T-Bird. Sure it was base model with the head gasket eating 3.8 V6 instead of a turbo, but it was still an Aerobird. Head gaskets and all it’s still the best damn car I’ve ever had.
I remember saving up allowance money and sending away for this one:
Great artwork!
No posters on the real plaster walls of our prewar house — it would be difficult to drive a nail through it without damage and tape was also a no-no in our house, even in the room I shared with my brother.
So I drew cars in my school notebooks; at the time, I was not very aware of “foreign” cars as we called them back in the day in Pittsburgh other than the very common VW Beetle and for a short time, the Renault Dauphine. And I knew about Jaguars and Rolls-Royces but never saw any in the flesh as I can recall.
My favorites at 15 were the 1965-66 Pontiac Bonnevilles. I couldn’t wrap my head around the facelifted ’67s, with their odd bifurcated front ends (upper headlamps above the grille and the lower headlamps in the grille). I also didn’t like that “slash” character line in the lower quarter panels just ahead of the rear wheels.
The ’67 Grand Prix avoided the headlight problem by having its quads arranged horizontally and hidden behind the grille — that was sharp, and there was a convertible GP for the first time. Still there was that slash…
That’s a thin slice of wall, and I feel it can represent 30% of all posters/model kits.
In early 1990, Dad announced that soon he would be trading in his Iron Duke-powered 1987 Buick Century – a hand-me-down from my maternal grandfather – for a new 1990 Honda Accord. It would be my family’s first Japanese-badged car.
As I was approaching 15 and close to gaining my learner’s permit, I welcomed this news tremendously… and soon, I became utterly obsessed with learning all I could about the fourth-generation Accord. I pored over Motor Trend’s test of the new car during free period in the high school library, collected all the promotional materials I could, and accompanied my dad on several late-evening trips to Honda Cars of Bellevue (NE) to look over the various models, without being bothered by a salesman.
I had fallen in love with a teal green EX sedan; we ended up with a dark gray LX, which still proved to be a fantastic automobile. I took my driving test in that car, it ferried me on my first date, and I would still occasionally take it to school during my senior year. By that time we’d moved to New Mexico, and I was driving my second car, a Geo Storm… that was utterly inferior in every measure to the nearly 200,000-mile Honda, except that it was mine.
Wow. When I turned 15 in 1968, I was a messed-up mess, wrapped up in school and my music studies, as well as being a primary caretaker of my bedridden and demanding mother, and I was in a phase of not caring what cars were on the road. (My mother is whole story that is neither here nor there right now!) That’s too bad, because little did I know that in a few years, the malaise era of bloat accompanied by ever-wimpier engines would enter on the scene. I can only look back now on what I might have fantasized about what I might have liked.
The Camaro and Firebird were certainly eye-catching; my brother and his wife had a Firebird, but it turned out to be an unreliable car. I liked the ’65 and ’66 GM full-sized cars better than the ’67 and ’68 models, which to my eye were sort of bloated. I just didn’t connect with their midsize and compact products.
Chrysler products? Off the radar.
Ford products? Looking back, the Mercury Cougar was a stunner, pulling off a very different look from its sibling, the Mustang.
Imports? Nah; I loathed my dad’s ’61 Mercedes 190Db, a smoky, incredibly noisy and clattery thing, with all the acceleration of an overloaded bicycle. I will give it this: it had VERY comfortable seats. And I just didn’t know much about other imports. The Japanese brands were just getting a toehold in the U.S., and they were still unknown quantities.
My fifteenth year is not one I would care to repeat. I’m glad to be far away from that time!
In 1964 I was fifteen and we had recently moved to a new house where I got my own bedroom – the car pictures I pasted up were mostly the customs and hot rods from the car magazines but I still have 3 framed photos I bought at a car show and hung with pride.
A red stock 1940 Ford Coupe
A white TR3
A silver Gullwing Mercedes with the doors open.
I remember being disappointed earlier by the new Corvette Sting Ray but have sure changed my mind since then!
I always liked luxury cars,so pictures of `67 Eldoradoes, Mk lll Continentals,Rivieras, Toronados and Grand Prix decorated my rooms, along with sports cars like `68 Corvettes , E Type Jaguars and Ferraris. Muscle cars were OK,but just not my thing but I always lusted after Cobras and Shelby GT 350s.
I was 15 in 1988, growing up in a suburb of LA. My fascination was with the Citroen CX and I am still fascinated by them, having never sat in one. I also had a cutout of a 1980 Ford Taunus Ghia from a magazine on my wall. I was a pretty weird kid.
No posters but 15 y.o. me obsessed over the Dodge Charger Daytona, Maserati Bora, Lotus Europa, and the Batmobile from the original TV series.
My 15th year straddled 1964 and 1965. I did not have any posters on the wall but stacks of R&T, C&D, and Hot Rod. My two favorites then and now were the E-type coupe and the Shelby 350GT.
Those scale models take me back. I shared a paper route with another kid who put all his profits in a bank account for college while I spent mine on AMT and Johan models. We had a 6-cubic-foot cardboard box of leftover parts in our basement that I would occasionally build a car out of. Customizing was done with a jackknife heated in the flame of Mom’s gas stove, and cotton was liberally applied as interior carpeting.
I always loved cars, but didn’t hang pictures. Don’t know why.
I was 15 in 1965, and my tastes ran towards GT cars with big American engines, be they domestic or foreign built. A particular favorite was the Facel Vega, with its honking Chrysler mill, near horizontal steering column and the exotically named Pont-a-Mousson 4-speed stick. I knew I would need a tux to drive one, and that added to the appeal.
Facel Vega? You, sir, have good taste. I discovered the Excellence and Facel II in a book of European Sportscars that I got when I was probably 11 or 12, and have loved them ever since. I have a 1:18 model of that HK500, which is probably the closest I’ll ever get to one.
The interiors are perhaps even more outstanding than the styling.
+1 also a long time fan of Euro American exotics here.
No car posters that I can remember, but I had a book “Supercars of the Seventies” (with a Countach on the cover, naturally) that I treasured. I would wash my hands before touching it and handle it very delicately, like a museum piece.
I also had a Porsche 928 sales brochure I liked to look through and imagine a more exciting and interesting life than the one I had.
In 1971, I had a chunk of one wall with pics of cars on it, the “stars” of that wall were:
1970 Charger R/T, solid yellow.
1970 ‘Cuda, bright red.
1971 Roadrunner, Petty blue with white stripes.
1971 Trans Am. Red.
1971 Z-28 Blue.
Not a single Ford, AMC, or foreign car ever made my wall.
one poster was something like this:
I had a thing for targa turbo slantnose 911 porsches at one time.
Well I guess it’s time to own up to my years. No wall posters but a shelf with dealer brochures and Sunday edition classified from the Oregonian news paper. The object of my desire 1963 Pontiac Lemans convertible 4 bbl. 4 speed and 4 cly. as pictured and reported in Paul’s excellent write up. Only problem I had to wait till I was 60 to acquire it.
one poster was something like this:
I had one of these on my wall at one time:
Mid-late 80s: Countach, Quattro in Group B livery and dirt, and a BMW 6-Series.
one of these was on my wall for awhile:
I wanted a ’77 Pontiac Firebird Formula 400.
In 1979, this was the car on my mind…
I think I had one of these on my wall once upon a time:
The 1968 GTO was what I obsessed over as a teen in the early 1980s. My classmates had those Lamborghini posters, I never cared for those cars. As for my walls, they were covered in self-made “posters” of xeroxed album covers. MC5, Eddie & The Hot Rods, that kinda thing…
1984 – No posters that I recall, but like many others, there were several shelves of models. Pretty much all factory stock 1930’s – 1950’s American stuff.
I had a Harley Davidson Electra Glide which I believe was a gift.
I had the poster with the dark blue Countach as well
And being raised on Volvos I had a poster of the BTCC Volvo 855 race car
I had some hot laydees as well and probably some other cars.
Posters on the wall in the first half of the eighties:
-DAF N-series beer hauler, owned by a company nearby (poster below)
-Mack F700, also owned by a Dutch company
-Kenworth W900A
-Peterbilt 359
-White Western Star COE
My room was also loaded with 1:24 and 1:25 plastic model kits. US-trucks from Ertl (and one AMT) and Euro-trucks from Italeri (plus a semi-trailer from Heller). DAF, Scania, Volvo, Mercedes, Mack, International and Kenworth. And of course matching trailers and semi-trailers.
Conclusion: I was more interested in big diesel trucks than in cars. Let alone in sports cars.
Nice livery on that thing.
In the eighties it was “hot” to Americanize (West Coast !) Euro rigs. Chrome, vertical exhaust stacks, wild graphics, sometimes a separate sleeper, etc.
In factory trim the DAF N-series from the early eighties was essentially a very naked heavy-duty truck, developed and built for harsh (African) conditions. Think Mercedes L-series. It was only available as a 6×4 truck or tractor and it had the cab of the Magirus-Deutz Eckhauber. As you can see the DAF above is very dressed up and as such it’s a fine example of a West Coast class 8 rig. Sort of…
That looks like a mixture of:
Ford
Sterling
Mack
maybe a little bit Western Star
Two DAF N2800 dump trucks in factory trim, “African style”.
And the White Western Star mainly stood out thanks to its cab graphics.
I’m shocked to realize that I can’t remember half the posters on my walls in my youth, but the one I can still clearly see in my mind was of an Eleanor Mustang that was all the rage after the Gone In 60 Seconds remake in 2000, I think I got the poster from the Chrom & Flammen American car magazine. I also had a bunch of 1:18 model cars, including a Porsche 993 Targa, Ferrari Testarossa and Bugatti EB110, and a whole crate of Matchbox and Hotwheels. Whenever I needed a crashed car to recreate a chase scene with a big accident I took a Matchbox to my dad’s workbench and banged it up with his vise and a hammer.
Countachs ? Diablos ? Testarossas ?
Nah… Only the true path of the Brougham is worth following.
So, during my youth, I had advertisements cut out from US magazines and pasted to my wall.
– Chrysler Imperial : a simpler way to get world’s best engineering ;
– Dodge Dynasty : for those that have enough money to throw around and enough sense not to ;
– 1993 Buick Park Avenue.
I also had two drawings made by my father : a late forties Buick convertible and a 1959 Cadillac 62 convertible.
Dad’s 1960 Chevy Impala sports sedan!
Besides that, a 1957 Chevy and/or an army Jeep.
As for the Lamborghini Countach posters, who in their right mind would want a piece of junk like that? I’m not kidding, either.
I wouldn`t mind having that “hood ornament” on the orange Lambo!
Usually the late 60’s and early 70’s muscle cars and of course the then new 1984 Vette and most any neat F-body. Most of my friends at school liked those too
My father had a 1953 Studebaker Champion Starlight from 1954 through the early 1960s. He always talked fondly about that car, along with the 1951 Champion sedan that he had bought as a slightly used car, and then sold to his parents when he bought the 1953 Studebaker.
In the late 1970s, he took me to the Harrisburg Auto Show, and I bought a poster featuring photos of several vintage Studebakers. The poster was on my bedroom wall for several years.
The car in the center of the poster was a mint 1953 Commander Starliner. I’ve wanted that car ever since.
My father also had a 1953 Studebaker, a Commander 4 dr. When I was 9 he took me out on a desolate country road for my first driving lesson.
The Alpine A 110 and 4 Cyl A 310
A110
A310 and A110
A310 (the 6 cyl)
A110 was definitely an object of desire for me in the late ’60’s. I did see a few Miuras here in the US, but Im not sure I’ve ever seen an A110 outside of a magazine picture.
You definitely had excellent taste and an impressive concept of performance for a youngster.
On my bedroom walls at age 15, I remember having a DeLorean DMC-12, a Lamborghini Countach, wedge Lotus Esprit, Ferrari 288 GTO, Vector WX3, Plymouth Superbird.
I had a poster of an Opel Calibra on my wall when I was about 7. I did think it looked great at the time, but it was also the only car poster I happened to get my hands on since my dad got it from the Opel dealer I believe (where he bought a Kadett of course).
Seeing as I will be 15 until late July, I am currently obsessing over the:
-Citroen S(&)M
-Saab 900 SPG
-VW Golf R(32) series
-Mk2 Chevy Corvair Corsa coupé
-1965 Chrysler 300 Letter
-1935 Auburn
-Duesenberg SJ
-Cord 810/812
-Panhard 24
-1973 Pontiac Grand Am
-1961-63 Plymouth Valiant with the NASCAR Slant 6
-Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTV6
-1965-66 Dodge Charger
-Studebaker Avanti
I always knew I was the weird child, and this should prove it.
Not too weird. 2nd Gen Corvairs were quite desirable but still affordable and fairly common when I was 15, and the GrandAm came out just before I turned 16, and I liked it then as well. Ditto Panhard 24’s and Cords. Charger and Avanti, not so much. No SPG Saabs then, but the 850cc Saab 96 Monte Carlo was perhaps its counterpart at the time.
Saab !
Mr. Saab (rally legend Erik Carlsson) passed away a few days ago, at the age of 86.
RIP Mr. Saab.
Also, the Alfa Romeo Montreal
I was 15 in 1962 and there were a lot of cars that I lusted after, but I was completely fixated on having a ’57 Thunderbird as my first car. Never happened, but when the retro-Bird came out, the obsession started anew, and at the age of 56, I finally got my ’57 T-Bird in the form of my ’03 model. Still driving it and still loving it, and it still draws considerable attention. Never had any posters on my wall, but my 20-odd promo car collection occupied a prominent place on my bedroom bookshelf. Still have all of those, too.
From the time I can remember (so maybe 5 or around), until I moved from that room to a different room in the house, I had a huge Ferrari Testarossa poster. I loved that poster and it’s still around but almost 20 years of tape have made it so I haven’t tried unfolding it 🙁
I also have an F50 poster similar to it but it never got on the wall. Still rolled up somewhere.
It looked very much like this one if not the same. I don’t remember the reflection on the bottom.
I turned 16 at the end of 1963 and the muscle cars, except the GTO had not come out yet, as neither had the pony cars. The car I lusted after and would still like to have was a 1963 Studebaker Avanti R3.
I was fifteen in 1969, a freshman in high school. The car that I really dreamed about wasn’t a Mach One, a Corvette or even a Jag XKE. It was a 1960 Cadillac series 62 convertible. This car was obviously well cared for because it was a shiny glossy black with a black top and chrome baby moon wheels with black walls. It was slightly lowered and sported a pair of chromed slash cut exhaust pipes under the rear bumper. I would see the car parked in front of a tavern on Marsh Creek Rd. in Clayton Ca. just before the big curve. I saw this car all Freshman year and dreamed of piloting this black rocket ship along the back highways of Northern Ca. I’d always loved Cads and this car sealed the deal. In 1975 I bought my second car, a 1964 series 62 Cadillac convertible. Gold with a tan top and interior. Boy did I love that car! When someone offered me twice what I had in the car, I stupidly sold it.
I turned 15 in 1990, which is when my walls turned from Countach to… Lexus. I think I had every single framed Countach poster ever made (incl. all 4 pictured) hoarded from K-mart, a craft store my mother went to and various carnival winnings.
Beginning in 89 my walls started going Lexus, with every clipping I could find and the pull out ads and brochures and an AWESOME dot-matrix banner printed at home, LOL. On the ceiling was a Batman poster (in front of the Batmobile), Elvira (3 posters) and a Ginger Lynne poster that my older brother gave me for Christmas. I had just gotten my Learner’s permit and I was set on buying an ’85 Cadillac Seville that was for sale by my school bus stop. That summer we moved to Europe.
I didn’t have any car posters at all, but I was drawing pictures of cars with fins similar to 1957-58 Chrysler products. I did have one magazine ad of a 1958 Cadillac Sixty Special sedan on my dorm room wall, along with a number of old license plates.
Speaking of posters, I had criticized my friend a few months ago. He found a perfectly preserved large poster that belonged to his older brother with the Oldsmobile lineup of cars from the late 80s. I think it included the boxy Cruiser station wagon, Tornado and Cutlass Ciera among the cars. He put it up in his office/den/man cave room using tape of all things. The sun from the windows on the opposite wall could possibly cause some fading and further deterioration now that I think about it. The cars and the poster are now hard to find in 2015 (here in Canada).
You’re talking about 1977 for me, so it was a rather eclectic mix of racing Porsche, Aston Martin Lagonda (the Williams Towns designed straight edge car) and James Hunt’s F1 Championship winning MacLaren M23, along with a few big trucks.
And, rather worryingly, I remember an Austin Allegro estate as well.
’69 GTO The Judge. ‘Nuff said.
I wasn’t even 5 at the time, but I loved watching “BJ and the Bear” when it was on. Ever since, I’ve liked the Kenworth K-100 Aerodyne.
I grew up in the golden age of Lambo/Ferrari posters. I totally did not care for them. I had the then-new 1980 Trans Am and Firebird Formula promo poster, One of a Corvette, and one of a ’67 GTO.