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?
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?