√Love is in the air, or how the Drive team fell in love with cars

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, the Drive teams reveals how the spark of love for all things automotive was ignited.

It’s Valentine’s Day, the day of over-priced roses and bad poetry about said roses.

Incidentally, the first recorded Valentine’s poem came from France (of course) in the 15th century. Its two lines read:

Je suis desja d’amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée…

Which roughly translates to:

I am already sick of love
My very sweet Valentine…

Here at Drive though, while we have no doubt this morning filled our hearts with love, chocolate, and over-priced flowers, our first, deepest and most enduring love is for the humble car.

It’s not a prerequisite that you love cars to work at Drive. But it’s an inconvertible truth that for all of the team here, cars are a lifelong companion.

But how did we get here? How did a bunch of disparate people from vastly different backgrounds and from a wide spread of ages, fall in love with the humble automobile? What stoked the fires of their passion, a passion that has outlasted, will in all likelihood continue to outlast, most of our interpersonal relationships?

I surveyed the Drive editorial team to find out. And as always, feel free to share your own automotive love story in the comments below.

Glenn Butler – Head of Content (Vic)

For this drive.com.au celebration of Valentine’s Day, most of my colleagues are probably waxing lyrical about the car that first ignited their passion. For me it wasn’t the machines themselves; it was what I could do with them.

I fell in love with motorbikes first. Cars came second. For both, it was all about freedom and speed. Freedom to go where I want whenever I want, and at speeds to thrill.

Inevitably, crashes and speeding tickets followed, most of the former on race tracks which is probably why I’m still alive today.

As for my pursuit of velocity, I quickly learned to apply and ‘time and place’ filter, and to understand that the enjoyment of speed is relative to the vehicle and the location: 200-plus on an autobahn doesn’t always feel fast, but half that on a closed mountain road can really get the blood pumping.

Trent Nikolic – Managing Editor

My love of cars is very much passed down from my parents. Both of them loved driving, loved cars and learnt to drive in the glory days of motoring in Australia in the 1960s when Australian-built cars ruled the roads and European cars were an exotic beast that few could afford. My earliest motoring memory though, is being broken down on the side of the road in my father’s Mini Moke…

Sam Purcell – Off-road Editor

It was the go-anywhere, do-anything nature of our long-serving family car – a 1985 Land Rover One Ten – during my formative years. I had the side-facing seats in the back all to myself, and can remember the 3.5-litre alloy V8 always sounding muscular. It made less than 100kW. It took our family of five on many road-tripping holidays, towed all manner of heavy burdens, and spent a lot of time churning through the soft sandy beaches of the New South Wales Mid North Coast. (That’s a very young Sam Purcell on the right in the back of said Land Rover in the photo below).

Kez Casey – Production Editor

It’s hard to know where exactly my love affair with motoring started. Was it riding along in the plush velour of Mum’s WB Statesman with its rumbling V8, or piloting Dad’s LandCruiser through paddocks helping feed out hay?

I grew up surrounded by cars, with my older brothers working as panel beaters, and me assisting on nights and weekends, or pouring over the piles of car magazines they had stacked up in the house and workshop.

From Sandmans to Celicas in the driveway, to Peugeots and Porsches on pages and posters, the styling, noise, and detail differences lured me in from a young age, and like so many first loves, will always occupy a place in my heart.

Emma Notarfrancesco – Senior Presenter

I have my family to thank for my devotion to cars. I still have the most vivid memory of the very first time I drove a car, well close enough – I was four. sitting on my father’s lap, steering his 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser down the driveway of our family farm.

As the years passed, I eventually got to pilot on my own, cruising around the farm and leaving me with the fond memory of my dad ending up with an empty tank at the end of every weekend.

Ben Zachariah – Journalist

From a very young age, driving represented freedom, trust, and maturity. While I loved the feeling of riding through the streets of Mornington on my mountain bike as a kid, I always longed to be able to jump in my own customised car and head for the horizon whenever the wind called my name. It was all highly romanticised in my head – and, to be fair, not much has changed.

Around that time, I also watched my TV in awe as rally cars in the WRC and ARC danced on the edge of blistering speed and losing control, and wanted to conquer that skill. Though people who love cars don’t always love driving, those who love driving always love cars – and I am firmly in the latter camp.

Tom Fraser – Journalist

I find most automotive-themed love affairs begin even before they have a driver’s licence, and forgive me for the industry self-plug, but it started with automotive media.

I used to love reading Wheels, Motor, CAR, and Top Gear magazines as a kid, cutting-out photos and pasting them into a scrapbook, to then annotate with specifications and my own personal comments.

Motorsport also played a large role in getting me hooked on all things automotive. The one-two combo of watching the V8 Supercars on TV, in addition to fawning over production cars in print media, this was how my blind love for cars formed.

James Ward – Director of Content

My love of cars began at a very early age. My first word was ‘car’ and apparently, as soon as I could walk I would stand at a large bay window watching cars pass all day long.

Mum drove a Fiat 127 but I am told I was absolutely transfixed by the X1/9 that sat in the showroom where she bought it.

I’ve always loved the design of the machine, sometimes elegant, sometimes simple, but always in a way that told a story behind the lines.

Driving itself really clicked when I realised I could just go where ever I wanted. Plenty of P-Plate era weekends were spent looking at a map and finding somewhere interesting that I had never been to before – and often just taking a turn down a side road just to see where it went.

I had my first taste of proper performance driving at a Sandown driver training track day in my VTEC Civic, and despite not being fast, loved every minute of it.

Now, I chase the feeling of a harmonious connection between the car and the road much more than speed – to be in a beautiful car surrounded by stunning landscape is a love that never dies.

Rob Margeit – Features Editor

My love affair was ignited by my next-door neighbour, Rudi, who owned a silver over red Porsche 356 Cabriolet. We lived on the sixth floor of a post-war apartment block in Cologne, Germany and my bedroom window looked over the carpark. I could hear when Rudi left for work, when he came home, when he otherwise went for a drive, the 356’s distinctive air-cooled engine stirring up something inside a very young Robbie.

Sometimes, Rudi would take me a for a spin around the block, dropping the roof, that glorious air-cooled sound thundering just behind my head as the wind ruffled my shaggy 1970s hair.

I have never forgotten those privileged moments, nor the unbridled joy they evoked in a young boy that sparked a passion I’ve been fortunate enough to turn into a life-long career.

I remember that child, channel him and the delight he felt, when one of the neighbours’ kids today makes heart-shaped eyes at one the more exotic cars I’m sometimes privileged enough to take home.

Sydney’s inner west is a long way from the working-class streets of Cologne, but maybe today’s quick spins around the neighbourhood kindles a flame in a young kid that turns into a life-long passion.

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