What was the first "exotic" you saw as a kid that started your passion?

Daytona....

I've never been the same.

 

1968, red Miura first on the road and later at a gas station between Cannes and Monte Carlo

Rijk

 

i still am a kid but the car that started me was the mellenium metallico lamborghini that this guy used to bring to the golf course i worked at as a teen. He would always pay me $20 to spray the car off and wipe it down for him i want one still!

 

Growing up, the next door neigbor was a car guy. He had an older Jag(maybe an E-type), a restored Cobra, a 50's era Corvette, and a DeTomaso Pantera. Of them all it was the Pantera that really got my attention. Actually, everytime he drove it, it got the whole neigborhood's attention. LOUD! I think this collection is what got me started, but the passion lay dormant for many years until a combination of factors got me going. Always have loved F-cars though.

 

When I was a kid, my dad always subscribed to Car & Driver and Road & Track, so I saw plenty of exotics there. In person, though, the first one I remember was a 365GTC/4 parked in downtown Portland, when I was around 12.

Then, when I was about 15, a local used car lot that specialized in Porsches had a white 250GTE. Man, I spent a few days fantasizing about ways I could buy it, and how much fun it would be. This would have been around 1981.

An column in Car & Driver by David E. Davis really got me going on Ferraris. It was called something like "You wanna exercise my Ferrari?" and it was about Davis, as a teenager, driving a 250Tdf regularly for a friend. I bought a collection of Davis' columns recently and reread it, and it still gets me going. Just one of those things, I guess.

 

Her name was Lavinia; she was an exotic dancer.

That's what got me into 'Exotics'!

 

I was in my last year of high school and driving my girlfriend and her mom to Boston from upstate NY. Just as I entered the toll booth for the Mass pike a guy pulled up into the next booth in a TR--it must have been an 85 or 86. Anyway, he took off (leaving our sentra far behind) sounding and looking great. Someday I'll own a flat 12 maybe even a TR. At the moment I'm feeling like their a little too bold to show up someplace I'm known in. As time goes by they'll be appreciated as old classics and I'll be there.

 

The car that started it - the 288GTO.
Driving my cousins F355 was the final (expensive) nail in the coffin.

 

I can't remember one particular experience that sparked it off, but throughout my childhood / teens, the Countach was THE car that I wanted. Still remember the first time I saw one (at the UK main dealer). Still got the pictures....

Kinda sad that now I wouldn't buy one even though I could...

John

 

It wasn't seeing an exotic that got me started, it was hearing of my grandfather's collection that did it. My dad would tell me about the cars when i was little. He owned a 67' 275GTB4, a 70 365GTB4, and a 77 308GTB. My dad says they were fun cars and I am sure they were! Unfortunately he died in 89' two years after I was born. So i never really got to meet him. By then the cars were sold though.

My dad has had Corvettes since 95, but they have never made the hair on my arms stand up like only hearing about the Ferraris did. When I was 9 I bought my first Ferrari (model). It was a red F50 Barchetta, I still have it today, along with all my other Ferrari models. The F50 got me going, and still does, more than any of the stories did. Still haven't seen an F50 in person, but I hope I get to put one in my garage one day!!

 

For me, when I was in junior high I remember seeing and hearing a silver Lamborghini Urraco. It was and still is one of my favourite exotics!

 

Growing up in the late 1950's & 1960's in Saratoga, CA there was a neighbor that worked with my Dad. He first had one of the early Jag E-Type (Gunmetal gray/red leather coupe) that he traded for the first Ferrari I had ever seen a Silver blue with dark blue interior 250 GT Lusso. That was pretty exotic for 1963! I have loved Lussos ever since. Yes, the kids on the block (including yours truly) were given rides.

 

rare - a fiat 500 is rarer than 360's + 3x8's and shows one's initiative

mysterious - most lamborghini's (are alluring)

sexy - most ferrari's (are happy)

timeless subtil elegance - 246gt

memorable

70's


Exotic - the most delicious and desired dream. les sommeil et les reves

 

Daytona ...coupe

I used to visit (prowl) around the NYC shops of Chinetti, and Alberto Pedretti -while he owned Wide World of Cars - during the early '70's. There was just something special about the Daytona coupe that kept drawing me to it, even sitting still. In the late '70's, WW0C began having monthly tech sessions and just get togethers on Sunday mornings for owners to show off their cars and mingle. The sound of a dozen Daytona's in the parking lot was just shy of orgasmic. That did it for me ! .

 

mine started with porsche 911, 996's. but then moved onto Ferrari once I started reading road n track

 

Mine was from a computer game!

Ferrari Testarossa in the game "Test Drive" by Accolade, which I got for Christmas in December 1988 as a kid... I was all of 9 years old.

I remember seeing it on a demo computer in the computer store where my Dad bought the ol' 286. I was fascinated that you could SHIFT manually and see the gears change!

From that point on, I paid attention to my Dad's Road & Track mags! The 328 was inevitable...
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XK 120

 

red maserati bora in the showroom of grand prix limited in greenwich, ct.

never ever forget it! my mom went in w/ me and let me ask all kinds of questions to the sales man...i remember thinking...some day!!

i went on to get one too! dare to dream!!

 

I went to buy a 1000 ots Abarth for $800.00. Parents declined to loan the money, as I was 14. I did take pictures of it though. Next was when a farmer bought a Lamborghini Jalpa. After that was a 308 gtsi, yellow with the license plate 4re. The local pizza guy hada red & primered 246 gtb. All around 1984. Of course I had the regular diet of AAR Cudas and 400 Firebirds, GTO's etc. but the Italian cars always stuck with me.

 

Wow, funny how a thread can get resurrected and just take off...from 2004 to today on this page alone...must be a few new members in the last year or so!

For me, it was the first time I saw an Acura NSX in person. I was hardly a kid, about 25 or so, but one was parked at a neighbours house in silver...and I just about lost it! F'n gorgeous!!

Later on, due to horrific depreciation that only a bought new from dealer Ferrari 456 owner could appreciate, I was able to buy one ...in that same silver! For a while there, my auto itch was as fulfilled as it ever was..... I was king of the world!

Goldy

 

Saw an orange Lambo Miura in the mid '70s when I lived in So Cal.. Had a lot of toy cars and models as a kid but didn't really get "into it" until I saw the real thing.

 

1972 Lamborghini Miura

 

308 GTB at Universal Studios in LA, then I started talking about Ferraris and other Italians and I can remember having a picture or two of an Testarossa and Countach in my room.