To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Your First Car Tells The Story
Remember your first car? That freedom with the windows down, your favorite song playing, and your best friends laughing in the backseat? Every car tells a storyâand those automotive stories reveal who we really are.
Welcome to our podcast, To All The Cars I've Loved Before, where we celebrate automotive nostalgia through personal car stories from everyday car enthusiasts, father-son restoration teams, father-daughter automotive adventurers, and families passing down car culture across generations. From first car stories and forgotten beaters to vintage car dreams and car restoration projects, we explore automotive memories through the vehicles that shaped our lives.
What Makes Us Different: We hold nothing back except politics, new car reviews, and focusing only on celebrities. This isn't another industry podcastâit's about automotive history told through YOUR experiences. Whether it's your first ride, learning to drive, or the car that changed everything, we share your automotive stories with classic car collectors, restoration junkies, and everyday drivers. Because automotive stories are life stories.
What Youâll Hear: Real people sharing real automotive memoriesâfrom father-daughter DeLorean projects to first-generation immigrants learning American car culture through a beat-up sedan. We feature car enthusiasts whoâve restored classic cars, students training in car restoration, and anyone with a first car story worth telling. Every episode proves your automotive history is your personal history.
Your Hosts: Doug and Christianâtwo friends who believe the best automotive stories come from everyday people, not just collectors and experts. Weâve loved everything from project cars to dream machines, and we know that vintage car memories and personal car stories connect us all.
Perfect for: Road trips, commutes, or anyone who still remembers that feeling of freedomâwindows down, music up, going nowhere in particular but loving every minute.
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Check out our website https://carsloved.com and listen to us on your favorite podcast platform or https://buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes
To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Your First Car Tells The Story
Seven VW Beetles, Five Decades: Converting Dad from Skeptic to Believer
Click here to share your favorite car, car story or any automotive trivia!
Some car enthusiasts are born. Others need convincing. Dave's father was definitely the latter when it came to VW Beetles.
Growing up with a dad who didn't understand the appeal of air-cooled Volkswagens, Dave faced a challenge: how do you make a skeptic fall in love with a car they've written off? The answer involves patience, persistence, and one very specific Beetle that changed everything.
This episode explores the deeper question behind Dave's story: Can you really convert someone to your automotive passion, or do they have to discover it themselves?
In this episode, Dave reveals:
- Why his dad initially dismissed the VW Beetle as "not a real car"
- The exact moment his father's attitude started to shift
- What makes air-cooled VWs so special to enthusiasts (and why skeptics miss the point)
- The specific Beetle that finally won his dad over
- How sharing car passion across generations changes relationships
- Why some cars require an acquired tasteâand how to help someone acquire it
But there's one detail about the conversion process that Dave almost didn't share. It involves a road trip, a breakdown, and a revelation that neither father nor son saw coming.
Related episodes:
https://buzzsprout.com/admin/2316026/episodes/16886205-air-cooled-and-carefree-guinevere-s-vw-beetle-tales-and-family-restoration-traditions
đ Connect: https://carsloved.com
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Listen on your favorite platform and visit https://carsloved.com for full episodes, our automotive blog, Guest Road Trip Playlist and our new CAR-ousel of Memories photo archive.
Don't Forget to Rate & Review to keep the engines of automotive storytellingâand personal restorationârunning strong.
to all the cars I've loved before. Listener land. You have found the best car podcast you've never heard about, but you know what I'm gonna have to get with my partner crime here, because that's really not. I don't know if that's so appropriate. Heard around the yes, and we would like to welcome our new listeners in Phoenix, arizona, new York, new York Highlands, texas, avon, indiana yes, avon. I wonder if that has anything to do with the old cosmetics company no, avon, yeah, avon. Indiana, washington DC, henderson, nevada. If you're in any of these places, feel free to drop a line, hit us through any of the Communique links that our good co-host, doug, has set up over time. Henderson, nevada. This might be my personal favorite. Mississauga, ontario popped up on our map by way of the analytics. Mississauga, ontario. I hope I'm not massacring you.
Speaker 2:You did a great job yeah. I did a great job massacring it.
Speaker 1:It is my favorite city, to say now, maybe my favorite city where we're hurt, and Iceland popped up on the map. I think Iceland is new Sweden had been around for a bit. If you're an old Volvo mechanic who wants to get on the show, please, in Sweden, let us know it's easy or a Saab mechanic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're trying to get somebody on the show who's a huge Saab person. I don't know where we are on that, but we're always prospecting for guests. But if you'd like to be on the show, it's easy. I'm going to tell you how. Christian at carslovecom. Doug at carslovecom.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Or you can go to our link tree and there is a link. Do you want to be our guest? So?
Speaker 1:easy and let me spell it out for you L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash carslovecom. That's a great little switchboard. Doug's been working on that. It took a quantum leap forward over the past week because we want to make it easy. We want to meet everybody where they're at. So if you're a social media junkie, you can catch us on Facebook. What else? Instagram, instagram we're now on YouTube, effectively the second largest search engine in the world. We're posting content. You'll see nuggets and snippets. So the way that you know, as we study the industry, the way that we can keep posting on a regular cadence, is to slice and dice a lot of the hours and hours, dozens of hours of content that we have right now, and so you'll see these snippets getting spun off, and that helps us remain publishing along these different vectors. Where else, doug, did I get them all? Carslovecom People listen to us on the site player, which I never would have thought initially. Where else? What are we missing? Anything further on how to get a hold of us?
Speaker 2:I think our link tree Say it for us L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash carslovedcom.
Speaker 1:No, not com silly oh yeah, sorry I said it wrong. Get rid of the com L-I-N-K-T-R-E-E slash carslogged New spot on the show. Well, okay, I'm going to call it. Remember the old You've Got Mail? You remember the old You've Got Mail, that poor fella just passed away who actually was the voice of that. I'm going to get his name by the end of the show. We'll toss that in.
Speaker 1:But instead of you got mail, how about we got notice? We got notice Getting a little street cred by a trade rag called Feedspot. This piece was called the best car podcast on the planet. Which you might say what planet? But that's Earth. We're not at Mars yet, by the way. It takes six months to get there. They don't tell you that. They don't tell you that when you're booking it on Expedia. So we were number 37 out of 70, all right, which puts us right in the middle of the pack, middle of the bell curve, you know. So, yeah, this is good, this is good information getting noticed. So, again, the downloads have really amplified. Now throw a little kudos to my partner. The continual nuggetizing of our content and spitting it off has. We're really seeing that in the numbers. So thanks for doing that. And what do you think about this show?
Speaker 2:It's a great way to. If somebody doesn't have 30 minutes or 45 minutes, it's a great way to for them to scroll through, find something that might be especially something funny. That's what we're we're pulling those soundbites that are that are funny or interesting, and it will get somebody's attention and hopefully they'll listen to the whole episode when they get time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and maybe the two dozen media consultants that we just hired are starting to pay off. So anything else on the best podcast on the planet, piece Any thoughts around that?
Speaker 2:No, we're just going to keep podcasting and keep listening, hopefully keep getting noticed. Yeah, the one thing we'd ask is give us a review, if you can, on Apple Podcasts. If you can't, pick your podcast site of choice or send us a note, tell us what you think. If you have a friend who wants to be on the podcast or who you think would be great on the podcast, let us know. If there's a couple husband and wife, father-son, father-daughter, mother, daughter, son and third cousin, fourth cousin, fifth- cousin, sixth cousin, Well yeah.
Speaker 2:Cousin once removed. Yeah, we'd love, we'd love to have groups. We've had some great, great interviews in the last several weeks. There are so many I can't even begin to talk about Some with Automotive Tech College that I learned about from PBS NewsHour. Can't wait to get those out. But that, I think, takes us to today.
Speaker 1:Doug is a segue machine, beautifully stated. Let's pick that up off the floor, dust it off. And I want to offer to the listening audience here listener land. We're starting to get reviews on Apple Podcasts, so I didn't think we would get that so quickly. Some kind words. A lot of them say for Christian to lay off the coffee. I don't even know what they mean, but please let us know. Always feel free, free to email us, but give us a review, especially if you have kind words. And yeah, I will hand the baton back to doug because I think we have a great guest today yeah, um, thank you, christian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our guest today, um, comes to us via another guest, guinevere, who is on an upcoming episode, or future or previous episode, depending on when you're listening to this one and we're going to talk all about air cooled cars today, specifically Volkswagens, where our guest Dave. I'm going to let Dave introduce himself. That's where he started and it's a love of his through today and there's a lot of tie-ins to his personal life and how he's given back. But, dave, if you want to introduce yourself, Thanks Doug, Thanks Christian.
Speaker 3:My name's Dave. I am a lifelong air-cooled enthusiast and have owned multiple air-cooled Volkswagens throughout my existence. Club in the Connecticut area called Small Car Company, which is a little bit different from a lot of clubs, and I'd like to say that the minute we have dues and minutes and Robert's rules of parliamentary procedure is when I quit. So we've grown organically. As I said, it's enthusiasts.
Speaker 3:You see someone on the road driving a vintage Porsche or 911 or a 356, 914, or a Volkswagen, a bus, a Beetle, a Karmann Ghia. You all begin to get to recognize each other and get to know each other. We begin to get to recognize each other and get to know each other and 11 years ago a neighbor of mine who was also an air-cooled guy named Tom, we said hey, you know, look, we've got a couple of names of people we know. Let's just get together for breakfast, let's get together on a Saturday or a Sunday, Just go for a drive, Just hang out. Just go for a drive, just hang out, just talk cars. Well, one thing led to another, After a couple of those wonderful, informal, completely impromptu, unplanned and rallies where most of our time was figuring out how lost we were, but never without a smile. I woke up one morning and said you know what? But never without a smile.
Speaker 1:You know, I woke up one morning and said you know what this could be a club. Now wait, how long did that take?
Speaker 3:How long did that take before you kind of met? I would say it fermented throughout a summer and then kind of the winter passage when we weren't driving Throughout a summer and then kind of the winter passage when we weren't driving. I sort of began to put that whole sort of world together.
Speaker 1:You said I miss these guys.
Speaker 3:I miss these guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just a few months, so that's relatively quick. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, please continue Love the story Love the story.
Speaker 3:But I think the other essence of the club is you know, how do you keep these obsolete cars on the road? And I don't think that's a condition or a problem. That's particularly true just only for Volkswagen and Porsche. It's all these obsolete cars. You talk to people hey, do you know I'm having this trouble. Do you know a source? What about this part? Do you know someone who could do this and do that?
Speaker 3:So the club was more than just let's get together and drive or admire these cars. It was a support system for keeping cars on the road. And then, you know, deep friendships really would develop along the way and we were always a kind of family oriented wives, kids and love that. So the whole path of having a club that yes, it's centered on a mutual interest, but it was really more about friendship and camaraderie in the end. And that was. We just had our 11th anniversary and we've been doing an annual show which is kind of an all air cooled gathering. We've had everything from Isetta's and Crosby's Amazing, some of them very rare cars come from miles away and we gather at Veterans Green in downtown Westport, connecticut, and celebrate all things air-cooled once a year.
Speaker 1:I love it Okay, so 11 years you've been doing that, and is this kind of an annual show that?
Speaker 3:you do.
Speaker 1:The show is annual, but throughout the year we're doing rallies, drives and other charitable events which have been stick you in the way back machine and we go back to your first car and we talk and think about how it all started. I have to tell listener land that you have the neatest wall set up here so I can see what's. You know, I'm very, I'm a very nosy person and I like to see people in their element, right. So I can see Dave over this video conference and over his right shoulder he has the deck lid to one of his beloved VWs, or maybe it even predated you, right? And it's backlit. Yeah, it's sort of backlit. It's a beautiful thing here and I wish everybody could see it, but you know.
Speaker 2:There's a great story behind that that Dave told us. Maybe you could tell the audience real quick, Dave, about the story and the tie-in to the small car company, the original.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's one of those, for me, meant-to-be kind of things. Love it. It really unfolded like this and I appreciate, christian, what you're saying, that it was a, you know, it's a deck lid. It's a piece of art in and of itself but hung on a wall and backlit yes, piece of art in and of itself, but hung on a wall and back, yes, and you probably can't see it. But there's also the license plate frame and there's a decal that say the small car company on it. I can, and therein lies the story that Doug mentioned.
Speaker 3:So in that winter fermentation where we've said let's make this a club, got to come up with a name, and I said well to my friend Tom, let's call it the Small Car Company, because we live in a town where the probably back in the day, the Small Car Company, which we tipped the hat to as the name of our club, was the largest air-cooled VW dealer in the country for a while, I think they came to be in the 50s and folded tents as a car dealership in the late 70s. And one thing led to another. When we decided to have our first car show at probably our second year of existence as a club, we contacted the property owner who was renting the space, that then the back in the day dealership, the small car company that was their original headquarters, their dealership. It was oh, the property was owned by a restoration shop, local restoration shop. They said, hey, great, you know, you can use my parking lot, you can use my showroom, you can set up coffee, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 3:And it was a really fun event. We had a great turnout and I was just saying to Doug that sometime at some point during the show, when we had about 50 cars, I looked around and said, my goodness, this is more air cooled cars on this parking lot today than there've been years. Yeah, the end of the show we were sort of we were cleaning up and the fellow who had lent us the space came out from the back. He said I knew I could find this, I've been meaning to look for it. Someone said it was under the pile of trash and you know, he came out and he was holding this deck lit and it had the small car company decal and license plate on it and he said here it's yours, oh man. So it was a, you know, a fun affirmation of what was beginning to happen and, obviously, something that you know didn't become a light fixture and uh office right away it went to the corner of my garage for about eight years.
Speaker 1:Right, it went from the corner of their garage to the corner of your garage. And then, I'm sure, years later, and okay, doug, doug wants to strangle me because he wants to go on to the, to the talk through the, but remind, the air-cooled show that I went to down here in Pensacola Called the Rare.
Speaker 2:Air Show.
Speaker 1:It was so good, oh my gosh, and I gave out a bunch of cards that I haven't heard from. But they have. The your deck lid reminded me of all the parts for sale door handles, dashboard pieces, lids of every stripe and size, just with masking tape and a little price on them. So wonderful, anyway. Okay, let's go way back to when you were a young man, because it all had to start somewhere. Dave, where do you want to kick it off?
Speaker 3:You know, preparing to meet you gentlemen, I began and was asked to think about all of that, which I hadn't for a long time and that was a real pleasure. And it's a very simple story. When I was in middle school, probably seventh or eighth grade, in Connecticut and you know, coming from a family that had a Chevy and my neighbor had a Ford there were very few foreign cars around who became a friend in seventh or eighth grade had just been, his family had just come in from California and they, the parents, were very kind of stylish couple that you know, tall and tan and playing tennis all the time, and they drove a oval era, mid fifties a beetle, beautiful black paint with a beautiful red interior, and I love with the car.
Speaker 1:Sounds beautiful.
Speaker 3:Can't you know, I can't explain the why or how. Just it was love at first sight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see it in my mind's eye. From your description I can see the car Beautiful.
Speaker 3:Iconic. Yeah and um, you know, as, as I got a little bit older and went finished high school, went on to college in massachusetts, I was in need of a, a car to begin to commute and take on my first serious summer job. And um, I went to the small car company in connecticut, in Westport, to look for a used car and found the perfect candidate, which was a 1969 VW Beetle in reasonable shape, reasonable price. And as I went out, as I was about to test drive it, the salesman said and, by the way, this was owned by a Connecticut tech student, norwalk tech student in the next town, who knew a little something about hot rodding Volkswagens, so it might feel a little different than what you're used to. And it was.
Speaker 3:It was mildly hot rodded, probably raised compression and a couple of other bolt-on types of things, and it was a great car. I just drove the heck out of that car and loved every second of it and, without getting too wordy about the whole thing, it was also an opportunity to begin to learn to wrench on my own projects yeah, yeah and maintain the car. And I found that I absolutely loved that process as much as I loved the car itself and had that car for years and went on to own a 73 standard Beetle, a 66 Beetle convertible and a 72 Super Beetle, which I currently have.
Speaker 1:So you have a type. We could say you have a type.
Speaker 3:I would say so. That's a very accurate statement. Good reporting, yeah yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So, and then, early on, let me squeeze in here real quick, partner. Uh, one of the things that you you had mentioned earlier that I thought was I just want to tease it out a little bit one of the things that you really love about these automobiles in general, okay, is being able to drive forever on five dollars worth of gas. Love that and, uh, fewer times at the line during the gas embargo. And for our younger listen listeners very real, very, very real thing, if you're like that was a real part of the early experience.
Speaker 3:Um, the gas embargo hit very heavily and, um, you know the ability to. You know what was, what was it? What is it? A 10, 10 and a half gallon tank of gas would just take me anywhere I wanted to go without, you know, being crushed by the experience of being on lines or, you know, worried about getting stuck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I. I read somewhere that, if you, you would look at your license plate and if the last number was odd, or even, you would go on a different.
Speaker 3:Is that true? It's definitely true, and it combined with a $3 limit when it got really bad.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't even know of that. A limit, wow, okay, okay of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a limit, wow, okay, okay, the three dollars family.
Speaker 1:Uh chevy station wagon went a little differently you're reading my mind, that was the next thing I was gonna say. Is your, your, as they say, your mileage may vary. Sorry, doug, I did, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Speaker 2:We got all these questions man no, I'm glad you mentioned it. I think think the oil embargo started in 1973, was it? Yes?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was the year I was born, so I knew there was some significance there. One was going with my then girlfriend, who is now my wife of over 40 years, on a ski trip to southern Vermont and it snowed and at the bottom of the access road to the ski mountain were all these cars that couldn't get up the mountain, the access road, and I said I think we can do it. And I said I, I think we can do it, and the you know I had snow tires but the combination of the weight displaced or or transfer the back, the engine over the rear transaxle, all of that, um, you know the little engine that could made so good but I think um guinevere told us there was a I think it was her that there was a volkswagen ad and it said what you know?
Speaker 2:what car does the snowplow driver own?
Speaker 3:those were the iconic ads by uh, I guess it was a significant Madison Avenue ad agency.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know they. They were all black and white, beautifully photographed with these wonderful taglines. They're quite collectible, of course. You probably saw them at your swap meet in in in Florida.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I had not seen that, but then I went online boy, we're good.
Speaker 2:We said.
Speaker 1:I think we saw some last night when we were talking yeah, we did the top 10 most memorable votes volkswagen ads ever created. And boy, there are some good ones here. Um yeah, brilliant, brilliant, sorry doug keep going.
Speaker 2:No, that's okay. So, um, yeah, yeah. So I'm glad we were able to bring up Volkswagen use in snow and of course you know, being air-cooled, how well they run in the winter. So how long did you have that? First car for Dave? First car for Dave.
Speaker 3:I sold that car about a year after the oil embargo to a local teacher because at the time I was moving to New York and didn't need a car.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and what was also a very interesting experience as a car owner in general is that I didn't lose that much money selling it, and because it just was running so well it held up who knows how many more miles could have been put on it at the time that it was being sold.
Speaker 2:Do you recall how many miles approximately towards the end of its time with you Probably 50,000 to 60,000 miles. Okay, yeah, so it had a couple hundred thousand more in it, for sure.
Speaker 3:Easily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. And so you're in New York for a while and then eventually you got out right, finished, moved a little south, at, at, at, when my academics were happening in new york.
Speaker 3:At the same time, uh, there were summer jobs and I was still in need of transportation. But but during this process of me finding the 69 Volkswagen, my father, who was a World War II, a decorated World War II veteran, was very upset with me, couldn't understand why a son of his would buy a German car. The simple logic was I risked my life to beat them and my youthful response was your generation did beat them and that's why Wolfsburg would go on and make these incredible cars that people like us can afford and buy and use them as transportation.
Speaker 3:What a reasoned response and their culture right well, you know, at that at that time the culture thing wasn't as big to me as the transportation thing, I sure I think it was beginning to grow, certainly. And so, long story short, my father's 57 chevy wagon broke and he said could I borrow your car? And he did, and that was the longest conversation we had had for about two months Can I borrow?
Speaker 1:your car Sure.
Speaker 3:And that weekend he went down to the small car company and bought a 73, brand new 73.
Speaker 2:Volkswagen man. Wow, it just took a weekend Convert.
Speaker 1:A convert. Yeah, your small car was next to what he was driving. The big lanyards of the 50s Just couldn't be more different. Couldn't be more different.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think he understood it because, you know, as someone who, as a veteran and someone who had been in Europe and probably driven a Jeep Totally driven a Jeep, a small, maneuverable vehicle, and also someone who understood what it costs to make a wage and pay for gasoline it wasn't an easy conversion. I mean it was an easy conversion, not, wasn't. And there he was. So roll the camera forward. I didn't need a car for a long time. He had that car. He let me borrow it. He was very generous with it when I needed it and when he passed away, my mother said should I sell the Volkswagen? It's running quite well. And I was at that point taking care of it. And I said, yeah, you should sell it if you want to. You know, use the money for something else. And that weekend, when I saw her, she handed me an envelope and it had the title to the car in it.
Speaker 2:Oh man Love it. How long did your dad have that car?
Speaker 3:Love it. How long did your dad have that car? Oh, my goodness, I would say about 10 years. Ok. So my mother just said look, you know you took good care of that car for your father and I can't sell it. Why did you take it? And it became my daily driver? It wasn't just, it wasn't, you know. To me I mean, I cherished it and I took good care of it and all those things you do with a beloved vehicle, but it was my it, my wife and I, when we were, when we were married, that was our honeymoon getaway car. I think there's a photo album somewhere with a just married oh, got to dig up that picture.
Speaker 1:Is there any way you could dig up that picture? Yeah, I'll put that all together. We got to see it, man. We got to see it. Yeah, love to see it. Oh, my gosh, dave, all these memories.
Speaker 1:I did not want to interrupt you when you first mentioned, in preparing for this show, we get this with a lot of guests that coming on the show and talking about these things. A few people have used the word cathartic Healing makes me think of things I hadn't thought before, made me smile, made me text my dad, a parent, a brother or sister, and fact check hey, where did this car come from? Was it a Catalina? Was it that? So it's really. We get that a lot. It's one of the very happy things for the show and Doug always says from the word go Doug's. We're really a podcast about nostalgia, talking about people.
Speaker 1:In fact, the branding of the show ended up being the right thing, but I originally wanted to call the podcast First Car, second Car, third Car, and Doug being the marketing genius that he is, he said that's the dumbest name ever. I just bought CarsLovecom and this was low, these many. But okay, we got to move on. We got to move on. I want to talk about Dave, something that you had mentioned. You're obviously very thoughtful and all about community with your club that you started, but could you tell us a little about Mentors and Motors?
Speaker 3:Be glad to Mentors and Motors came about in 2017, where I was sitting with my you know, my founding partner, tom, and we said you know, we're doing these shows, we're doing rallies, we have people from all really spectrums. I mean there were some at a show that year. I think we had two Rod Emery Porsches which you're talking about, probably cars that cost a million dollars, golly, and you know. All very exciting and very heady, but we were beginning to recognize that the people we knew running the restoration shops primarily we hadn't really begun to focus on dealers yet, but we would go on to Everyone was saying I can't find skilled people. My head mechanic is. He's about to retire. And talking to the people in our club, other clubs people were saying, hey, you know that guy who used to be able to do the valve job on my flat six Porsche engine. He just retired. What am I going to do?
Speaker 3:So I started really thinking about this incredible talent pool of kids in the state just locally really in the state of Connecticut who are studying to be auto techs and wondering out loud you know what percentage of these kids would be interested in being trained or getting interested in general in restoration, just the way we did, helping someone fix a car or inheriting a car or buying a used car.
Speaker 3:So you know, out of necessity, a lot of people learn to fix things that dealers didn't want to fix and they found themselves being self-educated as restorers and through a process of research and then you know, just sort of meeting people, was able to meet probably the strongest educator or instructor in the state at the time, who was the department head at the Bullard Haven Technical School in Bridgeport, which is part of CTEC's Connecticut Technical Education Career Systems, learning that there were 10,000 students in the state of Connecticut studying auto technology and this person, this head of this department, liked the idea of reaching out to these kids and opening up doors for them and really a lot of the you know a lot of the problems they were having with inner city and kids of limited means is they had never been told hey, you have a green light to go and make your way in the world and meet people and, yeah, self-advancement things that, um, we thought we could help teach, because we're not teaching them the ins and outs of being a mechanic, we're teaching them about life and how to have, yeah, life skills, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it was a marvelous experience and I'll send you the picture of it. They said why don't you come next week to meet the students and, by the way, our classroom is a garage and here's the big door Drive your car in. So I grabbed my 72 Super Beetle, which is a very interesting car because it's a 200-horsepower Volkswagen.
Speaker 1:What Holy crap.
Speaker 3:interesting car because it's a 200 horsepower volkswagen what holy crap with you know, set up like a german look car, with you know all the customized suspension. It's sort of you know like you know where I, where, I took it to with that particular. Yeah, I thought the kids would be interested in that car because, because it still is so primitive, you could put it on a lift, you could open up the engine bay, you could understand all the systems of a car just almost by looking at it because of its simplicity and maybe that's, in the end, what was so enduring for me. But, um, it was a just a fantastic day ended up spending.
Speaker 3:You know, what was scheduled as a 45-minute appointment ended up being a couple of hours kids hanging after school, and so the mentors and motors just became a manifestation of finding these kids, talking to the instructors, bringing them to events, having them, hosting them at our own events. And just one little anecdote we had an event last summer at the Malcolm Prey Foundation in Bedford, new York. Lily Prey and her father was Malcolm Prey, was a Volkswagen and Porsche dealer in Greenwich and they have a car museum and they're all about education and we had a marvelous group of mentors. We invite people that we know, and one particular fellow is the owner of a significant restoration shop and he was very impressed by this one sophomore from K-Nar Tech, bethel, connecticut, and that kid's now working at that shop.
Speaker 3:He started cleaning parts. And then you know, but I said, well, this fellow shop owner said, bob, how did you recognize this kid's talent? I said I could just tell by the way he talked about.
Speaker 2:Carmen.
Speaker 3:There was something there, and when I spoke to this young man's instructor, they said oh yeah, so-and-so. Not only does he, he's a great tech, you know, very intelligent mind and gifted mechanically, he can draw. If you say, draw a picture of an Audi TT, you just get the pencil out, draw a quick sketch. Oh wow. So he was an aesthetician as well, which struck home for me as an architect as something that's a huge component. So, mentors and motors moving forward. You know there's a lot of so-called STEM education, science, technology, engineering and math and we're going to put the A in that and do some steam work, with the A being art.
Speaker 1:Not with a steam engine. It won't be with steam, it will be with gasoline. Yes, air-cooled, air-cooled.
Speaker 3:So the whole mentors and motors program is really steam. It's science, technology, engineering, art and math. And it's really about people as much as it is about the cars.
Speaker 1:When you said STEAM, I thought you were going to say the A stood for automobiles, because anymore when you work on an automobile you're working on a computer with wheels. You know if you go into today's job market that's what they're going to look for. You have to be credentialed, you have to get certificates. I can work on this sort of system, this subsystem.
Speaker 2:Modalities yeah, to quote one of our past guests.
Speaker 3:Yeah, these kids graduate with an ASE certificate. They're not. That's it. That's it. Yeah, they're on the glide path. Give them about eight years they'll have their master mechanic certification. It's interesting, as a lot of them are being snapped up by the aerospace companies.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, because they have all the prerequisite skills to be cross trained in aerospace. That's an interesting little detour, that's an interesting detour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that that. That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So, as we guide the podcast to the off-ramp here, dave, I just wanted to say that the mentors and motor. The thing that sticks out to me is that it allows for young people to understand that learning is not a book. To understand that learning is not a book. I feel like you get taught that from a very young age and you can rethink the formal structure of education as it sits, and that's what you're doing, that's what you present to these young folks, and I think that's just a wonderful thing. And I tell you what partner.
Speaker 1:I think we're running close on time here and one of Dave's problems is that he's so interesting. We knew we weren't going to get to it all in one podcast, so I think we're going to have to have you back, dave. But could you tease just a little bit some of the car judging Now? We've never had a car judge on before. Concourse judge, concourse judge, concourse judge. Sorry, yeah, do you want to describe? Can you describe that in just a moment or two? And I would like to have you back on a future episode to not only talk about that. But Doug and I have Now the club that he has. I would love to get up there for one of his rallies and one of his cruises. Be a great opportunity for some video content.
Speaker 2:Sorry, Dave Spring.
Speaker 1:Let's do it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I say we do it, I say we road trip to see Dave.
Speaker 1:But Dave tell us a little bit about the Concourse Judging.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you know, for me it was the evolution of being in the car community. It wasn't something that I woke up one day and said I really want to aspire to this. So it started, you know, like a lot of things innocently, with someone saying, hey, could you help out at this event? And someone else saying, hey, oh, we have an air-cooled section at the New England Concourse, which was the first one that I did. Could you be the head judge for air-cooled? And you know, I think I had an immediate case of imposter syndrome and when someone's going to tap you on the shoulder and say, if you just step right this way quietly, yeah, but you strike me as the perfect package.
Speaker 1:The perfect package. You have all this, the elements that I think would lead you to do well at that.
Speaker 3:Well, and I appreciate that, because part of the element to me is it's for me when I'm a judge, it's people first. What is the story? How did this person get connected with this car? What brought them to this moment in time where they're taking this incredible? You know, if it's a concourse event, it's the best of the best. These are cars with a pedigree, these are cars that the best examples of their kind, and so what would bring someone to that moment in time in their own story? And I think it's just. For instance, at the New England Concours, the Volkswagen that was represented there was the rarest early Volkswagen bus that I've ever seen. Oh, man.
Speaker 3:It had 8,000 kilometers on it. Somebody do the math? Jeez, no, it was in iconic colors of candle wax, red and sepia brown, and it smelled like a new car. And the person who had it was a lifelong enthusiast, obviously someone who had earned enough money in his life to be able to buy something like that. It had traded hands many times yeah, and you, he's the, the. There's a, there's a somewhat cynical moment where you think, oh, I'm just going to be hearing a rich person you know, tell, tell me about an asset. But what I heard from that person, as they showed me, let's say, the owner's manual, was almost like a child speaking about something that they their most precious possession.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a neat. That that, that that's a really neat. So let's leave it right there and we can pick that up next time. But that's a really neat. One thing that's really struck me about many of the people that we've had on the show is that they ended up getting their dream cars, but they're not independently wealthy. They had a dream, they had a vision. They stuck to it. They said I'm going to put this amount of money away every paycheck, or I'm going to start a hobby side hustle. I'm going to put all that money in a bank account and doggone it when it gets to where it needs to be. I'm going to break that piggy bank and go buy my dream, you know, and that's inspiring too, because it shows the vision, dedication, hard work and sticking to something I mean all things that will get you there. Well, dave, it was such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for making time.
Speaker 3:Pleasure meeting you both too.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dave, and sharing some of your, some of your stories in time with us. I had a blast. If I look at and as you're talking I'm looking at a computer screen, at the, at the show script, I'm looking at the stopwatch off to the side, I'm chatting Doug off to the side, I'm taking notes, and if you look at how much ground we covered in in you know which really, we just kind of just kind of walk through your life. It was a delight. I just want to thank you for sharing a bit of your bit of your space with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, gentlemen. This was a real pleasure. Thank you, thank you, we will have you back.
Speaker 1:We will have you back. So what do you think, partner? Is that uh is about time to to head down the off ramp and and and guide this car into our, into the cinder block garage.
Speaker 2:I think so, but I do. I do have one last question for Dave. It's okay if he doesn't know the answer how many Volkswagens have you owned and owned as a current you know, even ones you own today, into the count.
Speaker 3:Including the two I own today, it's less than 10. It's probably seven.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's significant.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 2:And not all Beatles.
Speaker 3:No, no, I've only had Beatles. I've never had a lot.
Speaker 2:That's what I thought. I heard you say only Beatles. So seven Beatles? No, the Toreg he drives daily. Oh, you say only.
Speaker 1:Beetles, so seven Beetles. No the Touareg he drives daily.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're air-cooled.
Speaker 3:Oh sorry, I missed that part.
Speaker 2:Yes, I did mean classic. But yes he also has a Volkswagen as his daily driver, but it's a modern, water-cooled Volkswagen.
Speaker 1:And did I say it properly Tor-egg, tor-egg, that's the first time I've said it properly my entire life.
Speaker 3:I think that the people who speak German, they'll put a little bit of a W. Is it Tor-egg, tor-egg, oh boy.
Speaker 1:You're making my life hard, Dave. You're making my life hard.
Speaker 3:I've never said it properly, so I'm not making my own life hard. Oh, Dave.
Speaker 1:We've got to stop while we're ahead, buddy. But again, it was a pleasure and you had just heard the high-revving, low-mileage late model heard around the world. Authoritative podcast on Automotive Nostalgia. He is Doug at CarsLovecom, I am Christian at CarsLovecom, he was Dave. Everybody clap, please, follow the show, tell a friend, download, email us. Hit up the link tree L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E, slash Cars Loved and you'll find that's our digital switchboard. You'll find all our presences there. Hit us up the way you need or contact us the old-fashioned way. I even have a phone number and you can catch me there. So we will see you at our next local car show or rally, but we're always in the neighborhood. Thank you for listening. Keep the rubber side down and we will see you next week.
