'67 Bug, World's Cutest Car

The day I turned 6, my parents surprised me with a birthday party revolving around our 1967 Volkswagen Beetle convertible. The year was 1968. When my playmates arrived for the party, all dressed up, my mother ushered us down to our cellar. We had no idea what was up. She led us across the floor. Then, with a flourish, she pulled open the door to our one-car garage and announced: "Look! The Love Bug is here!" Our Beetle had been tarted up to look like Herbie, star of the hit Disney film with Dean Jones. As we kids piled into the car, I heard a scream. My friend Anna Marie cried out, "Wow!" Her eyes filled with tears of delight. The back seat was crammed with candy, from hanging lollipops to bags of SweetTarts. "It really IS the Love Bug," Anna Marie said. We devoured the treats as my dad drove us to the theater in the next town to see the film. It wasn't too hard for us to imagine we were riding in Herbie, the world's cutest car. And at that moment, I also knew I had the world's grooviest parents. --Tamara S., Rye, New York.

'59 Chevrolet Impala, Cocoon of Comfort

The "great finned one" was the first car I remember. I was three years old (at right in the photo). We lived in St. Louis, but my parents bought the car on a lark during a trip to Fremont, Ohio. They insisted on air conditioning, a massive unit that hung below the dash, equipped with four circular vents adjustable to shoot columns of frigid air anywhere you wanted. I remember snoozing while stretched across the front seat, my head resting on my dad's leg, as we made the 600-mile drive from St. Louis to Ft. Worth to visit my grandparents' farm. We were cocooned in comfort, safe from the blazing Texas heat just outside the glass. The car had a cavernous trunk, a V8 engine with plenty of oomph, and a style that would make the '59 Impala an American classic. --Scott S., Bethesda, Maryland.

64 VW Bus, The Cosmic Toad

I bought my first car when I was 18, in 1978. My Russian grandmother gave me the money for it--very disapprovingly, as we are Jewish, and it was a VW, thus German-made. Well, my dad had a VW bug and then a bus, so it was in my blood. I thought for years I'd never drive anything else (ha!).
        I bought a 1964 VW bus with the sun roof and all the windows except the rear wrap-around ones, for $1000, being told it had a rebuilt engine. It didn't--it just needed one. It was painted acid-green, and the sunroof was blue paisley.

Mexican Racer

About 1993 a friend gave me a Pink Floyd video called La Carrera Panamericana, a story about the rock group's exploits racing British cars (jags) in Mexico. Inspired, I sought my own suitable American road racer for the Mexican race and finally settled on an unlikely racer, a 1955 Chrysler. After about a year's build time, I had a car, kind of. Anyway, it was started--roll cage, fuel cell, the front frame clip and suspesion removed and replaced with a more modern and repairable front clip from a 1975 Oldsmobile station wagon. At the time finding parts for or information about the early hemi engine was nearly impossible because most of the old hemi guys were dead and there was almost zero interest in these engines. Any parts to be bought were old junk made in the '50s. Anyway, long story short, I now have three cars set up for the Mexican road race. --Ronald Davis, Fort Collins, Colo.

Rockfish Service Station

From the Library of Congress collection: Rockfish Service Station, Virginia Route 865, Waynesboro, Virginia, about 165 miles from Washington, D.C., via modern interstate highway.

'87 Shelby Charger, Big Car in a Small World

I bought my new Shelby Charger GLHS in November of 1987 after waiting 6 weeks for delivery. That had to been the longest 6 weeks of my life.
    This was no ordinary Dodge Charger but rather a modified product of Shelby Automobiles in California. There were only a thousand of these cars made sporting individual dash plaques with their unique production number. It was a four cylinder turbo engine with modifications that added 40 horsepower. As well, it had European adjustable shocks and tires, with graphics to match the racy hardware.
    I reluctantly sold my dream car five years later in 1992 after realizing that it was not practical for family life.

Painful Chevy Commercial from '65