Hi Gil,  For me it was when I was 8 yrs old and my cousin who was on leave from the Army drove up in a new Black '58 Fuelie w/red interior. Seeing the shiny chrome teeth of the grille and hearing the loud exhaust did it. Ten years later I bought a '65 Nassau Blue Coupe.

http://www.mamotorworks.com/corvette?frame=4.10110

When I was about 10 years old my sister traded in her 74 coupe for a Camaro Berlinetta....Lime green...yuck!!!

|UPDATED|5/5/2012 9:01:09 AM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

When I was 7 or 8 a neighbor had a '68 (found that out later when I remembered you had to push the button to open the door).  He wasn't a nice guy and certainly wasn't a role model, but I sure fell in love with that car.  From that time on I always knew I'd get a shark some day.  My time came in '01, too, 3 weeks before I got married.  

Just like Jimmy said I was never fan of the Corvette. Actually i wouldn't even look at them.
I owned a 70 Barracuda with a 440 6 pack all through high school and sold it when I was 22. To this day it is still my favorite car I've ever owned. Once it was sold I went through 3 Darts in the next 3 years then I didnt have a car that even resembled a muscle car for almost 30 years. (Dodge and Pontiac vans) About 6 years ago a friend of mine had a 77 vette that he wanted the bugs worked out of. He gave me the car for the summer while he was away and told me to drive it and take care of any problems I found. I found myself enjoying the drives I took in it. I decided to look for one and thats how I found the c3vr group and many of the members here helped me find a good one with all the information they gave to me. But no one here told me the heart ache that owning a rubber bumper car would be so after 3 years of that, I went and bought my 2nd one which  has chrome bumpers. Hopefully someday I will finish it and take it for a drive!

Rodney

Oh, if I ever find a barracuda that I can afford the 74 will be gone and I will jump back to owning a Plymouth! of course being able to afford a dodge product is something that seems to be out of my reach!
 lol

You're all gonna laugh but I fell in love with corvettes when I was thirteen. and saw "Corvette summer".
I even read the book!
From then on I would buy "Vette" magazine and "Corvette fever" every month and I built and rebuilt countless plastic model kits of vettes.
I'd get a great feeling every time I saw one. Wondering what it would be like to drive one. Wondering what the road looked like over those raised fenders...
Anyway, my passion faded off and on over the years but it still was there.

Its funny, when I was younger, I had always heard about it,  and I always wanted to go to Carlisle, Pa to the Vette show.  Who knew that 27 years later I would end up living in Carlisle and buying my first vette at the show?
Fate is funny.


|UPDATED|5/5/2012 4:39:11 PM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

I caught the bug from a cousin, at an early age...prolly 10-12 years old. He was into them, and I started noticing them then. Later on, when I was spending the summer with them, he was looking for one to buy, so most of my summer vacation that year(early '70s) was going around with him and my uncle looking at different Corvettes. He wound up buying a '62 project car. It ran, but was in rough shape, visually. It had a Thunderbolt hood scoop on it that he took of and gave to me.
Anyway...I was hooked once he bought the '62. Wound up getting a '72 convertible;e while I was in high school. It was an insurance total(I was working at a body shop at the time), and the back half of it was knocked off. We fixed it, and drove it. It got hit 3 times after that...then I had to let go of it...couldn't afford to keep it up anymore. We had already swapped heads, cam, intake/carb...had it running pretty well...enough to get a high school kid in plenty of trouble.

And the rest, as they say, is history....

My dream for a Corvette started in 1963 when I was in the service stationed outside Las Vegas.  I found a gorgeous Silver 58 Vette convertible with 283 and 2 4's on a lot.  As I was only 20, they said I needed a co-signer, so I called my folks back in Kansas and asked if they would co-sign.  They didn't know what a Corvette was and said they would have to get back to me.  The next day I got a call and they said they wouldn't sign as I would go out and kill myself in it.  Forty years later, after 39 years of marriage and raising two kids, I finally got my 74 Stingray.  My dad had passed on and my mother was in a care home.  I brought her to the house in her wheel chair and took her out to the garage.  As soon as she saw it, she said "You got you one, didn't you".  I put her in and we went for a long ride.  She's gone now, but that's one day I'll never forget.

My fascination with Corvettes started when I was a wee lad playing with my Hot Wheels redline cars. Ever since then, I swore I would eventually own one of those awesome stingray-like cars..   And as a result, LukesVette was born!!