was always interested when I was a kid and my dad had a lot of "nice" fords...
then when i was 17 i had the choice of a car or insurance so i bought a mk2 astra 1.4 for £50

sadly this didn't end well and i spent about 6 months with a couple of books like the haynes and body repair etc actually making it work and look alright, then i passed my test and discovered the scrap yard and started buying gte bits and upgrading it... all went well untill i stuck the cam and carb fro ma 1.8 in it... was a bit lumpy but went well, i also discovered that i could disable the rev limiter a few weeks later it dropped a valve at about 8000rpm good times!
then i got a mk5b escort and started buggering about with that, now 20 or more cars later i'm just as happy doing jobs on a basic old car as something like a mk3 mondeo or late 90s merc / bm