How did you end up here?

So the Hot Rod magazine thread has a few people that saying they found out about GRM thru that magazine.   I'm wondering how did you find GRM?  I found it in my late teens, I was at my moms house visiting for like a month (parents were split. Pops in Florida, mom in Pennsylvania) and I got a nasty flu. I was layed up on her couch and she went to get medicine and got me a few magazines to read while she was at the drug store. GRM being one of them.  At this point I was going to the hillclimbs when I was up there and working races anywhere I could help just to get close to it.  This unknown mag she got me had cars in it just like the guys I was watching race on the hills....I was hooked.  Been reading ever since.

Been reading the magazine since early 90s. Joined the first forum after the $1500 Challenge.

Dad bought a 1991 E30, 318ic. His friend at work, a nationally competitive autocrosser, gave him a few issues of the GRM 318is that they stuck a downing Atlanta supercharger on. That was about 2005, when I was 15. Guess I've been here over half my life. 

I was a starving grad student in the late 80's along with a very popular Megadork on this forum (hint, he has an aversion to liquid cooling).

I needed DIY maintenance advice for my '87 RX-7, he suggested I ask my questions here, the level of knowledge and maturity I was shown was vastly superior to any other site in existence (still true) so here I still am after all of these decades.

I first read about Andy Nelson's Nova back in...whenever that was via word of mouth. The rest as they say, is history. 

Someone showed me mke's Ferrari build.

I was hooked.

R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction | Builds and Project Cars forum | (grassrootsmotorsports.com)R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction | Builds and Project Cars forum | (grassrootsmotorsports.com) 

I've met Seth L .....actually lives not too far from me.

Dad got a subscription through nasa. I learned about the challenge, and now y'all are stuck with me 

Whenever I searched out some crazy automotive idea, this forum was often the only one where I'd find it discussed, or at least discussed seriously instead of telling the person who posted it to stop being a wacky cheapass. And where else would I find all this budget-relevant motorsports content?

I ordered a Mugen parts catalog from King Motorsports back in 1987, and they included a copy of Auto-X magazine, featuring their Civic Si project car, along with the catalog. That's when I subscribed. 

I still have that issue. 
 

I followed a link posted somewhere else (R & T online article maybe?) to Mazdeuce's Unicorn of My Destruction thread and started lurking at that point.  I signed up some time later so I could post my condolences to a member who had already been through a lot and then lost even more than I could imagine, just seemed like the least I could do.  This is a special place.

The people at miata.net suggested I come here because they didn't like the things I wanted to do to my miata and thought this group would be more receptive. 

My son wanted to race cars. I didn't know anything about them, but I knew we couldn't afford a race car. 
 

Until I read about the GRM $2000 Challenge in Hot Rod magazine....

We bought an SVX from the junkyard and brought it to the 2004 Challenge. First car I ever built. Placed 13th overall (I think there were 73 entries that year).   My 15 year old son drove it on the big test track in the back.
 

That was the first year the Nelsons came. 2015 was the first time Andrew won the overall, and I was on the podium with him. 
 

Love this place. 
 

I don't remember..........

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

I ordered a Mugen parts catalog from King Motorsports back in 1987, and they included a copy of Auto-X magazine, featuring their Civic Si project car, along with the catalog. That's when I subscribed. 

I still have that issue. 
 

That is freaking awesome.   Best I could find older pic wise is this.  It's probably about 15 years and 50 lbs ago lol.

I'd just started a new job working 12hr nights which consisted mostly of me sitting in the lunch room reading autotrader and car magazines. So I went to the local store at lunch one night looking for something to read and saw a magazine that said  Build a race car for $1500, and bought it thinking I'd finally found a magazine covering the kind of thing I've always done. I must have read that challenge article 100 times. I joined the forum shortly after and eventually went to the challenge in 2003. I'm pretty sure I still have that first magazine. I should pull it out and re-read it tonight.

For no good reason I was thinking, just this morning, about entering the 03 challenge. I entered, then a week later it hit me, and I wondered WTF I just did. I had less time than I needed to build the car, and entered a race that was a two day drive away having no idea what I was going to do when I got there.

I'll date myself.

yahoo groups jyturbo mailing list. Some dude was building a turbod civic for the $1500 challenge. Gave some looksee around and have stayed since.

Someone brought a copy of Auto-X Magazine to a meeting of the Western Ontario Sports Car Association in late 1986. I started driving the 35 miles to a little independent magazine store in London to buy it. I also got hooked on a bunch of British magazines in that store.

Still have every issue since I bought the first one.

11GTCS said:

I followed a link posted somewhere else (R & T online article maybe?) to Mazdeuce's Unicorn of My Destruction thread and started lurking at that point.  I signed up some time later so I could post my condolences to a member who had already been through a lot and then lost even more than I could imagine, just seemed like the least I could do.  This is a special place.

Same. Then I learned about the challenge and got hooked. 

Via the Magazine that I would buy at Chapters. I seem to recall that it was not published monthly at the time? That was like at least 20 years ago.

The people who run this show must be older than dirt by now! 

In reply to NOHOME :

Well, I started reading the magazine when I was 34, and they're both noticeably younger than me.

Long timer here.  I got a free copy because of my SCCA membership way back when Tim and Margie were starting out.  I had written a feature about stage rallying Corvairs for the CORSA Communique (magazine) a couple of years previously, and had been reading car magazines since I was 10, so I thought "Hey, I know the lingo, I'm an OK photographer, and there's a guy from Amarillo that brings a beautiful E Mod 914-6 to our events.  I'll shoot some photos, get the info and send them an article."  Tim and Margie bought it for $40 in 1984, so I sent them another, and another, and eventually did more than 100 articles for Auto-X, GRMand CM, and a bunch more for other magazines.  I probably had articles in both of the issues pictured above.  That paid for my social security quarters (I was a career federal geologist and was ineligible for SS unless I did it on my own through outside employment) so I benefit from my GRM experience every month.  Started with the forum when it started, and have been one of the family for almost 40 years now.  Back at the beginning Tim said he wanted GRM to be the Sports Car Graphic and Hot Rod of the sports car world - I'd say now that Hot Rod and others wish they could be the GRM of muscle cars, GRM has actually become the best car magazine in America, in my opinion, and this is the best forum of any kind, by far.

759NRNG said:

R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction | Builds and Project Cars forum | (grassrootsmotorsports.com)R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction | Builds and Project Cars forum | (grassrootsmotorsports.com) 

I've met Seth L .....actually lives not too far from me.

How's that guy doing? He seems to have gone to Michigan for the summer and never came back. 
 

I remember walking past a magazine rack in around 2004 and and seeing an interesting cover of Grassroots Motorsports. Bought several issues and somehow wandered over here and never left. 

I started by picking up newsstand copies from Barnes and Noble in the mid 90s.

I did graphics on an e30 M3 for my buddy which then got featured in the magazine. He said it was in there so I ran to B&N to grab it and while looking through I was thinking man this is great. Came on here and never left.