When she was learning how to drive a stick shift in her first car, a ’71 Pinto, Terri Anderson broke the seat. “My mom was in the passenger’s side,” she says. “Every time I jerked it or stalled it, we’d start laughing. It took twice as long to learn because we were laughing so hard, and I’d jerked it forward so hard that we broke the seat.” Today, driving down the road in her berry-cherry Nova, Terri’s still laughing. “It’s funny to watch guys come up beside me in my car,” she says. “They always look at me like, ‘Why is that blond driving that car?’” But she gets it. Terri admits that there are plenty of the women at car shows who are only there to support their husbands, but don’t know the first thing about cars. Just in case anyone mistakes Terri for one of those women, her license plate clears it up. It reads “NOTTIMS” (not Tim’s). After the Pinto, there were many other cars, among them a Ford Mustang convertible and a Pontiac Firebird. But the Nova is here for the long haul. “It’s the car I’ve always wanted, and it’s from the year I was born,” Terri says. “I’ll probably be buried in that car.”
Terri Anderson
First car: 1971 Ford Pinto Collectible car: 1964 Chevrolet Nova On working on her car: “If I do it, I know it’s right,” Terri says. “I’ve had guys insist they know what they’re doing, and I’d say, ‘Yeah, but that’s not how I want it done.’”
Candy Johnson
First Car: 1963 Ford Falcon Collectible Car: 1966 Datsun Fairlady Roadster On cars as females: “These classic cars are beautiful, cranky and temperamental,” Candy says. “They display a lot of the qualities that are typically assigned to a woman.”
Candy met her husband, “a total gear head” in high school. They bonded over their love of cars. Today, 34 years later, the couple still owns the first car they bought together, a 1976 Pontiac Trans Am. Today, they own nine vehicles, including a hot rod and three Firebirds. Candy uses her Fairlady as her daily driver in the summer. And much of the restoration, she did herself. “When my husband and I first got involved, I was more of a ‘step-and-fetchit,” she says. “As it evolved, I remember telling him, ‘That doesn’t look very hard.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not, and your hands are smaller than mine.’” In the late ‘80s, Candy began working on engines. In 2004, she replaced the Fairlady’s dashboard since her husband was too big to fit inside the car. When he suffered an injury three days into the restoration project, Candy took over completely. “It was one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done,” Candy says.
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