It was a 1959 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, 225 inches long, the longest car ever built-so long that when he fIrst brought it home in the fall of 1958, Stephen Hurlbert's grandfather couldn't close the garage door: He had to chisel out the wall at the front of the garage to accom­modate the car's magnifIcent nose. "I loved that car," says Hurlbert, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., who was 13 years old at. the time. "It's so impressive to see a car like that with the big fIns on it. It's like looking at a rocket."

Hurlbert never forgot that car. Forty years later his stepson spotted one just like it for sale on the Internet and quickly informed Hurlbert, who decided to buy it. "His mother, my wife, would have liked to shoot him," Hurlbert says.

More than fIve years, four parts cars, and thousands and thousands of dollars of custom reconstruction work later, Hurlbert is the proud owner of a spectacular show car that has already won him several trophies and awards. He didn't do any of the work, he admits: "I did the hardest part," he says. "I did all the paying."   

Since the moment the fIrst Model T rolled off the assem­bly line, Americans have loved their cars. Over the years they've become everything from simple transportation to status symbols, even expressions of cultural pride (see "Low and Slow," a story about lowriders in the September/October 2005 issue). Every American over age 16 or so has a story or two about some special car. We asked readers of THE HISTORY CHANNEL MAGAZINE to share your car stories with us-and so you did. Whether you wrote to us about your fIrst set of wheels, a saved-for beater, a family wagon, or a classic fIxer­upper, you dusted off your memories-and some pictures­and took a cruise down memory lane for our benefIt. In the following pages are a few of the many tales we. received from memb~rs about what made that car so special.

-Terry Monahan, Editor

THE HISTORY CHANNEL MAGAZINE 51 November/December 2005