My 7 and 8 year old are out playing in the car in the garage right now. I think it's a spaceship at the moment, but sometimes it's a race car. They spend a lot of time out there.
I remember doing the same. We would spend hours out there. My Mom thought we should be doing something else, but she always let us. Good memories.
Anyone else?
Oh yeah....running the battery down in my Dad's Olds 98 by playing space ship with the electric seats....learning a 4 speed at 11 in my Sister's datsun 1200....learning a 3 on the tree in the '57 Chevy....and having all kinds of adventures in the back of my Mom's '66 Fairlane Wagon.
Good times.Good times.
I still go out and sit in the garage and pretend it's a race car. I guess some things you never out grow.
Oh yah!! My friend's parents Caprice was the Millennium Falcon.
My dads Toyota was a ski/toboggan hill.
I don't think he's ever forgiven me.
I've got a parts kit car that the kids get to play in
When I was extra young, I found the noise that comes from the tires on my Dad's 61 F100 terribly entertaining or something. I was too young to remember specifically. You know that sound, when you push that little thing in and it starts hissing, but then it stops and you have to go to the next tire? Yeah.....I DO remember the not so happy reaction.
I dated a girl in High School who drove her mom's '87 Caprice Wagon.
Much playing in that car!
My 82 Volvo (future rally-X and TSD car) is a favourite of my kids. They like to play in the back seat. They also love climbing up on the hood and jumping off.
I remember sitting around in the truck thinking about getting it fixed and it being my first car, er, vehicle.
I used to bench-drive my father's '33 Chevy for hours at a time.
i practically lived in the dead mid/late 60's saab 96 two stroke in our driveway (which my parents had bought new and drove to death) when i was a kid...I "practiced" driving in it, and in fact, it may be the reason that I had no difficulty driving manual tranny cars later on. by the time i was 12 or so, i would occasionally "borrow" the datsun pickup when no one was home, which no one though id be able to drive since it was a stick shift... 
When I was a child back in the 60s we used to love to see a neighbor buy a new refrigerator and set the cardboard box it came in out by the street. We'd cut portholes in the sides, use magic markers to draw a control board on the inside, and play Flash Gordon games.
We traveled to distant galaxies and saw alien species.. all ten feet from the sandbox. Great memories, pre-video games. Imagination ruled.
My dad helped us get minibikes and stuff when we were kids. He probably did that to keep us out of his toy cars. 
And yeah NOTHING was better than a big ol' cardboard box!
At age 3 (in 1957), I loved playing in the MG TD that my uncle was rebuilding. I still remember the smell of musty leather and the feel of the banjo steering wheel. I also remember riding in the space behind the seats with the top down when he finally got the car running.
At age 14, my best friend and I would strap ourselves into the bucket seats of my dad's VW Squareback Sedean and bench race, pretending we were Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson driving the Mille Miglia.
When I was a kid it was either dad's Corvair Monza Spyder or the neighbor's Porsche 356.
I used to let my nephew play in my MG Midget racecar when he was a kid. Now he owns almost as many cars as I do. 
My grandparents had a motorbike, that was the best for playing in!
Joey
Jensenman wrote:...NOTHING was better than a big ol' cardboard box!
After the spaceship thing wore out, the neighborhood girls would take over, and turn it into a little house. Furniture and everything. A couple of them are interior designers now. Then it would rain, and the top would sag down. We'd cut the top off of it, and the box went from being a house/space capsule to Fort Apache or the Alamo.
When we'd worn the sides off of it, the remaining piece would serve as a sled, to slide down a grassy embankment at the bottom of the street.
Thanks for this post; these are precious memories I'd not thought about in a long time.
Thanks all for posting, I've been out of town for a few days and didn't get to check back.
Boxes were great! We'd do all the fort type things for awhile, but then we would break out the ends and make it into a tank tread. With two of us inside crawling, we'd roll over as many kids as we could line up. It was awesome!
