LAUSR

ABSTRACT Journeys by car in long-ago childhoods may resonate more powerfully as time transforms them from vivid memories into a personal heritage of tourism automobility. Such experiences can also be frequently mediated by exposure to and engagement with toys, books and television shows depicting multiple travel and tourism mobilities. Advertising images in print media as well as automotive brochures and monographs offer the promise of glamorous other lives filled with the latest cars in distant international settings of privilege and elegance. This discussion utilises autoethnography to map an inspirational father–son relationship, interrogate media impacts that have influenced and shaped a lifelong automotive obsession, and explore locations that became targeted (tourist) destinations in a pre-teen, pre-international travel imagination. Needless to say, this personal heritage of automobility and travel still has a ticket to ride.