Built my first flathead and taught myself to weld and channeled a friends 32 coupe but didn’t drive a car until I was 12 when I went 123 mph in a flathead dragster at Santa Ana.
I remember when I was 12 I had to lie and tell em' I was 14 so I could get a daylight driving license to drive to my first full time job.
Of course, that's back when we had industries and people worked for a living but then again, we didn't have Unicorns and Rainbows; just jobs and an expanding middle class.