I'm Pete. My first real taste in motorsports came in 1989 when my dad watched the 1989 Daytona 500 on the glorious Screensport (sigh, I sure miss that channel). For some reason the sight of 43 rather boxy stock cars screaming towards turn one made a lasting impression, and stock cars in general - and vintage ones in particular - have had a special meaning ever since.
It wasn't, however, until around 1994 I really started to follow motorsports for real, and from primarily watching NASCAR, Champ Car and DTM/ITC in those days I quickly broadened my range of interest to watch just about anything that has an engine and you are able to race with it.
From the end of 1999, when we lost Greg Moore who easily was my favorite Champ Car driver, and roughly two years onwards (in no way helped by the loss of one of my two main stock car favorites, Dale Earnhardt Sr.) my interest in motorsports went down to an all-time low, but then towards the end of 2001 I found my way back and haven't looked back since.
It was also around that time I started to collect racing magazines, books and videos for real, primarily stock car ones. A bit more in-depth:
Magazines - got lots of issues of Stock Car Racing Magazine, with quite a few dating back to the very early years of that magazine, 1967-1968 etc. I also have nearly all issues of the National Speed Sport News magazine from 1977, which was a real "impulse-buy" after getting in touch with someone who mentioned he had a box with those magazines in the attic
Add to that scattered issues of Autosport, Speed Age Magazine (several issues from the 1950's) + a few more scattered ones.
Books - the majority are about either the Daytona 500 or the Indianapolis 500, as I have a huge appreciation for the history of those two races, but I have quite a few other books as well including some Grand Prix ones (like an old hardcopy of "the Cruel Sport" by Robert Daley).
Videos - See the motorsport video collection thread for more details on this.