What was your favorite car?

Grampa Don

Grampa Don

Yep, that's me
Location
Orange county, Calif.
Here's a photo of mine, a '66 Mustang.

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We bought it new when I got my discharge from the Navy. That's my wife and oldest son at the house we rented at the time. Here's a model I built of it.

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I loved that car, but we traded it in for a station wagon when our second son was born.
 

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I think it cost just over $6,000.00 in 1976.

I remember that I put $3,000.00 down and financed the balance for 3 years with payments of around $93.00/month.

I used to lay awake at night worrying about how I was going to manage the mortgage payment of around $225.00 plus the huge car payment.

Last week, I ordered a pair of diabetic walking shoes that cost $199.00.

and the beat goes on ...:giggle:
 
Aunt Bea said:
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I think it cost just over $6,000.00 in 1976.

I remember that I put $3,000.00 down and financed the balance for 3 years with payments of around $93.00/month.

I used to lay awake at night worrying about how I was going to manage the mortgage payment of around $225.00 plus the huge car payment.

Last week, I ordered a pair of diabetic walking shoes that cost $199.00.

and the beat goes on ...:giggle:
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Beautiful ride Aunt Bea!
 
Grampa Don said:
Thanks. I didn't know about that. Didn't the Pinto have the same problem?
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Yes, & it was even worse. The Pinto's gas tank was right behind the rear bumper & Ford decided it was cheaper to have their insurance pay for burn injuries & funerals than to re-design it.
 
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Having not long past my driving test, and still in my teens, I came across this desirable MG TD. Alas the steep cost of insurance and the penchant of car thieves made it more of a dream than a reality. Then life got in the way, little things like marriage, mortgage and responsibility.

Fast forward forty years, there's money in the bank, the mortgage was long paid off and I had climbed the greasy pole. What about that MG TD that I had dreamed about as a teenager? Tentatively I brought up the subject with my wife, to my surprise she warmed to the idea, however, she pointed out that an open top car and hay fever were not exactly bed fellows.

The proprietor of a local garage that specialises in MG's, pointed out that the MG TD was born of the MG Y-Type, so I looked up the MG Y-Type. It wasn't an open top, but it did have a sliding sun roof, absolutely ideal!
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Well I can certainly see the similarity, so now a Y-Type graces our garage. We call her Jessica, it's a name my wife came up with. To my perplexed look she explained. The car is a red head, like a famous cartoon character, and like that character, she has a great body, so Jessica it is.
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Jessica has graced the front page of the German MG car club's magazine.
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She did something similar in the UK and for the life of me I cannot remember what. Still it's a great professional photograph.
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She modelled for artist, Richard Watkins, when he was commissioned to portray Wimborne in Dorset as one of the town's publicity drives.
We have photos of young ladies draped over the car for some other promotional wotsit. Jessica has carried brides to their nuptials. She's ferried festival goers from the car park to the show ground at The Goodwood Revival. She's been in quite a few photo shoots, quite a local celebrity is our little MG.
 
win231 said:
Yes, & it was even worse. The Pinto's gas tank was right behind the rear bumper & Ford decided it was cheaper to have their insurance pay for burn injuries & funerals than to re-design it.
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It was a poor design for sure, but, Pinto got a bad rep thanks to lot's of mis-information.
First, you had;
Mark Dowie’s article - which would go on to earn a Pulitzer Prize – was published in Mother Jones magazine. In the piece, Dowie referred to the Pinto as a “firetrap” and a “lethal car,” citing 500 to 900 fatal Pinto fires, erroneously attributing an NHTSA calculated social cost fatality to Ford and incorrectly attributing industry-wide rollover fatality data to Pinto rear-end collisions. The actual number of rear-impact, fire-related fatalities that could be attributed to the Pinto at the time of the article, per NHTSA data, was 27 - still too many, but far fewer than the numbers cited in Pinto Madness.

Then there was the 60 Minutes hit piece on the car, during which Mike Wallace cited a grossly inflated
estimate of 2,000 deaths and 10,000 injuries related to fires in the Pinto.

Perhaps the most illuminating data comes from NHTSA fatality rates per million vehicles for 1975 and 1976. In the published chart, the Pinto is responsible for 298 deaths per million cars in 1975, making it on par with the Chevrolet Vega (288) and Datsun 510 (294), but considerably safer than the Datsun 1200/210 (392), the Toyota Corolla (333) and the VW Beetle (378). In 1976, the Pinto’s 322 deaths per million cars was slightly higher than the Chevrolet Vega (310) and AMC Gremlin (315), but better than the Datsun 510 (340), the Datsun 1200/210 (418) and the VW Beetle (370
 
My 1st car was a 1956 Chevy Bel Air. However, my 2nd car was way nicer. It was a 1956 98 Oldsmobile. All that lovely chrome, leather seats, power windows, V8 motor and solid steel bumpers front and back that would put those modern plastic bumpers to shame. It even had a bottom on the floor that when you stepped on it, the radio dial moved to the next available station. Oh yes, it had lots and lots of room inside. No, it was not fuel efficient but in those days gas was pretty cheap. They don't make em' like this anymore.
 

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A couple of cars I once owned....and wish I had kept...were a 1964 Buick Riviera, and a 1990 Camaro Z28. A '64 Riviera, in good shape, in today's market, is easily worth 10X it's original price. There were only about 3,000 Z28's made that year....most were RS or IROC's. The remaining Z28's are also starting to bring classic car prices.
 
I had a 1968 Chrysler Imperial. Leather seats, air- the works. Of course, when I owned it, it was used, and abused. It was a monster of a car. You could open the hood, and get in to work on the car. You could land planes on the hood. But, I can't tell you the fights I had with car buffs. I'd mention that it had front disc brakes, and they 'd all swear the car couldn't have had them. Well, I remember shelling out big bucks to get them fixed. If I had a few $million, I'd probably get one restored, and drive it around from gas pump to gas pump.:)
 

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Out of all the different cars I've had, my work car a 1966 Opel Kadett was best. Zero oil usage when changed at 3000 miles, 34 mpg, 4 cyl. 4 speed stick. The job I had at times I drove 80 miles one way.

Mine was not as nice as the one in this video. It was dull red with a ratty interior. Can't expect beauty in a car used for work.

 
Back in the day, a Lotus Elan coupe that I picked up at the factory outside London on my way to a new duty station in Spain. These days a Hyundai Kona subcompact SUV. Great little car with some nice safety features -- automatic braking, lane change warning, and a backup warning. The car I wish I had bought and put into storage for 50 years? A Mercedes Benz Gull Wing Coupe I saw for sale for $3,000 on a used car lot in France.
 
My favorite car is the one I own now. After decades of settling for what we could afford and what was sensible, we bought a 2017 Ford Edge Sport. Two-row SUV, twin turbo V6 with 315 hp and 350 lb. ft. of torque, with all the safety features.

Gorgeous color (which Ford stupidly dropped after 2 yrs; yet it's the first thing we get complimented on, LOL), great acceleration, fabulous handling (no 'tippy' feeling around corners), good braking, quiet, comfortable (heated and air-conditioned front row seats; heated second row seats), and holds four adults in comfort with a ton of luggage.

And I love the safety features, especially as we age, LOL. Our only regret is that we don't have the new 360-degree surround-view cameras - always useful in the crowded urban area we live in.

Of course, now that they've come out with the new Mustang Mach-E SUV, I'm planning on checking one out in early 2024, heehee.........

I've posted this photo before. It's from their ad campaign; it shows off the color more accurately than most photos do since the paint is metallic and changes according to the light. I guess you could call it a metallic caramel color? - definitely not flat brown or orange:
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ElCastor said:
Back in the day, a Lotus Elan coupe that I picked up at the factory outside London on my way to a new duty station in Spain. These days a Hyundai Kona subcompact SUV. Great little car with some nice safety features -- automatic braking, lane change warning, and a backup warning. The car I wish I had bought and put into storage for 50 years? A Mercedes Benz Gull Wing Coupe I saw for sale for $3,000 on a used car lot in France.
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Oh, our friends have the 2021 Kona - it's a very fine little SUV! We went out with them and test drove a bunch of cars: the Sonata, the RAV4, the Mazdas CX5 and CX3.

Everybody raves about the CX5 but all of us liked the Kona better - roomier, quieter, better infotainment system (one of the very best, actually; really easy to use and fast response), good gas mileage (she has to drive to work 3x/week).

They got the turbo-4 engine. Which did you get?

I hear you about the MB Gullwing. I had an older friend who passed up a Gullwing for $5K decades ago and never stopped regretting it. But he had young kids at the time and knew he just couldn't afford the expense + partial restoration/maintenance. It was the time of life when one has to be practical, sigh.
 
My fave was my first car, a blue 1974 VW Super Beetle (pic from the internet). Its nickname was Baby Lytton!

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