Speaking of cars , what car did you learn to drive in ? Who taught you?

Toomuchstuff

Toomuchstuff

Member
Location
Wisconsin
I just replied to the post about your ideal vehicle , and it made me think of this . I remember learning to drive when I was 16. Back then , it was in driver's ed. in high school. I learned in this big old Buick LeSabre .... what a boat ! My sister in law let me practice & take my test in her car .. a Dodge Charger. I was so careful ,because it was considered a sports car ! I passed . Whew ! The first car I bought & paid for myself was a Corvair . Anytime I'd go over 40 - the fan belt would pop off..... ugh. I can't tell you how many times my brother rescued me ! I went through a series of junkers when I was young !
 

I grew up on a farm and was driving tractors since a fairly early age, as well as a 1950 GMC 4 speed truck. I can't remember when my legs were long enough to reach the pedals.
 
A combination of a driving school and my brother in law,who had been a driving instructor when he was younger.
I failed my 1st test,the examiner made me very nervous!
I think the car was a Ford Torino?
An absolute clunker,lol
 

'29 Ford Model A pickup when I was 9. Mom used to let me practice on the way home from church on our country gravel road. My dad also let me drive the tractor to and from the hay field pulling a farm wagon. I remember him yelling at me to "SLOW DOWN" when he was riding in the wagon.

In our State (New Mexico), at that time, i got my license at 14. The following year they raised the age to 16. I earned enough to buy my first car at 14, a '29 Ford Model A sedan with a new green paint job. I loved it! In High School, I took drivers ed twice because I liked driving but I really learned to drive on the L.A. freeways. There it was survival of the fittest!
 
I left home kinda young and once after hitch hiking for a couple of days I ended up in a very small little farming community (basically just a wide spot in the road) in Wisconsin one evening at the local Co-Op, a one armed dairy farmer pulled up on his tractor for fuel and after shooting the bull a few minutes he ask if I wanted a job helping on the farm for room and board and a small wage.....having nothing else better to do I accepted his offer.

Him and his wife treated me like I was family and while there he taught me how to drive his tractors, front end loader and his old pickup.....I ended up staying with him and his wife over a year till I was old enough to join the Army.
 
Bikes first!

I actually took my motorcycle test 15 minutes before my auto drivers license. The bike test was on a 1971 Honda 450 Scrambler, the car was a 1965 Chevy Impala.
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Speaking of 60s cars,when we went to my sis and BIL`s 50th anniversary party a couple weeks ago,his best man drove up in his black 1964 Pontiac GTO. He has had the car since it was brand new-it was a graduation gift from his parents. Shortly after he got it,he and my BIL were taking it somewhere-could have been a car show-and they had it on a trailer. My BIL was driving. Something happened and the trailer started swaying and then flipped. Car didn`t fare too well. But they got it fixed and to look at it today,you would never know. The valets were just amazed when he pulled up in that car-although they didn`t get to drive it lol, BIL had reserved him a parking place right in front of the house. When he left,several of us were out front and he had to do the old "peel out." My BIL just shook his head and said "I knew he would do that-70 years old and he`s still a kid..."
 

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Learning to drive was not a happy subject in my family, my older sister badly damaged the neighbor's car when she was learning to drive. I couldn't get any cooperation or encouragement at home so I took drivers education in high school and eventually hired a driving school to help get my license at the age of 21.
 
I was a reckless young man who thought he was a rebel and I broke the rules as often as I thought I could get away with it. I drove one of these for over a year without a license or insurance. I'm not proud of it - I was a foolish young man, but it was fun at the time!

The car hardly shouts 'Rebel' though does it!?

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A whopping big old 50's station wagon, can't remember the make, with of course no power steering. It was a bitch to parallel park. My arms would be shaking by the time I had parked.

I took driver's ed during the first semester of my junior year. My teacher was the football coach and he was tough! BUT, he taught us to drive for sure and I passed my test on the first try, even though I had a hard time parallel parking. It about killed me to have to wait until I was 16 and 2 1/2 months before I got my permanent license. My daughter had to wait until she was 16 and 1 day before she got hers (the bureau was closed on her birthday) and she was bummed out.

My senior year in high school, my dad bought me a '55 Dodge station wagon to drive, because I had to haul my younger sisters around after school. That was still big, and still no power steering, but it was a lot easier to drive.
 
I hate to admit that I never learned to drive until I was 18 years old and had joined the Air Force. I taught my self by taking a jeep out to a unused runway where there was lots of room. Two days later I took a six by six and practiced.
 
My boyfriend at the time taught me to drive in his 52 ford. My dad tried a couple of times to teach me, but it drove him nuts (and probably took 10 years off his life). We didn't have driver's ed or anything like that. I passed the test on first try, too, on my 16th birthday. Good thing they didn't ask me to parallel park -- to this day I'm not good at it.
 
HarryH said:
I grew up on a farm and was driving tractors since a fairly early age, as well as a 1950 GMC 4 speed truck. I can't remember when my legs were long enough to reach the pedals.
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Granddad had a '49 Chevy pickup and Dad a '51 Chevy pickup. They would put the 4-speed in "Granny low", I'd stand on the seat, and drive between the rows of bales. They would toss bales onto the truck bed. Those trucks had a hand throttle so they could adjust the speed before jumping off to load bales. A jump back onto the running board and they would stop the truck.

Drove farm tractors long before passenger vehicles. Old John Deere "B" model. Was able to get my "farm license" at age 14 so I could haul wheat to town, etc. We had a driver's ed class. Most of us already had driven quite a while before taking that class.
 
At the day I turned 16, neither my mom nor dad would teach me how to drive. So I had to take lessons from a driving school. To say that I am grossly uncoordinated is an understatement. I started to learn with a stick shift. After repeatedly shifting from 2nd into reverse, the driving teacher and I had a little talk about automatic transmissions. I learned how to drive a stick in the Navy. They stuck me in a truck and said, "Drive". Somehow I managed to get it into 3rd. After the Navy, my first car was a stick.
 
Having grown up in Chicago's inner city, I never bothered to learn to drive. None of the kids I hung around with had cars; many of their parents didn't even own one. We had one, but everybody took public transit every day, it was cheap and easy. The transit system covers the entire metro area; the boast was that there wasn't a single area in Chicago that was more than 3 blocks from either a bus or an "El" stop.

I was living in San Francisco when my boyfriend finally got tired of driving me around and insisted I learn to drive at the age of 24. He had a 1974 Ford Capri with auto tranny but no power steering. Parallel parking that 2-dr coupe could fog up the windows on a cold night, it was a heavy car that got all of 16 mpg.

Loved that V-6 engine; got a speeding ticket while I still had my learner's permit, LOL.

Never have learned to drive a stick. Love cars, but never felt the need to drive a stick shift since we live in an area of serious hills.

The one thing that surprised the heck out of my BF was that he didn't have to teach me how to parallel park. My mom had told me long ago how to know when to turn the wheel, so I was perfect on my very first try.

We're getting a new car in a couple of weeks that will have the auto parking feature. The salesman was mentioning it in his spiel and my BF who is now my DH, shook his head and said, "Oh, she doesn't need that. She's always been able to parallel park without a problem." But it comes standard in the Tech pkg, so what the heck, we'll have fun playing with it.
 
My Dad taught me to drive in our 1956 Buick Century. Then, I had been shoveling snow, and mowing lawns for neighbors for 3 or 4 years, and saving the money, so shortly after I got my drivers license, I found a good deal on a 1956 Ford Fairlane, and had enough set aside to pay cash.
 
Grumpy Ol' Man said:
Granddad had a '49 Chevy pickup and Dad a '51 Chevy pickup. They would put the 4-speed in "Granny low", I'd stand on the seat, and drive between the rows of bales. They would toss bales onto the truck bed. Those trucks had a hand throttle so they could adjust the speed before jumping off to load bales. A jump back onto the running board and they would stop the truck.

Drove farm tractors long before passenger vehicles. Old John Deere "B" model. Was able to get my "farm license" at age 14 so I could haul wheat to town, etc. We had a driver's ed class. Most of us already had driven quite a while before taking that class.
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We had a John Deere "B" right up until my father died in 1985. I used to have to start it up and give it a little exercise. I think my father just liked to hear the sound of it putt-putting and the rain cap clanking as I took it for a spin around the yard, LOL!!!
 
Aunt Bea said:
We had a John Deere "B" right up until my father died in 1985. I used to have to start it up and give it a little exercise. I think my father just liked to hear the sound of it putt-putting and the rain cap clanking as I took it for a spin around the yard, LOL!!!
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Another Johnny Popper fan. Did you know...

.

...Of course they really didn't use coke in the engine, but the idea went back to a JD advertising campaign in the 40s.
 
Wintermint said:
I was a reckless young man who thought he was a rebel and I broke the rules as often as I thought I could get away with it. I drove one of these for over a year without a license or insurance. I'm not proud of it - I was a foolish young man, but it was fun at the time!


The car hardly shouts 'Rebel' though!

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What make is it. My first car-not the one I learned on,that was my parent`s-was a 1957 Austin of England. My dad was a car salesman and took it in on a trade. His boss sold it to him for 50 bucks...
 
My grandmother used to tell the story about how she learned to drive in 1916.

Her father had bought a brand new Model T and she expressed the wish to learn how to drive it. Her older brothers scoffed, saying women weren't capable of learning to drive. As she was her father's favorite and could wrap him around her finger, he ordered one of her brothers to teach her to drive.

After a couple of lessons, she took it for a spin down the road from the farm. Coming back, she asked her brother to drive it into the old barn, where it was kept. He refused, saying that if she thought she could drive it, she darn well could park it herself. So she did.....and managed to crash right through the back of the barn.

The brothers were triumphant in their belief that a woman couldn't drive but her father said that if she wanted to keep driving she could and if she crashed the car, then he'd just buy another one! The boys were plenty sore about that.
 
I bought a 32 Dodge for $20 and basically taught myself to drive it. There was no such thing as driver ed where I grew up. I didn't know anyone who owned a car with an automatic transmission at that time.
 
I learned to drive in driver's ed in high school. I drove my dad's 1978 Chevy Malibu. Then got my own car, a 1969 Cougar XR7 in 1982. It was a sweet car.
 

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