Remember Your First car?

Beezer

Beezer

Well-known Member
FREEDOM!!!

Sure it was a fixer-upper...high mileage...rusty...etc. But it was yours! Transportation, baby! Your ticket to ride away from Mom and Dad. I still remember that life milestone of passing my driver's exam...all those years ago.

But this was back in the day when you really could buy an old car with just a part-time job. So much more disposable income than we have today. Back when gas and groceries were just an afterthought.

(Sigh) But I digress.
 

I suppose the lifetime milestone meter goes...

First kiss...passing driver's exam...losing virginity...old enough to legally drink and vote...buying first car...marriage...buying first home...work promotions...retirement.

Something along those lines, I figure.
 
We've already had a thread where people posted pics of their first cars. This is more of a thread about being wistful for a slower, more treasured time of life.
 

I was 17 and got my first a dark red '54 Pontiac Star Chief ragtop. It had a straight 8 motor and you felt like you were in a tank. It was dubbed the "Red Roach" by my friends. The car was great, I got to hone my mechanic's skills, but it balked at starting when it was too cold or too hot.

I'd rather talk of my second car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 ragtop with the 312 T-bird motor, 4 bbl carb and dual exhausts. It was black with a white top and a red/white interior. It was sooo cool!
 

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Oh, yeah, baby! It was a '55 Dodge Station Wagon that my Dad bought for $200 (or it might have been $100; all I remember is that he paid practically nothing for it) from a neighbor my senior year in high school.

It had some ridiculously huge super-duper engine in it and it could FLY!

Of course, it guzzled gas like mad, but gas was 25 cents a gallon. I could pack it full of my friends on Friday nights, collect a quarter from each one for gas and we could "cruise" town all evening.
 
I didn't learn to drive until I was in my 30's. Cashed out an old life insurance policy and bought a little red
'83 Honda hatch-back. Good little car, except that it stalled whenever there was precipitation .. on the side
of the highway .. in a snowstorm ..
 
I bought a Buick Lasabre when I was 15 for I think $75. It was from a friend of my sisters boyfriend who lived in another county, the boyfriend drove me there, I paid for it and drove it home. Didn't ask anyone, didn't tell anyone, just did it.

That was the first car I purchased, I had already been driving for some time. We always had junkers at home that I would take out on our country roads, plus some of the farmers had old trucks I would use between fields or for hauling feed.
 
Pinky said:
I didn't learn to drive until I was in my 30's. Cashed out an old life insurance policy and bought a little red
'83 Honda hatch-back. Good little car, except that it stalled whenever there was precipitation .. on the side
of the highway .. in a snowstorm ..
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Canā€™t go wrong with Toyota, Mazda or Honda. They make great vehicles
 
JBR said:
I agree... specifically about Toyotas. Very popular in western Canada, because they're reliable, road-stable, durable. But my first car was a just-plain-affordable old, black Volkswagen beetle... cheap.
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The first car šŸš— I bought specially for myself was a red Toyota sports car. I loved that thing. My husband convinced me to sell it when we moved here. He convinced me to sell my motorcycle too.
 
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I wasnā€™t in any hurry to drive a car. I walked to high school and got to my part time job in San Francisco by bus. But when I started attending the nearest junior college I had to get one.

My first car was an ancient Hillman Minx. Tiny, underpowered with weak brakes and very inexpensive as in a hundred dollars. When those weak brakes became too scary I bought my first new car. A Toyota soft top Landcruiser that was deafening at freeway speeds. It got better after that.
 
MarkD said:
I wasnā€™t in any hurry to drive a car. I walked to high school and got to my part time job in San Francisco by bus. But when I started attending the nearest junior college I had to get one.

My first car was an ancient Hillman Minx. Tiny, underpowered with weak brakes and very inexpensive as in a hundred dollars. When those weak brakes became too scary I bought my first new car. A Toyota soft top Landcruiser that was deafening at freeway speeds. It got better after that.
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Yes, I walked or bussed, or got rides with friends, everywhere for a long time ā€” jobs, shopping, movies. I was in Vancouver, which usually gets little snow in winter, so the beetle was okay. Moving out from there into a more typical Canadian winter made clear the need for four-wheel or all-wheel drive.
 
Yep, a 1957 Mercury! It has a large V8 with four-barrel carb. It was spotless inside and out with about 75K miles on it. It was Yellow and Black, looked like a Bumble Bee. It was a gas hog, but I worked at a gas station, summer and weekends, so that helped. I had some really good times it that old car. I got it in 1966...
 
I didn't have a car until I was 23, and it was a Ford 17M (as they were called in Germany) but I'd been driving large vehicles and tanks since I was eighteen in the army. Occasionally my father would let me drive his car in England when I was on leave, but I don't remember what it was. My first new car was a Toyota Starlet, which was all we could afford at the time.
 
I find this thread really interesting, especially how we varied so much in the when/how/what in getting our first set of wheels. The guys I grew up with in Chicago (late '50s, early '60s) were all "car nuts". We learned from each other, and could do pretty much anything on our (or our parent's cars). These skills served me well for many years, but of course are almost meaningless with today's computerized, automated vehicles.

Having 3 boys and a girl early on, I thought how fortunate they were to have an ol man who was willing and able to teach them and help them work on their cars. And, I had/have pretty much all the mechanics tools one would need.

HA! Did I get fooled! None of them were interested in cars - other than getting them from place "A" to "B".

That said, two of the boys now drive newer Corvettes, something I would have given anything to have back when...
 
VW , Bussel back. Was told only 5 were shipped to the US. Can't find anything online about it. It was sort of like a beetle, but squared off in the back. Didn't last long. I junked it.

Next was an old Ford Galaxy my boyfriend gave to me. I was driving down a hill when the front driver's side tire fell off, sparks flew. The tire rolled down the hill and hit the grille of a car coming up the bill. The owner dropped the tire off at my feet and left, because I was crying.

The cops showed up and re-attached the tire somehow. Car wouldn't start. One of the cops tried to start it and the hood flew open. He said he should run me in for driving this POS. Older friend was with me, heavily 9 months pregnant with twins. I think everyone felt sorry for us.
 
I just asked the Spousal Equivalent what his first car was. He said it was a '56 Buick that he bought for chump change in the months between graduating from high school and leaving for Navy boot camp in 1966.

When he came home from boot camp, the car was gone. Nobody, but nobody, had *any* idea where it went. They were all puzzled, perplexed and at a loss for words. Just gone into thin air. Oh, where did that car go? I dunno....isn't it still out there behind the garage?

He figured that his younger brother had taken it and wrecked it and everyone in the family was afraid to tell him, lest he kill said brother (they never could get along back then). To this day, nobody including the younger brother will admit where the car had gone.
 
Mobilman44 said:
I was 17 and got my first a dark red '54 Pontiac Star Chief ragtop. It had a straight 8 motor and you felt like you were in a tank. It was dubbed the "Red Roach" by my friends. The car was great, I got to hone my mechanic's skills, but it balked at starting when it was too cold or too hot.

I'd rather talk of my second car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 ragtop with the 312 T-bird motor, 4 bbl carb and dual exhausts. It was black with a white top and a red/white interior. It was sooo cool!
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I had a Ford just like that myself. [It was my first car] Bought it from a junkyard in 65 not running. Sort of wish I had it now. {I say sort of because} not sure how often I could actually go out and enjoy it.
 
Yep. '73 Opel Manta just like this one. Buick dealers sold them. Go figure that my first car in '77 was a German one.

It had belonged to one of my Dad's business colleagues who had traded it in. It had been in an accident and the dealership replaced the engine with a smaller one so it was slow as heck. Every time I would get the oil changed the dealership would say "this is an Opel GT engine, not an Opel Manta engine". I used to drive people to high school and when we needed to speed up I would roll down the windows and they would flap their hands outside.

It had an add-on air conditioner and an 8-track player that was mounted backwards over the console so I would always have to insert 8-tracks backwards.

But I still loved it. I thought it was cool and unique.

Opel Manta.jpeg
 
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At 15 I was given a 67 VW squareback with a blown motor that was at the schools autoshop class. My mother helped me tow it home with a chain..... 16 miles.... I pulled the motor out, rebuilt it and had it running in less than a month.
Had no drivers license yet, and discovered I couldn't get a title for it. So with help from a guy up the road, we turned it into a dirt track racecar. Over the next 2 summers I managed to win a few thousand bucks running at 2 different tracks. Of course, most of that went back into the quest to race. Then it happened... Got to flip end over end and destroyed, I got a broken foot and nose. Managed to get $500 for it from another racer who wanted the motor.
 
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