Your first car?

[whiskypapa3]

First new one was a '55 Chevy BelAire hardtop end of run model with a '56 Corvette engine (they ran out of '55 Power Pack magfluxed engines). Black. Two four-barrel carbs instead of the one on the Power Pack model, free flowing mufflers (read: louder exhaust tone). Three on the tree with Borg-Warner OD. Did I say Black? Ran like a dream for 65,000 miles. Beautiful shiny Black!!

In the late forties my high school buddy's father owned a fair sized garage. We used the garage over the weekends to fix old thirtys trade-ins and resell them to other kids. Buy them as junkers for $15-20 from dealers, get them cleaned up and running and sell them for $50. Those we couldn't fix got canabilized and the parts used to fix others or sold to his father and the hulk sold to the scrap yard for 5 or so dollars. We used the cars till we sold them, usually about a week. Friday night dates were in his dad's latest new car.

Did I say the '55 Chevy was Black?

WP3

 

[leadfoot]

PhotonWrangler, definitly not a show car, had fresh paint and not much else done to it. My father collects Model A's and so my brothers and I all drove the things through high school. He has never been into restoring as just collecting. Probably has enough to build about 40 cars and 10 trucks. All in all about 5 acres of stuff.

Leadfoot

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Gosh Leadfoot, that must have been quite a conversation piece everywhere you went. You've got enough of those that you could start up a side business providing vintage prop vehicles to the movie industry.

 

[BF Hammer]

Mine was a '75 Olds Cutlass. A blue 2-door with a 350 V-8. I got it in the the summer of '85 and it was wrecked by February '86 when the rain showers I was driving through on the way to tech school became freezing rain showers. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mecry.gif

 

[PlayboyJoeShmoe]

One of my later cars was a 1975 Cutlass. A great whopping HUGE boat of a car. It would get maybe 14mpg, and WAY WAY less when we pulled my buddies racebike on a trailer with it.

It was VERY reliable. It later became my Grandma's car until she crunched it the second time (and no more license!)

Dad and I once had a 1953 Chevy 6cyl and 3 on tree. It had vapor lock issues, that had I known then what I know now would have been non issue! It ran strong when it was running.

One last car of note: Was Grandma's some years before the Cutlass. 1969 Chevy Malibu. 327CI 350HP with a 3 on the tree. Manual steering and brakes. Fast as stink, but how come thousands more people were not killed in cars like that. Drum manual brakes, sheesh!

Oh shoot, one more: 1985 Olds Delta 88 coupe. Was sisters car. It had rusty freeze plugs that kept rotting out. The car stopped running at least three times from a TOTAL lack of water. We fixed the leak, filled it up, and she drove it some more! It was truly the engine that would not die! Pretty nice car otherwise...

 

[MenaceSQL]

My first car? I just bought it last week. It's a Dodge SRT-4 in the Flame Red color. This thing is pretty quick. The first time the turbo kicked in, it freaked me out. I only eased on the gas pedal and the car seemed to drift forward unexpectedly. Talked about being freaked out. When I finally came to my senses, I just laughed at myself. I'm used to the turbo now when it's boosting.

This is not my first vehicle but my first car. My first vehicle is a 1989 Toyota pickup which I still have. 330,000+ miles on the tranny with a new engine and it still is running fine. The original engine went out just under the 300,000 mile mark when I was driving around with a leaking and deteriorating 15 year old radiator.

 

[Rothrandir]

86 plymouth gran fury.

bad carb, bad alternator, bad transmission, half-broke steering, no traction, and it would die if i took a turn too hard.

 

[Lurker]

The first car that was really mine was a hand-me-down 1979 VW Rabbit Diesel. That darn diesel engine was so underpowered that I never used the A/C even in the North Carolina summer. I would just take my shirt off and leave the windows down and sweat. It was just undrivable with the A/C on. You couldn't accelerate up any sort of incline at all. And the accelerator was always on the floor. But it was even worse to drive behind because it put out a lot of smoke that smelled really badly. Plenty loud, too. And get this - there was no lap belt, just a shoulder belt, if you can believe that (that's how it was built). And running low on fuel often meant hunting from gas station to gas station looking for a diesel pump and praying that you would find one in time. And I won't even start to tell about how much it was in the shop.

I was so used to driving with the accelerator on the floor ALL THE TIME that one day I borrowed my sister's Prelude, started it up, floored it and popped the clutch as usual. To my complete surprise my head jerked back and I smoked the tires big time. "Oh yeah, I'm not driving my POS today!"

I drove it until it just wouldn't start any more and I couldn't bear to sink any more money into it, then donated it to a charity, who picked it up. But like any first car, I have a lot of fond memories of all the fun stuff that car made possible. All-in-all it was probably the best car I will ever own.

 

[PJ]

The first car I owned was a 1971 Buick LeSabre 2 door. I think it was called a Sport Coupe because it had no pillar between the front and rear windows. 5100 lbs., 350 2 barrel and L78-14 bias ply tires, oh yeah, it was real sporty! I bought it for 300 bucks and sold it for 200 3 years later.

Before that my brother let me borrow his 1967 Chevy half ton stepside to drive. It had a 3 on the tree and a 350-4 barrel V8 from a 1972 GMC Jimmy. Once I learned how to shift it was a fun truck to drive. It was faster than a new (at the time) Trans-Am with the 301 engine. Man, some of the "muscle cars" in the late 70s and early 80s were anything but.

 

[PlayboyJoeShmoe]

Read the 50th anniversery issue of Car and Driver if you want to know what THEY thought of the late 70's early 80's "Muscle cars"! Lots and lots of laughs in the issue too!

 

[PhotonWrangler]

My uncle used to have a Mercedes diesel sedan, late 60s model I think, and he was constantly having to take it into the shop for glow plug problems. That was one of the crankiest cars I've ever run across. He finally sold it to a mechanic friend and bought a regular gas car, an AMC Hornet (manual trans) that eventually became a hand-me-down car for me.