Column: Remembering Your First Car

In rode motorcycles until I was about 21 and then I bought a 67 Baja Bug. We had loads of fun with that car. We used it to go to remote places to spectator at the Mint 400 and other desert races as well. It was slow and noisy had no heat but it was fun.

Still have my first car....1968 Ford Cortina GT....bought new 9/68....kind of dates me.Drive her on nice weekends as much as possible.Not stock but all mods are period correct.52yrs and still love her.

I got my first car in 1974; a white 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS 283 Auto, which was in very good shape. It belonged to my grandfather and he could no longer drive. Within an hour of getting the keys I had my first ticket (of many) - speeding on Beverly Glenn just north of Sunset Blvd.

I po'd my gp and father by modifying it so I could cruise and street race it on Van Nuys Blvd. It went on a diet that removed about 500 lbs.

Within the first few months I had a Traco Engineering 327 (with an Offenhauser 3x2 intake) in it. Outwardly it looked pretty much stock and I would choose off Camaros for $50 a run. They thought I was just a heavy old grandpa’s car. Heh, heh, heh.

We would take my winnings and eat at the Bob’s Big Boy Drive In (gone now). After the cruise my g/f and I would drive up to Mulholland Dr. and “watch the submarine races”. Them was the good ole days.

Mine was a 1966 Mercury Cyclone GT. I got it about 3 months before getting my license. What a rust bucket, but I wish I still had it.
After that I had a 1973 Beetle, I wish I still had that too.

Then, in 1982, I got a 1980 Toyota 4WD pickup, I wish I had that too - hey, I see a trend here....

My first real car was a 1967 Triumph TR4A, solid axle. Bought it in 1973, rebuilt the engine in 1975, got it painted in 1978. Put 90k miles on it. Sold it in 2015. I hated to see it go...

Same deal as Tim's Shelby. This was my (local) dream car, but I soon knew where every single flaw was, and there were many.

Twenty-something years later, I owned a much better one that was still a very flawed vehicle.

They're great looking cars, but they're not very good cars.

My first street car was a '68 Camaro that had the Yenko look with Pontiac rallye II wheels and blacked out tail panel. I babied it and was going to keep it forever. Put it up on blocks inside during winters and what not. Rode my motorcycle a lot and always had another car or two and/or truck for work stuff, winters etc. The Camaro was stolen while I was at college. 

People would cringe today but I used the '70 Challenger in the pic below to tow my landscaping trailer and on snow days. I got my street license in '74 and at the time there was a gas shortage so a lot of the responsible "adults" were offing 2-10 year old muscle car era cars cheap and buying small economy cars.  Almost all of the guys around my age had their choice of Mustangs, Camaros, Chevelles, AMXs, GTXs, Scramblers, and other cool cars for low dollars. I bought the Camaro for $800.00.

[URL=https://app.photobucket.com/u/NOTATA/a/74027e71-239c-4b0d-99c8-69b652cb1a1f/p/3497b02c-a16d-42c0-b7c1-e8d9ba446f13][/URL]

1968 Pontiac GTO.  It was 1973 and it was at the used car lot of the Pontiac dealership where I had a summer job.  I washed that car 3-4 times a week.  I used to sit in it and imagine driving it.  It sat on the lot all summer.  Nobody wanted a "gas hog."  That fall, I came home from school and there it was in our drive-way.  It was the second car in the family and Dad said it was for Mom to drive.  The only extravagant purchase he ever made.  Mom never drove the car and I started modifying it right away.  If any maintenance was required, I'd get a quote from the service station.  My dad would give me the money and I'd use that plus my own money and do the work myself.  He drove it back from college after dropping me off.  He didn't pay attention to the temp gauge (wasn't a car guy and couldn't change a lightbulb). I got a rebuilt motor out of that. I rebuilt the tranny, got intake, cam, carb, headers and full exhaust.  Car ran awesome for years.  Did some street racing.  Blew the motor when I was in college.  He sold the car to a guy I knew without telling me.  He got $250 dollars which he thought was "really great" for a car that didn't run...

1974 Chevy nova, inline 6, auto, drum brakes all around. Parents bought it for me for $350. Sold it a couple years later with a slipping trans for $300. Wish I had it today, it was wonderfully horrible and it was freedom...

There's quite a few of these...

'75 Nova bought from my much-missed friend Ray for $100 when I was 19. 250 six, three on the tree, obtained with an interior full of the smashed passenger window and a slipping clutch. Covered in bicycle company stickers all over.

Fixed the main issues, drove it too fast for a while, never got the three on the tree linkage totally dialed in. Traded it back to Ray for a pair of early Rock Shox, and then bought his dad's '80 Rabbit, which was the first car I ever autocrossed.

My father wouldn't let me buy a car until I had insurance money first, guess my older brother burned him on a payment.  I had $75 left about the same time a neighbor was selling a 1959 Anglia Prefect for $70. 

That lasted only a few weeks when the lower ball joint gave up and no parts suppliers or garages even knew what it was let along have parts!  I bought a 1963 Galaxie convertible with a 390 4-speed.  I like that one a lot.

Not the same car but mine had the same wheels with a black tonneau and roof.  Whish I had it now!

We were a Ford family, and my mom sold Fords. My dad had several old Fords, including a '50 business coupe, that he took to car shows. Mom was a T-Bird girl from day one. She still had her first car, a '55. It was more hole than car,  but it was all there, and all original.  They had bought my brother a '75 Gran Torino Sport for a show car, so one day shortly after I turned 15 (in '87) Mom asked me what I wanted to drive.

My answer was simple: "Anything [FoMoCo] from '55 to about '73, and anything cool from about '83 to now.  First, she came up with a '77 Granada, green with a white quarter vinyl top, and Keystone Classic wheels, 302/auto.  Sounded cool to me. She decided it was too fast. 
 

Fast forward a couple of months, and she says, "What do you think of a '79 Fairmont 2-door sedan..." "Not much."  "...with a 302 and a 4-speed?" "When can we go get it?" "He wants too much for it. We'll wait for him to come down some."  We waited until he came down from $1200 to $800, and we went and looked at it. We got it for $650, and we grossly overpaid. It was a rust bucket with a dead miss, but according to Ford, they only made 54 of them, and they were all special ordered. I found out later from a lady that bought one of the other ones that they tried to talk you out of it, mostly because they wanted to sell you a car today, not in 6 months when they got it in. She had to threaten to walk out before they would just order the damn car. 
 

I still have it. It needs a complete restoration, but I still have it. 
 

1966 Renault Dauphine.  Dad paid $35 and the seller pulled it to the house behind his van.  We overhauled the engine and it was easy, as the engine came with wet sleeves.  Factory Michelin 4x15 tires were $45 each so we bought (4) VW 5x15 recaps for $44 installed.  Sold it for $350 right after the first oil embargo and could have gotten twice that. 

'47 Plymouth.   Did two 1700 mile trips , plus DD.

Learned to run it 1 qt. low on oil.   Didn't use any more.

I had a 1964 Buick Skylark 2dr hard top. Looked just like this, but with hubcaps instead of the Buick Road Wheels:


Man, that was a pretty car. Mine had the Fireball 225ci V6 and 2-speed Super Turbine 300 auto. Glacially slow, turned like the Queen Mary, and with the single reservoir master cylinder and drum brakes, it stopped like it, too. Had a lot of fun in that car, and got my hands dirty wrenching on it more than a few times. Mine had some rust that was beyond my skill level, otherwise I would have kept it. I tried tracking it down a few years after I sold it, but I couldn't find it. I'd love to find another one someday.

My first car should be familiar to the GRM staff, a 1989 VW Fox, 4 Speed, 2 Door.  Bought the summer before my Sophomore year in college in like 1994.  Bought with 90k on it I think, and put about 30k trouble free miles on the next 3 years of college.  I don't recall doing anything to it other than replacing both front CV shafts. Lots and lots of "fun" memories in that little car......

I was always super close with my Grandpa. When I turned 16 he gave me his Explorer because he decided to buy a new one. I had been saving for 3 years for a Fox Body Mustang. At first I was just happy to have a car as a 16 year old. As the years went on I fell in love with the thing. Now that Grandpa is gone I cherish it (even though it badly needs restored). I have so many great memories in that thing. Man I miss him.

I was given a 65 Corvair Corsa with the four carburetor 140 engine and a four speed when I was about 14. It had thrown a rod, and the deal was if I fixed it I could keep it. The only problem was that I had no knowledge, no mentor, and no garage. I made no headway on that.

Two years later, my dad handed me down my first actual driving car. It was a 1960 Plymouth suburban two door wagon. Special order with zero options. It had a 225 slant six, three on the column.

It had been beach driven (and stuck occasionally) at New Smyrna from new so the floorboards needed patching. I used aluminum sheet metal, pop rivets and roofing tar for where the spare tire fell out.  I fixed the floor mounted gas pedal with fiberglass, which lasted about two days before my buddy mashed it sideways. Second repair was marginally better. 
 

It was glacially slow, I actually got passed leaving a traffic light by a fully loaded gasoline powered school bus while trying to stay ahead of it.

it would fit my 9'4" longboard in the back with the tailgate closed, without having the nose of the board over the seat.

Same body style and color, different car. I'd love to have it back, but my dad junked it my first summer on the road racing trotters. 

No pictures, but I had a Kia Stinger in the late 80s.

Not a car.  A freestyle bike.

It was lurid hot pink, and was a near perfect clone of a GT Performer, right down to the baloney-cut top tube.  Most Performer clones were cut straight, probably because it made for less wastage when making $89 department store bikes.

It came with 36 spoke wheels and god-awful wheel covers like a lot of bikes were starting to get.  The covers got ditched on assembly, and eventually the bike got Skyway-clone plastic mags, at which point the brakes never worked well ever again.

1969 Bradley GT kit car. We pulled it out of a field where it had sat for 15 or so years, for a measly $500. We got it running and driving, put a Weber progressive setup on it, and eventually put floors in it as well. I had a ton of fun in this car, and if given the opportunity I'd take it back in a heartbeat. It is what gave me my deep-rooted love for ACVWs. I wish I had never sold it, especially since I got a life lesson (don't let "friends" make payments).

Not a picture of my actual car, but mine was this same color (just faded from sitting in the field) and has the same aluminum slots on it.

My first car was the pinnacle of performance, quality, and luxury.  I say that because it was my first car.

In reality, it was a floppy pile of steaming poo, but it represented so much more than that.  I flipped the air cleaner cover to try to get more air in the VariJet, painted the side emblems gold, and put better speakers in the back deck.  Blew a headgasket street-racing a CRX.  2.8 liters and 125 hp of blistering FWD malaise.

Stock photo, but it was just like this one.  83 Chevy Celebrity.  We could never afford anything cool.  Dad was a teacher and mom was a substitute teacher/stay-at-home mom.

My first car was a 1971 Simca 1204. Bought it in 1976. Beat the hell out of it. Out on the highway my foot was always on the floor.

When I was 12 I convinced Dad we should do a project together as my first car. After much deliberation about what to get jeep, custom van (yes it was the early 80's), something else?  I picked the VW Thing, and he actually found a pretty nice one for sale around 1983-84 We got it home and parked it in the garage and got busy doing other things. I played around with it a little but with no guidance I didn't get far.  My dad ended up having  to work more and didn't have as  much time as he thought. I had a hard time with school and had to really study and all of a sudden I was about to turn 16 and the car was still just sitting there. We got it out of moth balls, dad didn't have time to do it all and farmed out getting the carb redone by a local "expert: (one of several rebuilds I did and other "experts" did over it's time with me) Served me well for several years until I went off to college and it was not ideal for running back and forth across two states in the winter so it go put up for my sister (I thought) and I was put into a second hand CRX HF for the drive back and forth to school. My parents ended up selling it while I was at school unbekownst to me for a pittance to the same "expert" since they had let it fall into disuse and deemed it too unreliable for a teen girl to be out it at all hours. I was pissed to say the least and my sister got a nice "reliable" 1982 320i to drive from a local guy going away to college. I wish I still had it. I have looked out for it since but never seen it that I know of since.

I have old pictures some where but this is close to what it looked like.

My first car was a 1986 Monte Carlo. I got it in 1992 when I was 16. I remember buying it from my fathers friends daughter. $3,000. Like all cars in that era in central NY it was starting to rust but it was pretty well kept. My god father owned a garage. I got my interest in cars from hanging out there. He let me keep it in one bay of his three bay shop for months to fix the rust and repaint. I was 16 and I didn't know enough to do this myself. He would stay after work every day and "help" me. By help I mean he did all of the hard stuff! He was an amazing guy, he died on April 26 of this year. I have missed him terribly ever since. I hope that I can pay his kindness forward. 

Still have it, needs some love right now