Tell us about your first car

1966 VW Bus

(Not mine, but similar)

I bought it for $25 in 1978. 

In reply to Colin Wood :

 Dad bought this for me in 1962.  A lot rougher then and it traveled a whole 37 miles before a connecting rod decided  it wanted to get out of the confines of the block.

    It originally came from Japan (?!!!) yeh I assume a Navy  guy brought it from America when  assigned there.   
    I replaced the engine and brought it to San Diego when I was assigned there.  I did a bare frame restoration in the Base hobby shop and finished just as I finished my duty.  
So I've owned this for 60 years   

1964 Baja Bug (the picture seems to have gone missing).

When we rebuilt the motor we went all out and installed the 1385cc jugs. 

The car had a one piece tilt front end as well as a cut and turned beam for additional ride hieght.

I had many great off road adventures with it. I actually swapped for a fully restored BSA 650.

1974 Standard Beetle. Bought for $2500 in 2007 with a fresh coat of paint and a good running 1600dp. I built a 1641 for it, blew that up after 200 miles, built another 1641, much better. I wanted to drive it on the beach, so it got 3" lift spindles and turned up torsion bars. My favorite part are the roof racks. They are period correct, given to me by a cool neighbor. I had a megaphone exhaust on it, which is still the loudest car I've ever heard on the street. Sold for $2500 in 2009 after I bought a 1962 Mercury Comet 289/3spd.

1951 Dodge convertible, light blue, slant six. Hand-me-down and college grad present as I was off to the Air Force in '54. Half way through pilot training, while home on leave, traded it for a new '55 Thunderbird. Had I washed out it would have been repossesed for sure. No pics and dim, but good memories.

55 Buick Special 2door 3 speed on column. 264 cu in v8. $313. Thought I was buying the fast Buick. Learned to research before buying. I think it was in 1962. Man I am old. 

First car I bought was an 86 GTI. I made payments for 36 months then made large repair payments monthly until I got rid of it. Fun car though. Had a stereo worth more than the car at one point.

But before that I borrowed my Dad's 1981 Ford Escort L. It had manual everything. 

First car was a 1978 Honda Civic

I'm sure I've told this story here before, but like George Thorogood talking whiskey bourbon and beer, you're going to hear it again. And again. And again.

Dad was known as the Honda guy in town. Bought a Civic new in 1974 and nobody had anything like that in the neighborhood. Years go by and co-workers would buzz dad saying they had and/or knew a neighbor who had a dead Honda rotting away, would he like it? He'd pick it up for next to nothing, fix whatever was wrong and sell it off. He had a block & tackle in the garage so he could yank an engine in an hour, carry it down to the basement, rebuild it over the weekend, and have a running car in a matter of days. Some he kept and he had a pretty good run racing them on the ice with NYSIRA and AMEC.

There were four of us kids, and we started getting near driving age in the middle '80s. The standard procedure was to learn to drive in dad's El Camino which was his tow pig for the ice racing effort. As the next kid got to driving age, the one using the El Camino was issued a Honda, freeing up the truck for the next trainee. These Hondas cost $500, payable with a $20 check every week and you were not allowed to be late with a payment.

I started with the El Camino in late 1984 as my brother got his first Honda. I wish I had a picture of that truck. Dad redid the body of it with copious amounts of Bondo and painted it black with bold yellow/orange/red stripes that started behind the front wheels, grew to almost the whole thickness of the truck bed as they wrapped around the tailgate. You couldn't get away with anything because the truck was impossible not to notice and everyone knew who it belonged to.

I used the El Camino for quite a while, though I also got to use his screaming yellow '73 Corvette convertible the summer of '85 after I graduated high school. That's really the perfect car to teach a 17 year old to drive a manual transmission.

Anyway my sister was approaching driving age by early 1986 so it was time for me to move on to a Honda. This one was originally brown but I sanded it all down, patched some of the rust, and dad resprayed it '73 Corvette yellow. It was glorious. These were amazingly simple cars, nothing to break, brakes and tires lasted forever, and I could squeak out low-40s MPG if I tried. I also could pretend to be a rally driver on the back roads to my juco and never risk getting a speeding ticket.

The problem with these old Hondas in Massachusetts was that they rusted out. This one got so rotten that its front crossmember cracked, as I was told by a mechanic at Sears when I tried getting them to put a pair of new $20 tires on the front. He told me to drive it home very slowly and very carefully, and never drive it again. And that's exactly what I did.

Unfortunately, I never learned my lesson. As the other kids went through their initial Hondas and then moved on to better stuff (Rob got a Dodge Colt, Sue got a RX7 GSL, Alison got a AW11 MR2) as soon as possible, I just kept finding dead Hondas to revive and drive. They'd start out decent, all the lights worked, but then they'd all start getting worn out just like the first one. Like the other Hondas dad dealt with over the years, when they'd get to the point of not being able to fix them, we'd strip them of anything usable and send the rusty shell to the boneyard. I went through four of those Civics; as a family I think our total was 16 starting from that new one in '74 to my last one that was retired in early 1994.

BTW when I saw msterbeau post about his red Civic, I instantly thought about the Bash Brothers that I read about in Autoweek way back when, and then I saw that he was indeed one of them. Funny how you remember stupid little things like that and suddenly someone who was actually a part of it is one of your forum neighbors.

1976 Toyota Corona station wagon.

Burgundy, no roof rack.

My first car was a Murray Camaro. I literally wore the rubber off the wheels and my folks unceremoniously tossed it in the trash one day. I bought an identical one on Ebay about 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I no longer fit in it. 

My actual first 'car' was a 1971 C101 Jeep Commando. 225 V6 and a four speed. Not really the car I wanted; more like the car my dad wanted and I was the excuse for him to get it. Yep, had some rust. Yep, wouldn't start in wet weather (a puzzling trademark of both 225 V6 Jeeps I've owned). Nope, don't particularly want another one.

1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited. Had the 5.2 Magnum V8. Black on the tan leather. Pretty nice for a hand me down from my mom(she got a BMW X5 to replace it). 

Threw a ton of the Mopar fast parts at it. K&N intake, Fastman 50mm throttle body, Mopar PCM, Thorley headers w/ high flow cat, 3" Kolak exhaust, Mopar M1 intake manifold and 1.7 rockers. Had the Transgo shift kit installed as the 46RE was total garbage in stock form. Transfer case was the AWD version(NP249 IIRC) which wasnt as good as the 242 Selec-trac(was a wish list item) which could be put into 2wd. The AWD case was finicky.  

With all that it barely ran a mid-14's in the 1/4 mile. Think in stock form they ran 16's. It wasn't fast but would get out of the hole quick enough to surprise people if you powerbraked it. Lost to a local 1998 Grand Cherokee 5.9L a few times with the same modifications that i had. So i was bitter at the truck after that. 
Removed alot of the Mopar parts, sold them and went to a basic Kevin's offroad 3" lift with 31" A/T tires. Tried offroading but time and money at that point made not working weekends impossible. 
Drove it into the ground as a daily driver and sold it. Was such a reliable truck and NEVER broke down no matter how badly i beat on it.

I always have wanted to build another fast Jeep ZJ but space isn't available to keep one around. Also finding one that isn't beaten to death these days is nearly impossible. 

A bit of a tricky question there. The first car I ever bought with the intention to drive it at 16 was a 1980 Buick Park Avenue 350 Diesel. Car was pimp as f. velour interior couches, 8-track player and 11 speakers. Paid $250 for the car. Little old lady had bought it new and parked it when she couldn't drive anymore under a maple tree. Every service and tank of fuel was logged in the maintenance manual including the 2 year old fuel in it. Put glow plugs and filters in it along with 2 new tires and one month before I got my license the injector pump took a dump. This was pre-discount parts stores so NAPA or CarQuest were basically my only option and it was $400 for one. I didn't make that much in a summer so it sat. Sold it 10 years later for $300. 

Since that car was dead, my parents lent me their 1984 Ford Tempo 5-spd. I sourced two new control arms from the local junk yard for $10 a piece and drove it. Popped an engine when a rod bolt decided it not longer wanted to be attached, shattered the aluminum oil pan while driving 20mph in town. I bought the engine and dad paid to have it installed (popped in January and we didn't have a garage or engine hoist at the time). Drove it until I graduated. 

Mine was this dark blue but with the super obnoxious red interior and hte "premium audio" from Ford that put the amp in the trunk area so every time you opened the trunk when it was wet the water ran straight onto it. Apparently Ford ddn't learn from that and did something similar with the Windstar ECU's. 

   My first car was an '83 Thunder chicken (3.8/auto) that I bought in '98, at the age of 18, for the princely sum of $200. It was extremely haggard, leaked every fluid you put in it, overheated if you didn't run the heater at full blast all the time, had one functioning brake (d/s front), no kick down cable, the exhaust ended at the converter, the tires had wires showing and broken belts, and it had just under 200,000 miles on it. The poor thing only lasted about six months until it chucked a rod through the block while I was roaring down highway 270 at 100 or so.

My first was a hand me down from my uncle. It was my grandpas 1969 Coronet.  318, 2bbl, auto. I got it when I was 14 and it had made it though 11 Winnipeg winters. I worked on the car for two years and drove it when I got my license.  Learned body work, timing chain, ujoints, left hand thread wheel lugs, heater core and so much more. Here is a rust free representative pic:

Mine was gold with the white vinyl top

My first car was a 1969 MGC GT Primrose Yellow with wire wheels and knock offs. Bought for 1500.00 in 1980. Drove it all over the Bay Area. Hit a telephone pole bent the frame traded it for a 1972 Triumph Spitfire. Got it Friday night at 9pm rolled it the next day. Trailing arm broke off the car, sent me spinning....

My first one that I bought with real money was a 2001 Ford F-150. 2WD, manual transmission, crank windows, V6.

The first one I bought (with a fake ebay account at 9 years old) was a 78 Chevy Square body 3/4 ton. 2WD, 350 V8, TH400 trans

1971 MGB GT. My dad bought it when we moved to Indianapolis in '72 and he used it to commute for the 18 months we lived there. He never got around to selling it, so when I turned 16 a few years later, it became my car. I loved it, but one day I took my eyes off the road just long enough to change the station on the radio and totaled the car. 

This is the car with my little sister the day Dad bought it.

I then made the mistake of buying a TR7 to replace it, but that's another story.

1968 Sunbeam Imp = the 875 cc engine would not enable the car to start from a stop sign on a steep hill no matter how much you slipped the clutch (and doing that would have unavoidably ended it up in the shop anyway.

Traded in 2 weeks later on my second car, a 1968 Toyota Corolla which was actually reasonably peppy and as a non interference engine would float the valves in all four forward gears without negative effect.

Despite the durability of that car, I then started in on a string of British cars that lasted several decades (I still own four of them).

I was about two when my mom got it for me.  I could read "MIURA" on the underside.

I was about six or so when I lost it in the heating ducts of the house, I thought I could drive it from one room to the next, not knowing that there was a duct to the basement in between.  Well, that's how I learned, anyway.

1988 Dodge Omni, blue with blue interior.  Quite the terd

Fun thread, not the first time we've visited this topic and I enjoy reading the replies every time. 
 

It didn't occur to me to mention my first car, since I never got to drive it. I was gifted a 1965 Corvair Corsa coupe with a thrown rod. It had the 140 HP engine with the four carbs, and a four-speed, pretty cool car. 
 

I've always loved the looks of that generation. Unfortunately, I was 14 years old with no mentor, no garage, and no clue. I remember looking at it and trying to figure out what to take off the engine first. I'm sure I needed to start on the bottom, but there was no way to lift it sitting in the sand behind the house.  When I didn't work on it, the owner took it back and sold it. 

First car was a 1994 Cavalier RS, four door, auto. White with blue interior. Think I paid $2000 or so for it, not bad considering the age and condition. Drove that car for five years before someone t-boned me bad enough to total the car. How it survived me for those years, I'll never know.

Had been in four accidents, two of them my fault and good lessons in poor road conditions. Saw more air than many a rally car. Slow by any modern standard, but it got me where I needed to go, and got 30-40mpg frequently. Can't say I miss it, but when I see one of those old J-body cars on the rare occasion, it does make me respect how tough mine was.

64 1/2 Mustang Convertible.  Bought it used - 2nd owner.  289, 4-spd.  Original owner installed a chrome Sun tack on the transmission tunnel - just ahead of the shifter.  I rebuilt the engine, installed a matched Ford Performance hi-rise intake, hydraulic cam and springs. Mallory Dual Point and a Holley 780 Double Pumper on it.  New rings and bearings.  Hedman headers. Used to run it at Green Valley outside of Ft. Worth, Tx. and at Dallas International Speedway (both were SCCA tracks where I volunteered as a corner worker) in Lewisville, Tx.  Best run was 13.9.  I used to carry slicks and a jack in the trunk, and wrench to open the headers.  When Two-Lane Blacktop was released, I went with my friends to see it - we took up the front row.  Hell - We were living Two-Lane.

I bought my first car, an H-code 351W-2V FMX 1970 Mustang Mach 1, in 1988 for $1200.  Blue with white trim, 14" chrome wagon wheels, shag carpet, white fur dash, and Thrush sidepipes; it was everything a 15 year old could dream of wanting. I learned to wrench on it, and while testing the newly rebuilt brakes, I learned the consequences of the bad maintenance practice drilling holes in the shocktowers to grease the upper A-arms. The driver's side shocktower collapsed necessitating the shocktowers be replaced. I then drove it through high school and undergraduate.

Crazy thing is, I still own it 35 years later.  Just could never bring myself to ever let it go, even though I've abandoned it for long stints during those 35 years, whether for grad school or career or family commitments, or laziness. It did get mostly restored but not quite finished from 2001-2006, and then it sat again for anothe 6 or 7 years again. And now it's been sitting half torn apart since 2012 awaiting installation of the new engine, trans, coilover suspension, bigger brakes, and all the other stuff I've accumulated over the last decade.  It's a sad sight, but I'm hoping 2023 is the year I get it done (enough) to drive again.






 

‘69 Volkswagen Beetle.

Compleat Idiot’s guide kept it alive far longer than natural.  Learned oil changes and valve adjustments.  First engine removal and new clutch installation.

First throw out bearing explosion in heavy traffic due to being installed backwards leading to....

First lesson in driving manual transmission without using a clutch.