What was your first car?

[City of Mills]

I bought my first car at 16, it was an old barely-running electric blue 1969 Barracuda fastback. Took me a year to make that car road-worthy. Loved it though, until my dad made me sell it :cry: If I kept it, it would look like this today:

[bushisanidiot]

1. '65 Mustang I bought from my cousin. :)

that was a fun car to drive.. had lot's of pickup.

[ewagner]

2. 1952 DeSoto

bought it for $25.00

called it the so-do-do......as in dodo bird

[dolo amber]

3. Renault Alliance

that lasted approximately 2 months.

Incidentally, Renault is French for "piece of shit".

[alittlelark]

5. That was my 2nd car...puke green too

Wretched car, lasted a few months longer than yours though.

[DS1]

21. Your Renault was better than mine

[Rjnerd]

29. Had a renault Dauphine for a while

One of the family castoffs. Replaced the clutch (cheap) and drove it for the better part of a year. Starter gave out, and the replacement would have quadrupled the value of the car, and taken several months to arrive. Two things kept me driving it for a further 5 months, skill at parking on a downslope, and the fact that french law of the time required cars to have provisions for hand cranking. Yup, there was a hole under the bumper, and the jack crank had pins on it, so you could crank the engine. And I did for several months - kept me tuning the thing, so it would start on the second pull...

After the dauphine, there was an early ford falcon (62?) complete with column shift, and vacuum wipers, that would slow to a crawl on the highway.

After those two, I gave up on cars for a couple of years, for two wheels, both human powered and motorized.

Silly as it seems, I think it would be fun to have a citroen 2CV (aka DeauxChevau) They are just so silly looking.

[demnan]

4. A 1970 Chevrolet Belair

Ran like a bat out of hell and was full of dents (the guy who gave me the car had 6 DWIs). I drove that car for a couple of years. Best engine by far of any car I ever had.

I finally got rid of it in 1983. The engine still ran great but the heat and brakes gave out.

[SCDem]

6. '73 VW Karmann Ghia

I called it the poor man's porsche.... though it is a death trap I think it is still one of the most beautiful cars ever made

[Rambis]

7. 1972 piss yellow Maverick

three on the tree- I couldn't get it to move because the clutch was so shot. I ended up with a 1963 Chevy Impala (the Tank) I loved that car.

[Maine-ah]

13. hey

a friend of mine had the "shit brown" mavric to match your "piss yellow"

[alittlelark]

8. '72 VW Bug - Orange, beat-up as hell,

but a great car!

[CBGLuthier]

10. I had exactly the same car and same model year

I got mine in 77.

[Maine-ah]

9. 1977

PUKE green Volare. It belonged to my great aunt, who was even shorter than me. It had a block attached to the gas peddle. Hi-beams were on the floor, and it was deadly in the snow. The funny thing is my great grandmother (g. aunts sister) had the sister car, puke green dodge dart, that she gave to my brother! what a riot!!!

[On the Road]

11. A White 1970 Rambler American

and boy did I abuse it.

[Greyskye]

12. '76 Honda Civic CVCC - baby puke yellow

It was a good college car. I actually had 9 people in that car at one point: driver (me), 2 in the passenger seat, 4 in the back seat, and 2 more in the hatchback area. My next car was a 2 seater Honda CRX, as I was tired of hauling around all my friends!

[petronius]

37. Mine too - bright orange!

That car was unbreakable - it even mowed down a chain-link fence when I wanted to leave a concert in a hurry. And two people in the cargo area was always good for a laugh...

[gollygee]

14. '79 chevy malibu

It ran well.

[ladjf]

15. Renault quatre chaveax - It used more oil than gas.

When I tried to drive away in it, my friends would grab the back bumper and hold me back. I had a late date with a girl who lived on
the proverbial hill. The problem was that the car couldn't make it up the hill. I had to walk to get her. She wasn't too impressed when she learned that the car was about two blocks away.

[ET Awful]

16. 1978 Ford LTD with about a million miles on it, a huge V8 engine and

a broken speedometer cable :)

[scarlet_owl]

17. A 1988 Buick station wagon.

I can't remember the model anymore.

[flamingyouth]

18. 1980 Peugeot 505 diesel

Loved that car.

[bloodyjack]

23. HOLY SUFFERING CATFISH

That was MY first car too! Same model and year!

Amazing!

[flamingyouth]

26. WOW

That is totally weird. Mine was a bronze-brown color. What was yours?

[bloodyjack]

28. Mine was maroon-brown, pre-paint job.

Why did you have to let yours go? I lost mine in a car wreck and still dream about it sometimes :cry:

edit: post-paint job à la college jerks, it was kind of an ugly purple

[flamingyouth]

32. I just had to sell it

It had over 200k miles on it. I replaced it with a gas 405 model that I never liked as much. Then Peugeot stopped exporting to the US. I wish they'd come back, though I love my Volvo.

[billyskank]

33. Yugo Sana

Dunno what year. It was an "H" reg - not that that means anything to Americans anyway. It was shit. But it only cost UKP800. It looked like this:

[ceile]

19. 82 Civic

Had 95,000 miles on it when I bought it. CLose to 200,000 when I destroyed it. Great car!

[buckettgirl]

20. OMG

Thats the kind of car my mother-in-law wants!! My husband's first care was a 69 chevelle ss, 396, 4 on the floor, and factory air conditioning. It was a project car, and he hadn't gotten very far on it when his brother-in-law sold it out from under him!!!
I could kill that S-O-B for what he did!!! (Its a long story, and no - it wasn't legal, but we can't do anything about it)
I just wish we could have saved the rims... they had the ss emblem and were in excellent condition... but no, its all gone now.
Someday, I will make sure my hubby gets another 69 chevelle ss, and I will have a 57 bel-air. :)

[sinkingfeeling]

22. 1955 Metropolitian.......................n/t

[CottonBear]

24. A red 1976 Camaro

with a HUGE Chevy V-8 engine. Top speed was approximately 140 MPH. It used so much gas that you could see the gauge moving as you drove! God, I wish I hadn't sold that car. It had a very thin white double pinstripe down each side, the little tail on the trunk lid and a red and black interior.

edit: sp.

[Rjnerd]

25. On the road or not?

First thing I owned that could legally be driven on the road was a 1966 Datsun 311, aka Fairlady. A japanese copy of the MGB. Turns out it was a fairly rare creature, one of only 1,500 made.

Unlike the british originals, the electrical system worked, the fasteners weren't whitworth, and the engine was acutally pretty powerful. By the time it got to me, the plastic back window was opaque, the floorboards were wooden drop ins, and the exhaust manifold had a bad crack in it. It lost a contest with an even older chrysler, that crested a hill too fast, not knowing there was a blind intersection just past the crest of the hill. Luckily nobody was in the passenger seat at the time.

Before that I was part "owner" of an old two-stroke saab (I quote "owner" as I was just one of the 3 buddies, that found it abandoned and got it running again). Used to drive it around the nearby gravel pit where it had been left, and on the old carriage paths in the adjacent woods. Standard kit with the thing was a very large crescent wrench, to free the engine when it siezed yet again (and likely why it was abandoned originally).

Learned to drive, and "adopted" for almost a year, the familys 69 VW bus. Built it a new engine, when it swallowed an exhaust valve. Learned to tack upwind...

[CO Liberal]

27. 1958 Hillman Minx

Like the one in this picture, only a previous owner had painted the aqua portion on my car Fire Engine Red (with a brush).



I paid $80 for it in 1970, and drove it for a year and a half before the tranny jammed in second gear one morning when my father was driving it.

[ProfessorGAC]

30. 1973 Pinto Runabout

Not the hatchback version. Red with a white vinyl top. Had Firestone 500's on it.

Drove it until one year into grad school then i sold it. Was $1900 new. Sold it for a grand. Not so bad a deal.

The cousin i sold it to drove it another 4 years and then sold it for $300. So, we drove that car combined over 9 years at a net of $1,600. $180 per year, or $15 month.

Plus, since i put 70k miles on it, and she put over 50k, that works out to 1.33 cents per mile.

That was a pretty economical little car for a couple of college kids.
The Professor

[Wat_Tyler]

31. Never owned one.

[njdemocrat106]

34. 1982 Olds Omega Sedan, gold color (nt)

[merh]

35. 1969 VW square back - puke green with rusted floor boards

and dual carbs! It looked something like the image below (except it had a duller paint, faded, puke green, name of the car was Godzuki)

<>


It cost me $800 and I held parts of the engine together with spit, prayers, bubble gum and panty hose!

Life was simpler then!

[obreaslan]

36. 1984 Ford Tempo

I rocked!

[DelawareValleyDem]

38. 69 Chevy Malibu

3 speed column shift

[Rhiannon12866]

39. What a beautiful car! I share your pain.

Mine was a 1971 Plymouth Duster, slant-six, white with blue interior, that I inherited from my mother. I loved that car. My one and only accident was in that car, when a guy ran a red light and hit me broadside, so I had it entirely redone. My mother had it towed and crushed three years ago, because she didn't want it in her garage.;(

On edit: Welcome to DU, ByTheRiver! Glad to have you with us and I share your love of classic cars!:hi:

[jburton]

40. '71 Super Beetle

Perfect first car.

Lock your keys in? Just pop the vent window.

Battery dead? Just stick your leg out and roll it like a skateboard until you can clutch start it.

[hollywood926]

41. 1976 chevy chevette with no headlights.

[pdx_prog]

42. 66 Chevy Malibu SS....

Bought it (already hot rodded) for $900...

Kept it for about 3 months, sold it and bought a 72 340 duster.

[jdots]

43. 63 V.W. bus 0-60 in about 3 hours

brakes died at 11 miles an hour as it hit the back of a flat bed truck,almost lost my legs and the emergency brake was stuck,so i unscrewed the plates and walked away.Those things are cute but deadly.

[Abelman]

44. Oh boy

A 1988 Chevrolet Cavalier (Abelman 1, as I called it). Oh sure, it was a small four cylinder get-around-town mobile but I loved it like it was my own. It was really my mother's.

Then, there was the '81 Ford Thunderbird with a million things wrong with it. I drove it a total of four times, got it working, then went to college. My parents never started it and it suffered because of that.

My last car was an '87 Ford Taurus station wagon, Robin's Egg Blue. It was a piece of junk. I got it for $800 with another $800 for brake work. I spent a lot of dough just fixing stuff that went wrong with it, and the transmission finally crapped out on me in Chicago.

In between I had to drive the Mustang my parents bought from the neighbor. I was so excited until I discovered what I thought was a convertible was a fake! It had a sticky transmission (manual) and ran worse than my cavalier.

I'm now looking to buy a VW Jetta (diesel) and also a project car Rabbit. The Jetta, just so I can drive normally, and the Rabbit so I can trick the shit out of it. (Not trick in the traditional sense, in the nerdy-treehugging sense)

[Phillycat]

45. DAYUM, that is a sexy, sexy car!!

I love muscle cars. I'd have to give any guy driving that car a second look, that's for sure. Keep your 'vettes and your :puke: Hummers, a good muscle car is the hottest, for sure.

[Left Is Write]

46. A 1975 two-tone green Buick Century.

It had stiped upholstery in green, brown, orange, and yellow.

That car was butt-ugly.

[blondeatlast]

47. 1979 AMC Pacer LX--the power everything, luxury model.

Truth.

[bmbmd]

48. 1964 Ford Falcon

of indeterminate color.