[Admin]

First cars are special and memorable. They teach us life lessons, and for many of us, they've seen us through many important events in our lives. They leave a mark, for good or bad, and sometimes we love and hate our first cars just like a family member.

What's your first car story?

 

[PhatPens]

​

What's your first car story?

1966 Dodge Coronet 500 318ci 2 bb. Silver w/black vinyl roof. AM radio swapped out for an 8 track eventually. A/C $2800 new. What's the story. Had way too much fun with it. Way too much. Would love to relive those days. I was teen just getting started. The world was a playground. (still is). End of story. I can go on forever.

 

[GarretG]

First cars are special and memorable. They teach us life lessons, and for many of us, they've seen us through many important events in our lives. They leave a mark, for good or bad, and sometimes we love and hate our first cars just like a family member.

What's your first car story?

My first ride was a white 1960 4 door Olds Delta 88. It had chrome slot wheels and a noisy muffler. Occasionally it would backfire and set the carburetor on fire which required quick thinking and movement to put it out. Besides that it leaked transmission fluid, a lot of fluid. All that aside I would pack it full of peeps and we would ride around and have the best of times in High School! It lasted for a year then I moved on to a more reliable Ford Galaxie with 3 on the tree! Those were the days my friends!

 

[Brigmix]

My first car I could call my own was a 1969 Ford Fairlane Cobra In a Royal Maroon. It was 9 years old when I got it after getting my driver's license in high school. It as was one of only 1,324 units fitted with the optional automatic transmission. As a girl, I was the envy of all the guys in my high school class. They took every opportunity to think of a reason to get to ride in it. Eventually, I upgraded to a 1973 powder blue Dodge Challenger. Today my two boys can't believe their mom ever owned a muscle car let alone two!

 

[agsmithiv]

Sorry for the loooong story...but you got me reminiscing...

I pulled my first car out of my fathers field and got it running to drive to High School. It was a 1946 Ford Tudor sedan originally built and sent to State of Nevada Department of Forestry . It still had the Department of Forestry signs painted on the drivers and passengers doors. Like so many cars built for public use in 1946, it was built with parts left over from 1942. The instruments, exterior trim, taillights, steering wheel and horn ring/button were all 1942. Due to WWII, from 1942-1945 a large majority of vehicles built in the US went to Gov't vs public use. My father taught High School Auto shop in the late 50's-70's and had one of his Senior graduate classes strip the car inside and out. They installed a 1963 Ford small block 260 V8, which had been donated to the school by FoMoCo after his students won first place at the National Troubleshooting contest in Dearborn the previous year. The engine was outfitted with cutouts and an electric fuel pump w/emergency kill switch, which made it a cool drag car for the local dragstrips. The students had used the original torque tube drive line, converted the shifter from three-on-the-tree to a three-speed floor shift with a granny low non-synchronized truck gearbox. To add weight to the right rear wheel, they relocated the battery to the trunk where they mounted two 6-volt marine batteries in series. One battery ran the 6-volt instruments and Generator, and the 12-volt starter used the amperage and voltage of the two batteries in series. I never had a problem starting that car!
Like sailors and first ships, gearheads miss their first cars just as much. I wish I had her back, I heard she wound up in Australia.

 

[dkatz]

r

I have two first car stories....I was a jr. in high school, spring of 1968. I and four other guys chipped in $10 to buy a 1952 DeSoto. It ran fine. When we were picking it up, someone said, we ought to put a sun roof in it. We were buying it from a guy who owned a construction company. He grabbed a cutting torch, jumped up on the roof, and started cutting out a huge opening (without even asking). That worked great, but: it caught the upholstery on fire. We got a kitchen chair, cut off most of the legs, and it was the drivers seat. There was no way to cover the roof if it rained. We dubbed it "Poptop". We painted idiotic slogans on it. NONE of our parents knew about this, and it had no insurance (easy to get away with in Kansas in the 60's). Looking back, it seems totally insane and dangerous.
Finally, it was my turn to take it home. I parked it around the block from my house.
Next morning, the police showed up at my house. The people whose house I had parked it in front of were complaining because their minister was coming over...doesn't seem like a police action thing to me, but it was.
My parents were outraged that I had done this.
They told me to take the car to a junkyard and get rid of it (I think it was in my name?) My friend and I decided that it would be an adventure to take it to Kansas City (about 60 miles from where we lived in Topeka, KS), sell it to a junkyard and take a bus home. When we got to KC, we couldn't find a junkyard. No google...we decided to drive back home.
We picked up a hippie couple who were hitchhiking. They were headed to San Francisco. It was the "summer of love" (or was that actually a year or two before). Somehow (and yes: this sounds even more insane than having the car in the first place), my friend and I thought it would really be cool to go to San Fran, and offered to drive them. I'd had no thoughts of running away from home until that moment, it just sounded like a cool adventure.
We got an I 70 and went about 125 miles when the car broke down (later, I learned that all that happened was that the plastic rotor cap was broken and fell off: an easy fix). Our traveling companions had already begun having doubts that this trip with us was a good idea, anyway, and took off.
We left the car by the side of the road and decided to hitch hike home.
Shortly after we'd crosse the road and stuck out our thumbs, the highway patrol picked us up and called our parents.
Boy, was I ever in trouble. My parents made me start going to a shrink. And with 60 years of hindsight, I can't say that I blame them. What we did was SO irresponsible, dangerous, ill-conceived (I had maybe $10), impractical and idiotic that what could they do but think me insane. And so Poptop wound up in the junkyard, even thought it actually ran really well. It, by the way, had a very early automatic transmission, that was operated by dashboard push buttons.
WHAT was I thinking?

 

[dkatz]

Here's my second first car story (It's okay, as this one is the first one that was really mine, the previous was owned with four other guys). In 1972, I had borrowed a friend's car, and was in a terrible accident: a drunk crossed the center line and hit me, head on. Broke and shattered my femur in three places, and was in traction for SIXTY FIVE DAYS! I was a broke musician in those days, but: I collected some "uninsured motorist" money (as I said previous, in Kansas, in the 60's, though you were supposed to have insurance, it was easy to get away without it, and the guy who hit me had none). So, I wanted to buy a car.
I wanted a safe car. So nothing but a volvo would do. I was buying used.
I had a friend who was an expert mechanic, and he told me to not buy a used car without him looking over it.
I found a used, '68 Volvo station wagon, and to me it seemed great. The guy selling it was a minister. How could I gor wrong from a man of the cloth I thought. I bought it without having my friend check it out.
But he did, after I owned it.
None of the tires were the same size.
It needed a ring job and a new clutch.
Oy.
I think I got some of it done, and then decided to give up on it. Sold it and bought a '72 Datsun 510 wagon. Was a great little car, that sadly, was parked in the street in front of my house, and was slammed into by a pickup truck and totaled...glad I wasn't in it!
Anyway, in 1975 I moved to Boston to go to music school. In 1980, I got a teaching job in Kansas City, and moved there. Worked at a community music school and gave lessons at a guitar store.
And: I had a student whose parents were the people who bought my Volvo. They had fixed it up and it was, in 1980, still going fine.