You saved your pennies. You worked your ass off saving up the coin to get your first car, and you knew what you wanted. But things didn’t work out…that Mustang was too expensive, your parents shut down the idea of you in a Camaro in zero seconds flat, and the dreaded words started to come flying out of their mouths: “Dependable”. “Reliable”. “Safe.” Buzzwords that indicated that your first car might suck after all.
I got lucky growing up. Before my 16th birthday I’d already had a small fleet of cars pass through my hands: ’75 Camaro, two G-body Cutlasses, a ’73 Comet, two Aeroback Chevrolets B-bodies and plenty of borrowed seat time in a Chevelle and a 454-powered Chevy dually had cemented my desire for a V8. Nothing else would do. Unfortunately, life got scrambled a little bit around that time period…I ended up moving out of state and leaving my baby, the 1979 Caprice, behind and wound up working at a food court inside a K-mart to whip up some money. My grandfather and cousin took notice that I was not quite myself without a set of wheels…they were tired of hauling me around, as well. My eyes were fixed on a 1973 Plymouth Satellite that belonged to my cousin’s mother. She never drove it and it was sweet. I’d also taken notice to a 1987 Monte Carlo SS in town. But one day, as I walked back to their house from school, I saw a late 1980s Hyundai Sonata in front. I thought my cousin had bought a mileage beater so he wasn’t dumping all his check into his Pontiac Bonneville. Wrong.
Take the car in the pictures, and make it look like a $400 Craigslist special, and you’ll get the idea. Band-Aid tan, no rear bumper cap, cheap hubcaps. Luckily, the car was an absolute shitbox and I only drove it once, ever. It wouldn’t go above forty miles an hour and the transmission was one hill away from giving up the ghost, and it was easy to convince my grandfather that while my cousin meant well, he had executed poorly. The Hyundai disappeared shortly thereafter, but that was after lots of prayer involving that car and a lightning strike. It was better than walking, but riding the bus around Colorado Springs was probably smarter…and cheaper in the long run.
We always share the stories of the cool first car, but this time, let’s hear about the turd that you got, or narrowly missed driving? This ought to be fun…
A Ford Anglia/Popular!
No matter how cool you think they look done up as gassers in the States, back home in the UK they had a weedy 1127cc sidevalve motor that couldn’t move you out of the smell of your own farts and would corner on their door handles even on a wide smooth bend….
1984 dodge 600 four door….
Replaced it with a 63 galaxie pretty quick..
Luckily I wound up with a 4X4 Chevy truck but my parents kept threatening a Chevette.
Pontiac Astre.
’nuff said.
By the time I got my license at 16 anything with 4 wheels and ran would have been fine with me. I ended up with my dad’s some what dinged up ’73 Gran Torino when he got a new company car. The 400M was no powerhouse but had enough torque to smoke the right rear all the way down the street.
I really wanted a 6cyl (4.1L) Cortina, power to weight ratio etc, but was only allowed the 4cyl version (2.0L), first car ended up being a nice 1980 Ghia, but it wasn’t enough.
So I used to flog the crap out of it, and one day going sideways down some dirt tracks I smelt smoke, thought “that’s odd”, as the cabin filled with blackness through the vents.
Long story short, these Cortina’s had a recall out on them for the plastic clip that holds the fuel line to the carby…..
Burnt to the ground in front of me, revenge of sorts….
Chevy Citation , 4 speed manual . Yep I really muscled my left leg on that harder than rock clutch pedal .
I was given the choice of a rough Plymouth Duster 340 and a gold K-car of some sort. I made the obvious choice as a 14 year old, and paid $850 for the Duster (still own it today). The strange thing is my dad was a Chevy guy.
My parents had a 1980 turd brown Corona wagon and a 1968 Camaro conv’t. Granted the car was a 6 cyl, 3 spd on the floor no option car but I did get the Camaro!
My first car was my mom’s old 77′ Firebird (still got it), after I broke the crankshaft spinning the 301 to the moon, I drove a 60′ Apache 10 longbed step side. Luckily my sister got the 80s Sentra.
Learned to drive in a Wolseley 1300 – could just about pull the skin off a rice pudding on a good day. Then an Austin Allegro with leaking hydrolastic suspension on the left hand side, so about every six months it would look like it was drunk leaning against a wall. Fortunately not the square steering wheel model. But it did have shocking engine mounts so that if you dropped the clutch hard, it would pull the exhaust off the manifold. Wouldn’t move fast, just make a lot of noise.
All this in good old NZ, at the time it seemed to be that old cheap vehicles were British. Shortly after, the govt relaxed import duties, and all the old cheap cars became Japanese.