Maybe he sold it on before you could be seen being picked up from school in it, or perhaps he kept it too long and your childhood memories rusted before your eyes. But did your Dad (hey, or your Mum too) ever have a cool car, one you would deeply desire today.
Just occured to me that between his oh so sensible family hatches and small British sports cars that my sister goes nuts for, he had a quite delectable car, a Lancia Beta Coupe. Very nippy according to him (and Mum agreed for once) and equally sharp looks. Its probably rusted to pieces by now, but someone in Belfast has a soft top that I would offer to buy if I had the cash. Makes me think that Dad was quite different before the mortgage and all that got on top of things, this four seater coupe was his idea of practical, the practicality coming from being able to fit me in the back, which he couldn’t do with his MGB GT.
My dad had a 55 T-bird when he was younger,sold it somewhere in the 60’s,he said it was the dumbest sale he ever made.
He has made up for it a bit now though,he currently has a 57 Chevy,a 64 Mustang,a 70 Corvette and a 29 Model A.
My dad was a “car-guy” in school. He could get anything to run, and run well. He bought a GTO and spent 4 years fixing it up, but got rid of it in college. He has always liked classic cars, and when I was in high school he bought a 75 MG-B and it was wonderful. Actually, it was a piece of crap at first, but once we fixed it up it was nice.
Now he has it up for sale, and drives a Ford F150 or a Jeep, depending on the day. Of course, both of those vehicles are rather nice…
My dad had a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda, then after that was stolen and stripped, he bought a '70 Road Runner. He was more mad at me for breaking the gallon of milk in the RR than he was about the 'Cuda being stolen. I guess all the insurance money in the world wasn’t getting the sour milk smell out of the carpet.
MY dad had a 1950’s Jaguar Convertible. I only have dim memories of riding it once when I was very, very small. It spent most of my childhood under a tarp in the front drive. Until we moved and then it sat in the garage. When my parents got divorced when I was twenty, my brother sold it (with my dad’s blessings) and got a decent amount for it.
I miss my dad’s blue-on-white 1955 Oldsmobile with a Rocket V8 engine and manual transmission. He promised that when I graduated from college, he’d give me this car, but he got pissed off and sold it instead.
My dad’s daily driver is a 2004 PT Cruiser which, while I like it (I own one myself), probably isn’t especially ‘cool.’ He also owns a Ford F250 Diesel – a nice truck, but probably not really cool cool.
He also owns a fully restored 1932 Plymouth – not hotrodded out, but restored to stock. That’s a very cool car, indeed. Especially since he did all the restoration (except the upolstery on the seats and the exterior paint job) himself. He just finished it last year and has been enjoying taking it to local car shows and things.
Dad’s a motor-head and he’s actually owned a number of cool cars. We sat down and figured it out recently and he’s owned 51 cars. He’s 71 years old, BTW.
One example I never forget is the 1956 or '57 Triumph convertible he had in 1960. I always remember that one because it was my fault he had to give it up. In 1960, my folks had been married for three years and my mom wasn’t getting pregnant. Finally, Dad said, “Look, if we can’t have a baby, let’s have a sports car.” So they bought the Triumph.
And my mom promptly got pregnant. With me.
She had kind of a difficult pregnancy and her doctor was worried about her riding in such a low car. And once she started to get large, it became harder and harder for her to get in the thing. Anyway, a 2-seater sports car is not a family vehicle. And their finances at the time dictated that they were a one-car family. So the Triumph was traded in – for a Volvo, IIRC. As I grew up, whenever I got on my dad’s nerves he would say (jokingly, I hope), “I should have kept the car…”
Dad drove and raced a 1965 Triumph Spitfire but sold it when he went in the Navy in 1966.
In a move that I have mixed feelings about, he decided to get married and buy a house rather than get the 1970 Boss 302 Mustang he had picked out. I mean, c’mon, a house and a wife? I know she turned out to be a my mom and all but we’re talking about a Boss 302 here!
My dad bought one of these in 1957, same color too: http://ragtoproad.com/574drford/57CLEAR.jpg
I was home on leave about a year after and he let me use it almost every night.
I remember riding around in a 66 Triumph TR-6, a 57 Chevy Nomad, a 60 Pontiac Bonneville, several different motorcycles, a 74 Lemans, a BIG Ford pickup, an 86 Mustang convertible that I bought from him, and then some pratical family cars, too.
My father drove a 1974 Cadillac Calais- this body style but with a padded gold/mustard vinyl roof, gold/mustard plush interior, and aubergine body. He bought it when it had about 1000 miles and drove it until his death when it had almost 200,000. He loved that car.
When gas topped $1 per gallon under Carter and his 500+ miles per week became expensive he bought a manual 1978 Toyota Corolla (mustard colored) that he also loved and only used the Cadillac for when he was hauling several people or cow feed. (The Cadillac smelled of cattlefeed from the time it was a few weeks old.) That Toyota Corolla cost about $3400, had well over 100,000 miles when my sister sold it for $1000 in the late 1980s, and it was still running in the 1990s- an almost indestructible car.
My dad had an awesome succession of muscle cars and convertibles, up until I was about a year old (mid-60’s). The first car he bought for me was a 1957 Nash Metropolitan.
Now, he has a Segway. Dad’s pretty hip for an AARP member…
