So we have a thread on your least favorite car. Here’s the opposite. Out of the cars you’ve owned, which one was your favorite? The car you wish you still had (unless you still have it).
I’m going to have to pick my current car, a 2019 Mazda MX-5 Miata. I won’t deny that owning a tiny sports car comes with certain limitations, but I have so much fun driving it that it doesn’t matter. Put the top down on a sunny California day, go around a curve a bit faster than you would in an ordinary car, and you will forget all your problems. Like all the car reviewers say, it really is the most fun for your dollar in terms of a car purchase.
1977 Camaro I bought in 1986. It had a 305 engine but California Transmission. Really fast acceleration, easy to work on, great and fun car. I drove it cross country 3 times in fact.
Sadly I lost an argument one snowy and icy morning with a telephone pole.
My first car was pretty awful. I bought it in the late 90s, it was a 1990 white Geo Metro. The car itself was okay, though 3 cylinders struggle on hills. But that wasn’t the issue; the car was just badly-maintained. I paid a shop money to do a thorough inspection of the car before buying it, yet they apparently didn’t check the transmission fluid because after 3 months of driving it, the transmission was shot. The fluid looked like thick burnt motor oil.
My second car was the worst, the only good thing about it was that it cost me $100 cash. It was a 1977 Chevy Impala. I am not going to get into how bad it was, that could fill a book, just suffice to say that too much of this song is familiar.
My third car is the one I am most fond of, but purely for nostalgia. It was a 2001 Toyota Echo and I drove that for 17 years. It was solid and reliable. I still remember when I drove through one of the area’s worst ice storms and made it the whole way despite passing many stranded cars. It was the little car that could, and got me up and down hills safely over a 4 hour drive (that was a 45 minute drive in normal conditions). It was the first car that either of my daughters ever was in. I loved that car, and it was still decent when I traded it in, but it was just time to move on. I mean, it had manual locks and windows, still had a CD player and a cassette player. It was a relic.
From a practical perspective, my current car is my favorite. A 2018 Chevy Spark. It’s tiny, yes (only has 2 seats in the back) but that means I can park it anywhere. It turns on a dime. Very modern, automatic lights, locks, windows. I can lock my car from an app. It’s very comfortable to drive and sit in. Mileage is great. It makes me happy.
Hmm… I’ve owned several cars over the years – perhaps 10. My favorite would be a tossup between my first car and my current car.
My first car was a 1975 VW bus, purchased ca. 1997:
It was canary yellow just like the pic, had curtains in the back and deadhead stickers on the rear window. I spent ~$150 on a Blaupunkt Seattle tape deck and a big box speaker to put in the back and man alive I thought I was the luckiest kid in the western hemisphere. That thing just oozed coolness and it was the perfect car for me: I could load a cooler and the dog in the back and go camping for a weekend or I could drive it every day to school – both of which I did. It had no fan-forced air but the A pillar windows opened and the heat actually worked!
Unfortunately the oil filter somehow rattled off one rainy evening as I was coming into Portland on I-84, and that was the end of that. As I noted in the other thread I am not much of a mechanic and I wasn’t about to try to swap in a new engine so I sold it, not running, to an old hippie for $300. Somethimes I think I should’ve kept it. That was right before I met my now-wife and all that space in the back could’ve been put to good use.
My current car is the only car I’ve ever purchased new; a 2020 Honda Civic sedan, Sport trim:
There’s some things I don’t like about it: it’s small and cramped inside, it doesn’t have lumbar support, the cup holders suck mightily, the climate control is laggy, and it doesn’t have variable intermittent windshield wipers. But it’s the only car I’ve ever had that has a backup camera, it has the lane-keeping assist and radar adaptive cruise control, It has a sport-tuned suspension that is wonderful on my long commute on narrow mountain roads, it has integrated fog lights which none of my other previous cars have had (and I didn’t realize how vital those damn things are until I had a car with them on it), it gets a real-world combined 34mpg, and perhaps most importantly it’s a 2020 model year with a manual transmission which makes it truly an endangered species. I also brought it brand new so I know its service history and have been able to keep all receipts. No surprises. It still runs like it’s brand new.
When I began car shopping in 2019 I fell in love with the Kia Soul (I even started a thread here on the Dope asking about user experiences) but it had two problems: it was probably the ugliest current production car in existence and only the base model had a manual transmission. The new 2023 models have fixed the disgusting front end so now it actually looks like a car but unfortunately it’s only available in a CVT and, as near as I can tell, only one mid-level trim model has fog lights. I’ve toyed with the idea of trading the Civic for a new Soul – the Soul would have a sunroof and lumbar support and heated mirrors and seats and remote start and all the other niceties that sound ever more appealing as I get older – but that manual transmission and that sport suspension that makes me feel like I’m glued to the pavement as I navigate 13 miles of 30mph corners in the pouring Oregon rain is still really, really nice to have.
I’ve been lucky enough to have many cars that I’ve really loved and appreciated. But I still have a real soft spot for my first truly ‘good’ car; the first car that I actually owned as opposed to having been given to me by a relative. It was a 1982 Mazda RX-8 GS. It was a tasteful metallic charcoal when I got it, and in overall solid shape, with most of the work it needing being things that a novice mechanic could handle (replace the starter, fix some simple electrical problems with the power mirrors and pop up lights, etc)
By the time I graduated from college, rust was starting to eat the bottom corners of the doors and a place or two in the rockers. So I took some money I was given as a graduation present to get that car painted (RED this time), reasoning that keeping that car clean and well running would be much cheaper than trying to replace it, or, god forbid, trying to buy new.
That plan would have worked, but kind of like how renaming a boat is supposed to anger Neptune, repainting that car activated a curse.
My uncle backed into the driver’s side door a month after I got it back from the painter
A month or two after getting that accident fixed, I rear-ended someone coming home from a night shift
Couple months later, someone hit the front corner, but thankfully left a note
The next fall, I was waiting for a gap in traffic to make a left turn into the work parking lot, when I got rear-ended at 30+ MPH by a guy in an F350 work truck. The entire back half of the car was demolished.
I’ve been lucky to have a lot of great cars since then, but other than my Lotus Elise, none that I was quite that personally invested in. My current M240i convertible might be a close 3rd.
Great SUV for camping/road trips for 1 or 2 people. Capable of taking me wherever I wanted to go, and then some. (it was far more capable as an off-road vehicle than I was as a driver, that’s for sure). One of the features I liked best was the tailgate with the power window. I put over 240K on it before things started wearing out on a regular basis–it would’ve been fine for around town but I needed something that I could count on for month-long road trips.
Not mine, but my mom had an orange Volkswagen Thing when I first got my drivers license. All the doors came off, windshield folded down and it had a frunk.
Without a doubt, my 2021 Ford Mustang Mach E is the best car I’ve ever had, and my favorite. It’s not without its downsides, so my very close second favorite is the 2019 Expedition I used to have (short term car).
Based on how much I loved the 2019 Expedition, I’m betting that the 2022 Expedition that I’m picking up tomorrow after a 9 month wait is going to be a close match for the Mach E. Different use cases. Different downsides. Different upsides. Tough call.
2001 Dodge Intrepid R/T. Leather interior, 8-way powered seats, great sound system, sun roof, reasonable (for me, at least; YMMV) power-to-mileage, great “road manners,” just an all-around great, comfortable car. Only had one breakdown on it, in 2010, when the radiator fan crapped on me in the high-high heat of July, and I barely got it off the road and turned off just short of total engine meltdown/lock-up.
But it developed an oil leak in the winter of 2016, and I couldn’t run it down. It only leaked when the outside temp dropped below freezing, and lower the temperature got, the worse the leak became. No one could run it down. I finally traded it in in August of 2019 on a new car, but I still miss it.
This is a hard question. I’ve had twenty cars over the years, and since I’ve had the finances to afford new cars (the current one and the previous two), each has been better than the previous one. I guess “favorite” isn’t necessarily synonymous with “best”, however.
I really liked my 1967 Caprice Sport Sedan. It had the 327 with the double hump heads. The A/C worked, and it was in pretty good shape. I had it from '85-'88 IIRC. I also liked my 1963 Studebaker Lark. It had the 259 V8 with an automatic transmission. It ran quite well. I had it from '91-'95. Of all the cars I had, these two are the ones I wish I had kept.
The two cars tied for “best car for the money” were a 1983 Datsun Nissan Sentra Diesel (yes, it had all four emblazoned on the trunk lid) and a 1988 Ford Festiva. The Sentra cost me about $750 and I drove it for nearly eight years. It got an honest 42 MPG in town and better on the highway. It died when crunched between two Chevy pickups. I got $1100 for it from the other guy’s insurance.
The Festiva cost $1000 and I drove it for nearly eight years. It didn’t get quite the MPGs the Sentra did, but its A/C worked! I got $1500 for it from the other guy’s insurance when I totaled it.
Summary: the car I most wish I had back as a collector piece was the '67 Caprice. The one I wish I had back as a daily driver was the '88 Festiva.
I had an MG Midget. I loved driving the car but man, what a pain in the ass! If it was below 40 degrees Fahrenheit I had to use spray starter to get it going. Spark plugs had to be changed often, and one plug was nearly impossible to reach. Parts were difficult to find other than searching junkyards. It was my daily driver for two years, including Pittsburgh winters.
Probably the 2006 Chrysler 300, in black. Comfortable, quiet, AWD and roomy. It wasn’t the SRT8, but nice all the same. In a tie would be the 1998 Jeep Wrangler Sahara, also in black. Not as comfy, certainly not quiet or roomy, but a lot of fun.
I don’t know if I can name a favorite. I really liked my Aerostar - it had 235K miles on it when I sold it. My Scion xA was a great little commuter car that had a surprising amount of cargo space - I sold it to my sister.
We had a Crossfire and much as I hate sports cars, that was a fun car to drive. Unfortunately, it was a really expensive car to maintain, being essentially a Mercedes.
I guess the Aerostar would win first prize for me. I was sorry they stopped making that model.
2003 Ford Crown Victoria. It was baby blue. First car I bought for myself. Paid half down, and paid off the loan in under a year. Horrific gas mileage, but that wasn’t an issue back then. It was crazy fast for a car that big, but riding in it, it was like a couch on wheels. I’d buried the speedometer needle in that thing at least a couple of times, and it still felt like we were barely moving.
I’d probably still own that thing if some dickhead on his cell hadn’t rear-ended me at a red light one night and totaled it.
It wasn’t my car, but my wife had a car I know she wishes she still had, a 1972 MGB. She bought it new and loved it. It was a neat little car. I drove it occasionally. The only reason we parted with it is that after we were married, we lived in some southern states where reliable service on a British car was simply not available.
1996 Mazda Miata. My first manual transmission car. I met Mrs. Charming and Rested when I owned it (indeed, because I was shopping for it). It sounded wonderful. I handled well with the best steering of any car I’ve ever owned and the easiest transmission to shift. It moved nearly everything in my one bedroom apartment (including the dressers but not the box spring, mattress, or couch). It put a smile on my face every time I drove it. I’ve owned other Miatas but my first was the best.
My first car was a 1975 Toyota Celica GT purchased in 1979 from a private owner. It was a 5 speed and I learned to drive a stick on the 60 mile drive home after buying it. This was near Pittsburgh, PA. Not the best place to learn how to work a clutch. Or maybe it was. That was the last car that I ever bought that was less 10 years old. Fun to drive, for sure. However, I didn’t know a thing about buying cars or fixing cars and the engine need a major overhaul pretty quickly. It lasted maybe another 3-4 years before rust wrecked the bodywork. Still, it was cool and is my favorite. My current daily driver is a 18 year old Civic with 200K, 100K of which were put on by me. I like it because it always starts, gets pretty good mileage and the AC works. Paint is shot, outside door handles are broken (passenger side), 3 of 4 speakers don’t work and one wheel well is rusting. I’d buy another Honda in a second.
