Sorry to revive this, but I intended to post this earlier. I had a 1969 Buick Wildcat, 4-door hardtop. Believe it or not, it was bronze with a white top. I absolutely loved that car and wish I still had it. Another reason that I hate and despise my ex-wife, as if I needed any more.
1971 Datsun 1200, 2-door. I bought this from my sister kiffa for a can of beer. This car went through eight starters. The first time the starter wouldn’t work was on my move from LA to Pennsylvania. Fortunately, a gas station attendant showed me how to use a screwdriver to move the brushes (by contact with two screws) enough to get her started. I estimate that I used this technique about 30 % of the time I had the car.
After Pennsylvania, I got this car out to Idaho. No power left in her. On the pass from Jackson Hole WY to Driggs ID, she could only do 18 mph, tops. She was becoming a total rust bucket, with large holes on the floor under my feet. But when she died 20 years after her birth, she had over 300,000 hard-driven miles on her.
And she never automotively betrayed me, unlike my 1984 Maxima, which chose to die after I paid the toll, but *before * I got to the Lincoln Tunnel (aka the “no, we don’t tow from there” zone). :rolleyes:
My first car was distressed 72 Chevy Malibu that had been painted orange. By hand. I’m not kidding, you could see brush strokes. A bright orange Malibu with a green license plate. I called it the Atomic Carrot.
a 1973 Buick Electra 225 four-door. Deuce & a quarter. It was like driving a building. I put 18 high schoolers in that car.
455, 4bbl, 2 gal/mile beast of an engine.
Power EVERYTHING, including a HUGE front bench seat (NOTE-NEVER put Armor-All on a HUGE front bench seat - nearly got launched out the PASSENGER window when I made a left!)
And the coolest option I had seen at the time - cigarette lighters in both the BACK ashtrays…
You could drive through a building & come out without a scratch…
I miss that car…
In 1997, my parents bought me a 1977 Mercury Comet 2-Door. It had a 302, an auto trans, and a hole in the floor. The exhaust system cosisted of a piece of flex tubing.
I hit a gravel truck with that car. When we put it up on ramps to see if it was fixable (nope), we found out that there was a hole in the left rear frame rail, where the rear axle connected.
'72 Ford Maverick. 4 door with a brown and orange plaid interior.
I loved that car, but I shared it with my sister, and one (otherwise) beautiful fall day she drove it into a mountain. It wasn’t even a new mountain, it’d been there for years.
I still miss the car, but not the plaid, so much.
~S
There’s a handful of them zipping around San Francisco, mostly in wonderful-looking condition. Itty-bitty things that are apparently just a dream to park.
As for my first car? 1981 Pontiac Fiero, which had been described to me as the upscale variant of the Chevy Citation. I’d hate to see the “downscale” version.
Not once did I have trouble starting the car. Always had trouble keeping it running, though. It was just impossible to turn the key and drive right off without stalling. In the winter, I had a 2000-RPM book that I’d lean up on the gas pedal so I could start the car and let it warm up while I set about scraping frost off the windows. Front defroster was pitiful, and with nothing in the back, I had a heater plugged into the cigarette lighter and sitting on the rear shelf to keep at least a reasonable frost-free spot in the rear window.
Air conditiioning was 4-40 - 4 windows down at 40 MPH
Radio was glorious AM.
The struts for the hatchback were shot, so I had a broomstick to hold it up.
And the hood. A previous owner apparently bent the hood prop so badly that it had to be removed entirely.
Muffler fell off about three blocks away from home on the way home from work.
Radiator fell out about a month later.
No, I don’t miss that car.
Behold! My beloved 1974 Opel Manta!
Red with black vinyl interior. 4 speed manual. Not all that slow for a 4 cylinder. Alpine Tape deck, Alpine 40 channel amp in the glovebox. White-letter Radial T/As. I got it when I was 15 from a farmer neighbor of my grandparents in Arkansas, and drove it all the way home alone to St. Louis 6 months from my 16th birthday. My grandfather loaned me the $800 and didn’t tell my parents. They were rather surprised when I walked into the house by myself. “Where’s PaPaw? How did you get here?!” 
I put well over 100,00 miles on it.
The letter “a” was missing from the “Manta” badge on the back, so my friends and I called it “Mant.” We decided that it kinda looked like an ant, so to complete the effect I installed another radio antennae to give it one on each side of the hood.
Sold it back to the same farm family when I graduated from college for $300. Eventually it died but they keep it on their property and I pay him a visit whenever I can.
Baby blue VW fastback, year unknown (hey it was Santa Cruz and I was young and drugs were involved), nice crank-open sunroof which leaked. I am chagrined to admit that my boyfriend owned the exact same car, same color and everything.
I never did figure out where my engine was.
My senior year of high school ('85). My stepdad scraped up enough to get me a '76 Subaru DL. The “rustbucket.” I could see the street through the floor. I kept thinking one time I would whomp down on the clutch and my foot would go clean through.
Oh, God, what else?
–A buddy and I had to push-start it every morning to get to school.
–The fan would never come on, so I had to wire a toggle switch through the dash.
–I never could get it to go into third gear. Second and fourth we okay, but not third.
–Moving to college (about a 12-hour drive), I had to stop about every hour to add coolant. Even so, it ran just below the red.
–Toward the end, the clutch burned up and the fender fell off from the rust. In addition, I had to drive hunched up the car was so small (and I’m not particularly tall.)
I’ve probably repressed much more than I remember.
I ended up calling the salvage guy. Told him if he came to haul it off, we’d be square.
1979 Buick Lesabre. I got it in 1995 I think, (95 or 96). It was $950, it wasn’t a bad car and as far as I know didn’t ahve any mechanical problems in the year that I drove it but it got about 7 mpg. This wasn’t too bad as I think gas was down to $1 a gallon back then but I still spent alot on gasoline.
My first car was a red 1967 Plymouth Valiant. I bought it in 1992 for $200. It was a stick shift (3 speed) with no power steering, brakes, etc. It had 13,000 miles on the odometer, and I was assured by the seller that was accurate. supposedly the original owner had bought it new in Seattle, drove it to Oregon, and then parked it, only driving it into town once a week for grocery shopping. The body was all covered in dents, it was rusted through in several spots, the air vents were all stuffed with sticks and leaves, the carpeting was rotted away, etc., etc. (The black leather seats were pretty nice, though.) I swear I was pulled over every other time I drove it just because it looked like a car that someone who was up to no good would drive. If they could have cited me for crimes against aesthetics, I’m sure they would have. In the time I drove it, I had to replace the clutch, the alternator, and the heater core. Ooh, but I had fun driving it! It had a big V8 engine and I drove it way too fast every opportunity I had. It was pretty awesome.
The first car I actually owned was a four-door '59 Plymouth Fury with a push-button automatic. I bought it in 1978 and believed fondly that it was a ‘classic,’ even though it was very obviously a POS. It had the original pink-and-white paint job, the original upholstery (shot to hell), the original fins, and, unfortunately, the original brake master cylinder, which no one could replace for what I could afford to pay. I bought the car for $100 from another waiter at the restaurant where I worked and promptly doubled the value by putting some used tires on it. I “fixed” the upholstery by stuffing throw pillows into the springs in the front seat and throwing an old bedspread over it.
I drove the car for a year, then sold it to someone who I was convinced would lovingly restore it to its former glory. I still prefer to think of it that way, instead of as the block of recycled steel it probably became.
My first car was a 1967 Chevy Biscayne 4 door, slant-6 engine that wouldn’t die and three-on-the-tree transmission. Funny, I have never seen another one of those cars, ever. My brother and I were given the car in our senior year of high school by an uncle who owned a gas station. Apparently he towed this in for someone who never paid to get it back. It had matching dents all the way down both sides, as if someone tried to run between two trees that were *just barely * too close together.
The car I miss most, though, is my first patrol car. It was a Dodge St. Regis, I don’t know the year (early 80’s, I guess). It was a retired State Patrol Interceptor, with a 440 engine, 4-barrel carb and beefed-up suspension and steering. It had a hood big enough to land aircraft, a back seat the size of a king bed and a trunk bigger than my first apartment. If I stomped on the gas you could hear the engine three miles away, I would be smashed into the seat like an astronaut during take-off, and I could watch the gas gauge go down as I was driving. The hardest part about doing a pursuit in that car was not passing the bad guy like he was parked! Man, that was a cop car!!
My first car was a 1984 Jeep Grand Wagoneer. Bought it from a used-car dealership run by a family friend. I later found that the first owner was probably a classmate’s dad.
A loose transfer case shifter and a dumbass in a Ford Ranger conspired to destroy it.
Same as my dad’s. He was ashamed to be driving a 10-year-old car. Now he’s wishing he’d kept it, of course.
My first was a ‘67 Merc Cougar. 351c. That car was fast as fast could be, in a straight line, and for less than 10 miles, after which, it would overheat, rattle and shake and undulate like mad. Did that same shakin’ thing over 120 too. :eek:
Damn. i meant 69.
My first car was a '70 Ford F250 pickup. Strictly a farm vehicle, boy, pickups didn’t have any fancy options back then.
It’s my second car I miss most, though. 1970 Mustang Mach I, 351C. Loaned it to my brother and he totalled it.
1978 puke-green Datsun 510.
No air-conditioning, non-functional heater, one window didn’t work, and by the time I got rid of it, only one functional windshield wiper ( driver-side ). I had to drill holes in the bottom of the doors to let the rain water that accumulated after every storm drain out.
Despite all of that it was reliable as hell - I took it over mountains in snow, off-road in deserts ( with all due environmental deference - it was the only way to reach a few botanical sites 
) and basically all over the west coast with never a failure, other than one blown hose ( easily dealt with ) and one leaky water-pump ( temporary annoyance ). Could turn on a dime, too ( I’ve been frustrated with the much wider turn radius on every car I’ve had since ). It had well over 200,000 miles ( 230K? 240? ) when I finally parted with it.
- Tamerlane