What was your first car? When did you get it? How much did it cost? How long did you have it?
Mine was a Chevy Monza- basically a revamped Vega- got it brand new in 1978. It cost a little over $4,000, and had a cassette deck instead of an 8-track. I had it for 6 years.Mine was a 1974 Oldsmobile Cutlass S. I got it for $800 in 1982 and drove it for 3.5 years. It got 10 mpg on a good day.
1971 Ford Courier pickup. Dad bought it as part of his dragline company. When he needed something hauled and his crew were busy, I went and got it. The rest of the time the truck was all mine.
My first car was a 1966 MGB. My mom ordered it new. She drove it until about 1972, when she got a Toyota Celica.
I got it after high school. It didn’t run. For some reason my parents had taken it to Tijuana for reupholstery. By the time I got it the red vinyl that replaced the original red leather was faded to pink in some places. The Old English White paint (sort of an ivory colour) was oxidised to chalkiness. The ‘isinglass’ (i.e., plastic windows) were cloudy brown.
We sent the car to have the engine rebuilt, and we ordered a new hood (that’s a convertible top on British cars) from Moss Motors. And I was on the road! I drove the hell out of that car. Dad backed it out of the driveway and the door caught on a tree. Folded it into the left-front fender. So off to the body shop. Now since I was a kid, I didn’t really appreciate originality. I had the car painted orange like the new (-er – MGBs stopped being made in 1980) cars, and had the carpet and upholstery changed to black. I drove it until I got a Porsche in 1984, and still drove it occasionally after that. Like an idiot, I sold it a couple of years later.
The MGB Saga is a thread about my current MGB. In a nutshell, I bought a hulk in November 2002. I took it to a body guy in April 2003. The body guy was lazy and didn’t finish it until last Summer. Now it’s in the hands of a hobbyist who works on it when he gets around to it. I’m really hoping (hoping against hope!) that I’ll actually get it this year. It will be a duplicate of the car mom bought, which was my first car – Old English White with a red leather interior. Only it will have overdrive.
A Datsun 180B which I bought for the (then) princely sum of $1800 in 1983 so that I could get to uni more easily. I sold it in 1986 after I graduated. I’ve never bothered buying another car.
I don’t know how much it cost new. $2,500, maybe? It didn’t cost me anything. It was a hand-me-down.
And since mileage has been mentioned, mid-20s. (I’m hoping the overdrive will help on the ‘new’ one.)
My folks always preferred to keep cars in their own name, so I don’t think I really ‘owned’ a car until I was living out of their house in my mid-twenties.
The first one that was “mine” to drive, though, was a 1970’s-era Dodge Aspen. It had been sitting a bit and not driven much in recent years (I 'quired it in the 1990’s). First task was to fill it with gas and put air in the tires. All four tires were 20psi or less.
Drove it until I went to college driving a retired army pickup truck from the 1980’s that could be started without trivial accessories such as ignition keys.
1955 Ford, bought it with my own money from my first job in 1963 when I was 18 – $350 in installments of $30 a month. It was so pretty – two tone, a very pale green (almost white) over aqua.
It used more oil than gas, and broke down on me once, about 15 miles out of town in the middle of nowhere. The guy who stopped to help was the previous owner. He told me it needed head gaskets. Fixed that (on borrowed money), then got pregnant, quit my job, went broke, and the finance company took the car back. They had to tow it. I only had it a few months and it was a lot of trouble, but I loved that car.
A '72 camaro when I was 17. Got it for $1200 and fixed it up. Loved. That. Car. I had it for 7 years, til I got pregnant and we decided to get something “safer and more family friendly.” sigh…
I had a '69 Dart for almost ten years, from '86-'95 or roundabouts. I have no idea what we paid but it probably wasn’t much more than a few hundred.
It was the BEST car, and I wish I’d kept it. It never gave me any trouble, but my little girl always acted like it was so embarrassing to be seen in it. I sold it for four hundred dollars (it really was in excellent shape too), then put down several grand on a car that always gave me hell.
I have seen the car recently on the road (it’s not hard to miss) recently and I want it back!
A '63 Pontiac Catalina. It was black. I think I paid $100 or $150 for it.
a 1984 Dodge Rampage. It only cost a couple hundred bucks and lasted a year or so. Man I loved that Cruck.
Where I graduated the big thing about prom was to arrive in the most original way. A few years ago they actually started to orgainize a parade out of it. Well my little Cruck was on it’s last legs and so my friends and I painted it with the grad theme (it was jungle) and piled in. We barely made it there but it was a blast. And in a scrapyard somewhere is my leafy truck, probably growing weeds of its own.
A 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air 2 door hardtop. I paid $800 for it from a private party in 1965.
I sure wish I still had that car. 
I felt the same way about the MGB. That’s why I’m creating a duplicate.
A 1959 Plymouth Savoy with push button drive on the dashboard. I remember installing a fake floor shift on the ‘hump’.
Cost $ 600.00, and I still have the bill of sale from a dealer in Norfolk, VA, ( I was stationed there…USN).
1978 olds delta 88. All my friends made fun of it, but whenever we wanted to go somewhere I had the only car big enough to hold everyone. I paid a couple hundred bucks for it, and it got me through college. I sold it after I graduated.
The first car I bought myself? That would be the '95 mazda miata I just replaced two weeks ago. Great car with not a single problem I didn’t cause (because I believed those bastards at Pep Boys when they said my hoses were fine). I got it with all the bells and whistles, so it cost about 30 thousand. I still can’t believe I’m selling it for just $650, but it’s toast to anyone not willing to do some serious tinkering.
Before that was my dad’s '85 nissan pick-up, but I really just took over the insurance. Also a fabulous truck that died only a few years ago, victim of a collision with a mack truck.
The first car that was mine to *drive * was a Ford Maverick. It had tons of room to haul my friends around, but guzzled gas, so it was switched for a Mazda GLC that we drove until everything not made of metal had just crumbled away. It wasn’t worth an overhaul so it was driven over the rainbow bridge, never to be seen again.
1962 Pontiac Catalina convertible. The car was super nice except for a couple of problems. There was an electrical short somewhere that would cause the battery to die after only a few hours. And the carburator was junk. It leaked gas so I could drive the car more than 10 miles or so before I had to stop and sop up the gas off the intake manifold. I paid $35 for it and sold it 6 months later for $50 to my best friend. The engine caught fire a few weeks after I sold it due to the gas leak. My friends mother wanted me to give the money back but I had already spent it on another car, I bought a 66 Rambler for $75. Saw another 62 Catalina convertible at an auction a few years ago, it was in about the same condition as the one I had, it sold for $12,000.
1950 Plymouth; $150.00 IIRC
1963 Karmen Ghia purchaed in 1969 at Suburban Motors on Lake Street in St Catharines Ontaro for $800. Four years later I bought another vehicle as a back up for cold winter driving and was talked into lending it to my brother who didn’t bother to check the oil. Last I heard it was abandoned on his girl friend’s farm which her father sold (the farm) several years later. If I ever get that way again I’ll look it up. A lot of memorable early sexual social history in that vehicle.