Your first car?
 

I shared the worst date car in the world with my mother. My father had a friend in the neighborhood that was a GM exec. He told my father he'd get him a car from the pool. My father got a great deal on a 1967 Delmont 88. Financially, it was a great deal, but the car immediately had no resale value. OK, visualize this; it had a canary-yellow body with a white painted top. The delineation between top and body was a lousy tape line. To make matters worse the interior was baby-puke green. Luckily, my girlfriend, now wife, took pity on my poor soul and went out with me anyway.

Shortly after being "asked" to leave my parent's house at 19 I found myself without a ride. I was asked to leave the house for fear I would kill my brother. I had already beaten him pretty badly for spending my coin collections while I was away at military school. When confronted he told me that they were "just" coins and that he had spent them on candy. I only learned a few years ago that the "candy" he spent the money on was actually H. :shock: He did eventually straighten out.

At any rate, my father had more compassion for my violent transgression than my mother and understood my plight so he loaned me the money to buy a car, through the same GM guy. I dreaded what he would bring me home, but he was loaning me the whole purchase price. He wanted to keep it under $1,500. This was 1971 and I was 19, just to set the framing. My father shows up in a 1968 Firebird 350 in Burnt Umber, I believe it was called. It had a black interior with tiny chrome hubcaps on matching painted wheels. The only think he got wrong was that it had no stick, which probably saved me a few tickets. That was, by far, the coolest thing my father had ever done for me, in a sea of uncool things.

So, now I had a car and shared an apartment with a guy I went to HS with. His girlfriend moved in, they fought constantly and both moved out without a word to me. Now I had a car with payments to my father, a fiancé, an inherited cat, an apartment and car insurance premiums of $650 a year, a princely sum, I assure you. I could not afford all of them. Gi told me that she had an idea that would help out. She suggested that I put the car in her name under her parents policy. Back them girls got better rates than guys of that age. She said her premium would save $400 a year, but I had to promise to pay that much more on the principal of the loan. She's pretty damn smart that way.

However, since we were not married (she was still in high school) I couldn't simply give her the car, I had to sell it to her. So I did. I sold it to her and made out a bill of sale for $1.00 "and other valuable considerations". She paid a $10. title transfer fee and 4 cents in sales tax. I got a refund on my cancelled insurance of about $350 and paid my father back that amount towards the principal. That step started me on a lifelong drive to be debt-free.

Two weeks after transferring the car to her name her parents received a notice from AAA making me an excluded driver on the car. I couldn't drive my own damn car! I was livid, but fate would have it that I was hired full-time by her uncle as an electrical apprentice. As a perk I got to take the truck home at night. I found out years later that he felt that the trucks were safer in our driveway than his commercial yard.

So, the car became Gi's transportation until the day we got married. We then insured it as a married couple and could afford the much lower rates. By this time she had my savings passbook, my car and my stereo. In actuality, I married her to get my stuff back.

Her prom:




At our first rented home.




Gi drove the car as a daily driver until she got the Pacer in '76. She cried when she got the Pacer, and again when they towed away the rust-ravaged Firebird. She cried again when she sold the Pacer. Could never figure that one out.

I'm full of them.

How about yours?

My first car was a mk2 golf. Bought it the same day I got my license. I was completely new to cars and the mk2 was a problem child. I spent more on fixing that thing then on my next 5 cars combined. But I absolutely loved it. It got me into this scene 13 years ago and i made a lot of friends in the VWworld all because of that mk2





I've had a lot of cars over the last 13 years but always kept atleast 1 mk2 in the stable.

I remember the pacer story. " nobody goes out to buy a pacer lady!"

Great memory!

Thinking back on my original post I was in error. My real first car was a 1930 Oldsmobile I bought while away at military school. It was in a barn across the street from the school campus. I bought it for $60. spent $10 on a head gasket and got it running. Unfortunately, my folks wouldn't let me bring it home, so I abandoned it.




I actually had another car, in-between. I wanted a dune buggy, but my parents wouldn't hear of it. My folks went away for a two-week cruise, leaving my grandmother in charge. I brought home the Corvair I had purchased a week before they left. I moved their cars out of the garage while my friends brought over their cutting torches and sawzalls.

The first thing I did was cut the top off, then I removed the doors. I cut away the floor pan between the door posts and bolted both halves of the car together. As you can see in the picture, granny didn't look real thrilled.

I got the car running and tooled around the neighborhood listening to the now-flexible car creaking as I went down the road. I knew I had to do some serious welding. A friend's family owned a Standard station. I was told I could use the lift and their stick welder. I drove the car on back roads to get there, only to find the lift occupied by a project that wasn't moving out quickly, so I parked the car behind the station and walked home.

I came back the next day and the car was gone. My friend inquired and found that when his grandfather came in and saw my work of art he thought someone had abandoned a POS behind his station so he hooked it up to their tow rig and took it to a scrapper where it was deemed to have no salvageable parts and was immediately put in the crusher.

That old guy probably saved my life.

nice stories......my first car was a 1984 suzuki alto,keep in mind that i was only 12 years old.drove it a little around for 2 days till my dad found out where my money had gone,I [in my young stupidity]asked him if he would get it registered so i could drive it to school......oops,wrong question.to make a long story short,my dad sold the beast.


similar car,mine was all different kinds of purple and rotten to hell.

Oops.

unfortunately,i couldn't get away with 'oops'.....just thinking about it makes my ass feel hurt again.

D'oh!, then?

then i had trouble sitting for sometime ;) :D
when i bought it,the PO [a guy that worked at the company where i was then the 'tool-hander',I still work there BTW] said it wasn't a problem at all,but the car was still registered by him.same night he called,to get the official transfer-paper we need overhere.i think i don't have to explain what happened when my dad picked up the phone and found out he sold the car to a kid.........
we didn't have the € back then,so my loss was a F250,-.....he never paid me back any of it,eventhough my dad insisted him to give me back at least some of it.

Does he still work there as well ?

nope,that year IIRC he started his own business,and still has his own shop.
[i run into him every now and then,he talks to me like it never happened,so do I]

A 1986 Ford Fiesta. It was a solid and fun car.

Audi a4 2005. Still running that :)

1979 VW Golf "Mark Wan" GL

1980 mk1 Golf diesel..with probably 5 milion km's behind its belt