Thread: Your first car?
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Old 16-04-2012, 15:39
barry2952 barry2952 is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2012
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Default 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.
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