Post your rose-tinted 1st car stories within.

I originally posted this on another forum, but felt compelled to share here as well..

My first car was a 99 Plymouth Neon Sedan in bright Platinum. Low mileage car, about 64 IIRC. PO cooked the old engine and half-assed the install. Did not understand the sensor differences between 95, 96, and 97-99. Got her running after some new pigtails and a Crank sensor. Ended up doing new timing belt/tensioner/engine gaskets.

I bought it when I was 15, paid $900 cash. My dad threw a set of tires on it and proceeded to put ~20k miles on it due to his sales job at the time. I learned to drive by tagging along on his trips. This was the summer where I learned the value of GSF (Gas Station Food, thanks Speedway) and what it really meant to be a road warrior.

A few months after I got my license, the exhaust went to E36 M3. I just started posting up on the local Neon forum and hanging out with a lot of the Auto X guys. Ended up meeting a guy who prepped the cars for the Celebrity Challenge during the 90s and had a ton of parts in his basement..

One week later, BAM! "Neon Challenge" open exhaust. Couldn't beat the price of free, although just about anything would beat that car in any type of speed contest. Still didn't keep me from thinking I was the next Auto-X hotshoe who would soon be burning up Hoosiers on his weekends. I started to piece some things together to build a "cheater" SOHC by mixing/matching parts, as well as swapping to a manual trans. Ended up selling most of it off when I needed money.

In reality, I was 17 and could barely afford beer and gas and having new hockey equipment was a lot more important to me than Auto-X.

The car had a multitude of hilarious failures. Most were mainly stemming from the lack of alternator splash shield. This led to many dead batteries, locked-up alts and thrown belts. I accepted very little help, other than some guidance from another guy I met on the forum who was a master tech at the local Dodge dealer.

There were some other electrical gremlins. A lot were where the PO had used butt-connectors for sensors. I really honed my soldering/heat-shrink skills here and have a lot to do with how well I can do automotive wiring nowadays.

I had a lot of good dates in that car, and great memories of laughing about it breaking down. It would happen at the worst moments. I could never sneak a girl home late due to how damn loud the thing was. It was even a good wingman when broken down, as there isn't much to do when you're sitting in a disabled car with a female.

I even (regrettably) let the girl I was into at the time first start driving on that car. To this day, I have never been more terrified of riding shotgun. We only went a few blocks!

Ironically, she took out an exit sign on I-75 in it during a snowstorm while carting my drunk ass back from a wedding a few years later, well past graduation. The car ended up being fine, I just pushed it back onto the shoulder. Her and I never really talked after that night.

When I graduated, I bought a really clean Jeep XJ, but kept the Neon for leaving overnight @ the bar, heading to Detroit, etc.

My sister drove the Neon through HS, and didn't take care of it that well. Blown speakers, rust due to not washing, and even a broken strut.

Still, we got about 8 years out of it. My dad drove it the past year or so, a few miles back and forth to work. It kept E36 M3ting crank sensors every 4 months or so for one reason or another. Luckily, it only took a few minutes. I sold it back in August for $1700..

In the meantime, I had picked up a mint 98 Neon ACR (factory Konis, quick-ratio steering, bigger sways, 4-wheel discs, etc.). It had almost the entire Mopar catalog thrown at it for Auto-X. No A/C, no Radio. I picked up a set of ITBs and started collecting parts to build it into a beast. I sold it this spring when I developed "Z06itis" and realized the money could be more effectively spent on a better platform.

Still, I owe a lot to that car. All the great nights, the long drives to hockey games in HS (our school had no busses), etc. It really pained me to see how down-hill it ended up, as I had plans to still build it into the car I wanted when I was 15. I've made quite a few good friends thanks to that car. Although I may not be a "neon" guy anymore, I'll never forget where I came from.

All is not lost, though. I stumbled upon a mint 96 sedan, despite 170k miles. Threw a rod and am building the "cheater" SOHC I've always wanted to do. Not really planning on keeping it over the long-term, but it's been keeping me busy the past year or so.

!954 Oldsmobile 88. Bought it in 1996 for $300 and all it needed was a $100 water pump for the V-8, (and shocks and brakes.(Why should those stop me)) Oldest car in the high school lot. Big dreams of hot rodding it. Ran out of money before I ran out of ambition.

I paid $750.00 for a 1968 Suburban 3door 4x4 with a 350, 4spd, ambulance doors and leather Volvo buckets. Just needed a Cherry Bomb and a rear wheel cylinder.

fortunately, i don't need rose colored glasses. i still have mine, and it's badass.

however, when i was 16, it had a bunch of crappy speakers in it because i couldn't afford good ones. and the sound of a straight 6 with cherrybombs needed lots of sound if you wanted to hear over the exhaust.

patgizz wrote: fortunately, i don't need rose colored glasses. i still have mine, and it's badass. however, when i was 16, it had a bunch of crappy speakers in it because i couldn't afford good ones. and the sound of a straight 6 with cherrybombs needed lots of sound if you wanted to hear over the exhaust.

You can't just throw that story out there without telling us what the hell it is.

First car was the 77 Aspen station wagon inherited from my parents that I grew up in. Shortly after moving from VA to NC my dad had a work buddy refresh the engine. Picked a good guy too (hot rod builder with left overs) so that 318 got a bit more than was expected. My favorite memory is a hole rusted in the exhaust that made it sound like a stock car (to my 15 year old ears). Nothing like driving around chrurch on Sunday with an uncorked V8. Drove it all through high school and embarassed several unsuspecting people who lined up at stop lights . The speedometer was broken so it looked like I was going 100mph everywhere. My sister got it after I went to college and decided to bounce it off of several trees during a rainstorm and it was never the same, she wasn't physically injured fortunately.

I spent my $600 tax refund on a 1971 Datsun 510 in the spring of 1976. Since it was barely rust proofed and this occurred in Quebec, it already had rust holes where the bright trim was fastened to the rocker panels. Learned to do crude body work on it, joined the local motorsport club and rallied and autocrossed it. It became my winter beater when I bought a newer car a year later.Before I finally sold it 5 years later the floors were "borrowed" aluminum road signs. Damn, I still miss that thing. 510s were just so right.

'73 Buick Riviera GS. 455 4bbl, posi. My dad owed me money and traded me the car for the cash. It had rust in the rear quarters but was otherwise a solid car. Interior was in really good shape.

With all my friends in the car going to lunch, we could still beat those snot nose rich kids and their new 1983 and 1984 Z28s and Mustangs.

I wound up getting rid of it a couple years later for a 280Z (thus beginning my dozen year run of driving nothing but Z-cars... I need to get another one...).

I wish I had never gotten rid of that car. sigh

Ah, memories! First vehicle was my dad's 1972 chev pickup when I was 16. He bought a new one because he has thoroughly thrashed it. There was literally not a single body panel without major damage. The price was $500.00, and after I paid him he said I couldn't have it for a couple weeks because his new one wasn't in yet. Then he proceeded to back it out of the shop looking behind him with the door open because he had long since ripped the mirror off, and caught the door on the door frame. It bent all the way back and never closed properly again. Plus big new dents. "Sorry about that" he said as he handed me the keys.....

And I soon discovered that the motor was done and I proceeded to buy the "rebuild your small block chevy" book and rebuild it on the shop bench. I'm 16 remember, and I know exactly nothing about motors. It took me weeks, during which time it sat on the bench, open to the elements. One day I came in to find someone had been using a skilsaw and filled the new block with sawdust. During the process, an employee came along and offered to help me port the heads. We went to work with a craftsman drill and a very coarse stone and hogged out the ports. No real plan, just made them WAY bigger. So I got it all together(amazing right there) and dropped it back in using a tractor for a hoist. So then along comes employee number two who just happens to have a tunnel ram and an 850 double pumper holley that he will sell me for cheep. I could just get the hood closed. Three weeks later during which time it barely ran the holley pumped about a gallon of fuel all over the motor and the whole mess caught fire and mercifully burned to the ground. It later transpired that the motor had already spun a bearing by the time it burned.

1973 Mazda RX-2, white. My mom bought it new in'73, then I inherited it in '75 when I started commuting to college. I totalled it in '77 by sliding sideways into a phone poll and rolling it. Bad memories. Believe it or not, the last street accident I had was in 1977 (knock on wood). I later (much later) made a race car that looked just like it.

Nothing spectacular, but boy do I have memories of the, "Catruck." 1990 Grand Prix, maroon, 3.1L, salvaged from the pasture. Had been mom's car, we lost her to cancer in '98, I was a sophomore in HS. For whatever reason, dad parked the car in the pasture several months before mom passed, and there it sat, for over a year. I got tired of bumming rides/riding the bus, so I decided that there was a car in the pasture no one was using, so I got it running, and claimed it as mine.

It had it's idiosyncrasies: weird electrical gremlins, factory radio would turn on/of and change stations at random, dash lights would all lite up at random times, at a dead stop the speedometer would peg out, and my favorite... the odometer "didn't work" it was for the most part stuck, but occasionally you'd be stopped, and hear a faint "whirring" noise, look down and discover that the odometer was racking up mileage as if you were driving 500 mph or better.

Now all of my high school friends were in two categories of vehicles, trucks/4x4s or sports cars, while I was in the Grand Prix. To poke fun at the sports car friends, I had all of the Summit, Jegs, Edelbrock, Hooker, Flowmaster, etc, etc. stickers you could imagine in the back window of my Grand Prix. I once got pulled over, and had to explain to the officer, "what I raced," since I had all of those stickers, he didn't get it.

The Catruck (car + truck) was so named, because I took it to 80%+ of the same places my friends in the trucks/4x4s would go, dirt roads, mudding, jumping terraces in fields, four wheeler trails, that Catruck was unstoppable, unless of course you blew a tire, had a hard time explaining that one to dad, or got high centered. Bonus was you cold do all of those shenanigans with about 8 teenagers in the car.

I drove that Grand Prix everywhere, until I got my Jeep TJ, Christmas '99, which really wasn't the best vehicle for teenaged Lee, had my folks known the places I'd been in just a FWD econo box, I don't think they'd have ever considered letting me get a 4x4 Jeep. The Jeep, led to plenty of it's own stories.

The Catruck was given away to a local mechanic family friend a long time ago, but the memories will be with me forever. I still have the Jeep though, and have no inclination to ever get rid of it.

• Lee

My first car was a total POS. A hand-me-down '95 Daewoo Cielo my mom got by walking into a dealership and asking for the cheapest car. Broke down constantly, had dangerously poor braking, looked like the dull 3rd-world-market mommymobile it was, I hated it. I think it did permanent damage to my sex life.

I've spotted some poor bastard who is very unlikely to deserve it driving the awful thing around within the last 2 years.

First car was a 1980 Buick Park Ave 350 diesel that I bought for $250 when I was 15. It ran well on the second stage of the injection pump, but from a stop, it did nothing until 15mph when the fuel finally flow into the cylinders and would bark the tires. It died completely two weeks before my 16th birthday. Since this was pre-Auto-Zone days an injection pump was $500 in 1991 money. Not something a broke ass high school sophmore could afford, so Mom and Dad let me use their 1984 Tempo. I beat that car mercilessly. Definately do not have rose tinted glasses for it.... it ate tires like no tomorrow, lower balljoints were made of paper and a passenger axle that was unable to stay together for more than a year.

The car that I do have those precious memories of where the first real car I spent money on... my 1989 Caprice 9C1. bought it in June, 1994 knowing it would need a transmission. I drove the car 110 miles every single day, 6 days a week to college. It got 18mpg on ever tank whether I was being Mr Nice or doing 110 for 3 days. I have lots and lots and lots of fond memories of that car and would still like to build one the "right way" for a OLA car.I put 105k miles on that car in less than 5 years, sold it to a good friend of mine who literally blew the transmission up in 4 days. Car was never the same after that.

summer of 1991.. 1978 Chrylser Cordoba... given to me by my cousin after he tried unsuccessfully to kill the 4 barrel 360 by driving it 30 miles with no coolant due to a hole in the radiator from hitting a fencepost as he was coming out of a corn field via a cow pasture.

sadly, no rich Corinthian Leather for me- just green vinyl. but i did put some chrome valve covers on it and rebuilt the Thermoquad carb in a futile attempt to get more than 4 miles per gallon out of it, and i did turn at least one old used 235/75/15 tire from the local tire store into a cloud of smoke and chunks of rubber every week..

i did my first radio install in that car- an early 80's Kraco cassette deck that was supposed to have auto reverse, but would instead just play the same side of the tape backwards when it got to the end. the radio was enhanced with a 12 band Roadmaster Eq/amp mounted under the dash and a pair of Roadmaster 6X9 speekers wedged in the rear deck, because properly installing speakers is too complicated for a 16 year old...

the front suspension was so worn out that you had to turn the wheel 1/4 turn either way to keep it going straight down the road, but that didn't stop me from doing some really epic Dukes of Hazzard powerslides on the gravel roads of Wright County, MN- and i learned that yes, tires do squeal on gravel if the conditions are right so they at least got that part of things right on the tv show..

1980 Trans Am with a 301. Bought it when I was 15, had a cracked head and a couple other small issues. Had it right by the time I got my license at 16. I used to just pick a road and drive. I loved to hear those secondary's in the quadrajet open up. I was sideways around every corner I saw, especially in the rain or snow. I also liked to lock the brakes up and slide it to a stop. It wasn't long before my tickets landed me in court, the judge let me keep my license because I was working two jobs while in high school. I would have a cop follow me from home to school then from school to my first job and from there to the city limit as I went to my second job. I had one police chase in it and got away, and sold it not long after to get rid of the heat. Every cop in town knew me and that car. Wish I still had it.

1985 in MI...a '65 Mustang convertible, black with gray Shelby stripes, Mach 1 hood scoop, no power steering/brakes or seat belts. 302 with a 3 speed. 14" Keystone Klassic's with wider Rally ST tires at the rear. Cheesy aftermarket stereo with Philips speakers that would go out occasionally due to a short somewhere under the dash. Sold it to a friend of my brothers when I moved on to an SVO.

I learned a lot about driving and a lot about girls with that car.

jstein77 wrote: 1973 Mazda RX-2, white. My mom bought it new in'73, then I inherited it in '75 when I started commuting to college. I totalled it in '77 by sliding sideways into a phone poll and rolling it. Bad memories. Believe it or not, the last street accident I had was in 1977 (knock on wood). I later (much later) made a race car that looked just like it.

My first car was a '73 RX-2 also! My Dad got it for me from a co-worker for $500 around 1980. It was a yellow 4-door with a bit of rust poking through above the rear wheels, but otherwise in great shape. It had about 60k miles and a fresh engine compliments of Mazda. I dogged on that car for 5 years and another 60k miles and sold it after I landed my first job out of college for $425. I will never own another car that I can drive for 5 years and sell for only $25 less than I paid for it!

Alas, it was totalled in a broadside collision about a week later.

Check it out.

I had a 1987 Mercury Sable GS. It was brown. I put some racing stripes on it. With electrical tape. I liked to put it in neutral, rev it up, and drop it into drive. One time I drove it around without an air filter because it sounded awesome. I drag raced it on a sod farm a couple times (we were definitely trespassing). It was involved in a "high speed" pursuit once when we were driving around throwing paintballs at other cars and some guy got really mad about his car getting hit.

we got a badass over here

First ride was a 1965 Falcon Futura, 3 on the tree. Gave $225.00 for it. No this ain't it.

The first car I bought with my own money was a 66 Bonneville for $300. I still have it, and about $15,000 into it, its still in the body shop.

Shortly after that, I bought an 87 El Camino that was a low-mileage cherry Conquistador with every possible option. Silver/black/silver, rust free body, posi rear, 9-code 305 HO, and even the factory air-adjustable shocks. Turns out it was total shine-ola. The body was great but the engine developed a vacuum leak, the frame was swiss cheese, the tranny started sounding like a bucket of bolts, and the rear axle chipped a tooth off the ring gear, punched it out through the diff cover, which let all the oil drain out. Fortunately I stopped when I saw smoke coming from the back of the car but I think it would have been another mile before it caught fire.

I used that car to transport my buddy for his bar-hopping bachelor party. He got wasted so I put him in the back. He yacked all over the side of the car the whole way home. I sold it with some of his vomit chunks still on the side.

My first car was a 1980 Honda Civic Hatchback that was a hand me down from my mom. She bought it new so it was in great shape. . I don't think I ever had to do anything to it except add gas, that's until I took it for a transmission oil change (no clue why) and the moron that did it left the plug loose. I came out ahead as the guy found a 5 speed replacement instead of the factory 4 speed.

I really got hooked on cars starting with restoration work rather than racing. My dad and I bought a Series III Jaguar XJ6 together (split the cost 50/50) when I was 14 and I spent a year fixing it up before I could get my provisional license. I can remember the day he drove it home a few days after we went to look at it. It had a leaking rear main seal and a big blue cloud of smoke followed it up the driveway, but I was ecstatic. It was black with a biscuit tan leather interior, wood dash, tons of chrome - classy automobile.

I bought another XJ6 a while after getting my full license and shortly thereafter and we sold the original car. I still miss the first one. I was such a great Sunday cruiser and I learned a ton working on it. It also, remarkably, never gave us any problems after we finished the work it needed when we got it. All the electronics, lights, windows, etc, always worked. Always started right up, etc.

My memories of the first car are definitely a little rose-tinted especially since we didn't have the car for more than a couple years. The second car was my daily driver for a while and was nothing but trouble; leaked every fluid except brake fluid at one point or another, the gauges would read random values all the time, the lights did weird things, it had hot-starting issues, etc, etc.

I'd definitely get one again some day though.

Here they are.

My first time pulling an engine.

67 Bug (green). Delivered pizzas in it, learned to work on it (with the help of my step brother). I put a Turn6 sway bar on the rear... oh my, what a change... It is one of the two cars I actually sold (to a friend).

Later I bought a 65 Corvair because it seemed that much more "sophisticated" then a VW (the engine sounds of that car can be heard in Mr Hollands Opus, my old roommate was a sound editor).

Still have not owned a car with a radiator. I am not against a pure electric car, so I might be able to keep up the trend, we will see.

I built a '64 Ranchero with a hopped-up 302 and toploader in it. Restored the car before I could legally drive it. Dad called it the "Red Bomb" because with that weight distribution and suspension it was just a matter of time till something got destroyed.

A couple years of street racing later I totaled it. The head impact that I took probably knocked a dozen or two IQ points out of my skull. That is all. Friends don't let friends race cars like that.

yeah im older than most here!

1934 Ford roadster it ran ok , needed a battery tho, pumped up the tyres.

cost $20. bucks, sold it for 50. and bought a 34 ford two door, for(honestly) $7.dollars, it was cold in Mass. so needed a roof, roadster had top with a few holes!

used to be a time when cars were super cheap!