Post your rose-tinted 1st car stories within.

Almost first car story: My dad and I went to look at a yellow detomaso pantera that was really pretty nice, needed little things here and there asking price was 11,000. I had about half and pops and I had agreed that he would finance me the rest and I could make payments to him. It was about to be a done deal, and he decided at the last minute that I would likely not survive ownership of this as my first car, or at the very least the car would lead to teen pregnancies all over the area in which we resided. Too bad, it was a straight car with relatively (70k ish) low miles, it'd be wicked by now.

All thru highschool I had been driving my father's hopped-up Chrysler 300. Since my mother didn't drive I put a lot of miles on that car ferrying her around. When I graduated and was going away to college my parents decided I needed a car so that I could come home on weekends without them having to come get me.

So they bought me a Renault 4CV. What a disappointment! Went from several hundred horsepower to ~20. After the first year I transferred to another college and lived at home. But that 4CV lasted another 2 years taking me and 3 others the 40 miles to college and back every day. I learned a lot about momentum driving that car in the hills of SW PA. Floor it going down the hill so you could get up the next one with only having to downshift once!

When it died I ended up with a similarly underpowered Ford Falcon. That's why when I graduated from college and had my own money I bought an Alfa Romeo Gulia.

White '97 Taurus wagon. It technically belonged to my parents but for all intents and purposes it was mine. I hated the thought of driving it at first but years later when rust killed it I was genuinely sad to see it go. For an appliance it wasn't bad to drive with that 24v V6. Learned how to drift a fwd car in that poor thing. Somehow it never ended up impaled on a tree along some slippy gravel road. It was a tank in the snow too with good tires.

I may have been the only one to like the swoopy egg-looking styling but I think it was cool.

Lots of good memories with that car. It had a flip up rear facing third row seat and I could cram a lot of basketball teammates in there. That was always a laugh and I could fit guitars, drumset, and keyboard in it. When it went away I bought a Lumina from my grandparents and quickly realized I liked the way the Ford drove much better.

Was actually a 77 Yamaha XS 650. Oh how I loved that thing except for the riding in sleet/snow/freezing precip part. Still makes me shiver thinking about it. Traded it even for a flat black 69 Chevelle SS! What fun, Bald M50s meant sideways EVERYWHERE at all times. The rear framerails were cracking until the day when there wasn't enough left for even dumb teenage me to drive on. Like 1/4 inch! Its replacement was a 78 Accord which was hit it the middle of a carwash by a stoned guy in a 69 Firebird! Punted me straight though and left a perfect beak print on the hatch. Hah!

I learned to drive on my mom's Austin mini 850 and my dad's 65 Corvair. My first car I purchased at age 19 was 1968 Triumph Spitfire. Had to get my dad to co-sign the bank loan. I drove like a maniac and was lucky not to kill myself. After a few years I converted the Spit into a race car and raced it for a few years. Fast forward 15 yrs and I found the Spit racer in sad shape sitting in a field. I just had to buy it back again, but never did anything with it, but it was a stable mate in the garage for my TR4 and TR8 road cars. Eventually I sold the Spit to a guy who was racing one but needed a new body/frame after crashing his car.

Summer of 1974 and I was a 14 year old lawn mowing fool! I had my eye on a beautiful car. Starter was out and since it was a big block Ford it was on the block for the outrageous price of $450. The day arrived and I push started it (4 speed) and drove it the half mile home. Once I got it home I fixed the starter, washed it, checked everything 4 or 5 times, played with the radio, found all the pertinent articles in my massive Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines and felt all growed up!

Dad got home and hit the roof! 14 year old blowing all his money on a gas guzzling hot rod that I was going to kill myself in! He made me take it back and I got $350 even after I had fixed it and washed it! Local policeman bought it a week or so later for $800 and drove away.

I always wonder what it would have been like to legally drive a 1969 Shelby Mustang as a first car...but I take off the rose colored glasses and realize I probably would have killed myself in it. Cop still owns the durn car and I actually had to judge it at a car show once.

75 Camaro LT. 350 4 speed with a 4.56 posi rear. Corvette yellow, brown interior (because it was originally brown/tan RS two tone. Stock motor. Good for burnouts. Broke down a lot, but probably had a lot to due with the 16-18 year old driver but drove it hard. Car turned a lot of heads, but was not as fast as it looked. I do miss the Cragar S/S wheels that I added to it.

Paid $70 for a 1958 Anglia Prefect. Girls thought it was cute, fathers thought I was harmless. Lower ball joint split in half and the nearest replacement was in England.

Two weeks later came home with a 1964 Galaxie convertible, 352 - 4 speed with Cragar torque thrusts.

In the hands of a 16 year old ......

Turn 16, tell grandfather I want an old mustang.

Visions of a '69 fastback dance in my head for months.

He calls and tells me he found "the one."

I pop a motoboner.

I arrive at his place to find an 82 Mustang, literally dragged out of a field. (very similar to this)

It was a v6 with the motor completely seized. No hood scoop for me.

We spend the Summer swapping a 5.0 in.

This is all on my own dime, so of course everything is ghetto as E36 M3. The master cylinder leaks, the tail lights work occasionally, no A/C in Texas Summer, and the radiator fans are wired to a toggle switch on the dash.

I spend the next year frantically trying not to rear end people, and I can't figure out why I absolutely can't get traction til 3rd gear (my 16 yr old brain tells me its because of all the POWAH)

A year later I take it in for inspection, which I fail miserably. The tech tells me these are the worst dry rotted tires he has ever seen, and he is amazed I'm not dead.

It is at this point that I realize that the tires are very likely 10+ years old, since I never changed them. They had been on the car since it was dragged out of a farmer's field.

Amazingly I was never in an accident, and didn't kill anyone.

This was posted in another place by someone else over this same discussion.....

One fateful day my 15 year old self was walking down a dusty trail, kicking an empty bottle of Miralax. Hands stuffed into my pockets, I scowled at my dusty shoes, wishing aloud I'd had a mode of transportation that wasn't a pair of Sketchers. Perhaps it was the right combination of words, an answered prayer or the acid kicking in, but I'll be damn if a berkeleying genie didn't pop out of that empty Miralax bottle. "Greeting young metrosexually dressed lad. For freeing me from my laxative prison, I shall grant you one wish. What do you desire most of this earthly world?" At that very moment a million different things ran through my mind. 'How can this be real? Does Pamela Anderson still have HIV? This is some great acid.' But after some brief soul searching, I knew I had the answer. I locked gazes with the genie and firmly proclaimed, "Genie! I know what I want... of all things God and man has made, from women to wine, from the mountains to PornHub, I have settled on one thing." "Speak it, child." "A 1991 Chevrolet S-10. Blue. 4.3L if ya got it." "Alas, it will be done. But I need something more from you first." "Name it!" I exclaimed. There was a long pause from the genie then without forewarning he spoke, "I need about tree fiddy." It was that very moment I notice the genie was actually a 10 story tall giant crustacean from the Paleolithic Era.

My first car was an 85 Omni which if flipped end over end into a hay field 6 weeks later. Don't drive fast on dirt roads and DO wear your seatbelt. My next car and I had a relationship, so I'll tell that story.
It was a 1983 Dodge Aries K. Burgundy with burgundy velour bench seats front and rear. Auto. My dad bought it for my older brother when I was 15. My brother was super pissed when I got the Omni a year later because the Omni was a four speed and way cooler than the K car. To make matters worse, after I flipped the Omni he had to share the car with me for a year. We still have a strained relationship.
I grew to love the car though. It perpetually ran terribly but never left me stranded. I learned how to change plugs/wires/cap and rotor as my first mechanical trick. I learned about replacing brakes after I hit my sister (gently) when I tried to stop and pick her up when she was walking home from school. I was grounded until I had my dad drive the car to confirm that the brakes were backing pads on disks. He told me to learn to change them so I asked a friends dad to show me. I replaced the front floors with roofing tin later that winter. I fixed a rust hole in a gas line with two hose clamps and half a dollar bill on a back road in the middle of nowhere because I could smell gas. It developed a series of oil leaks that were hard to keep up with. I'd wait for the oil light to come on when cornering hard and then pour in another quart.
I had a standing bet in highschool that I could make it through any mud hole that my friends could make it through with their trucks in 2wd. I never lost. I took my first real road trip with a friend when I was 17 and he barely 16. 1000 miles over a week from Grand Rapids to the Porcupine Mountains and back. I once hauled 800lbs of carrots for deer bait in trunk/back seat/front seat.
Finally I was driving home one day with my mom and sisters and two dogs in the car. My mom had me stop so she could grab the mail. It was hard to see the cars coming, dusk, I asked her if it was clear, she said yes. I came within inches of pulling in front of a fox body Mustang and getting T boned and probably killed. Luckily the K car was slow off the line and I ended up hitting her in the door. It bent the front of the car all to hell, but it ran fine after I used some fencing wire to get it back together.
I drove it like that for three more months before I bought another K car for cheap because it had a leaking power steering pump and a bum radiator. I parked them right next to each other and swapped parts and took the new one off to college. I actually have more stories about the car, and they're all good ones. I even have a burgundy K car shell in my backyard right now. Different car, it was supposed to be a $2004 challenge car, but I bought it because of that first one. I loved that car.

I bought my first car from my friends dad for $500. Learned to drive manual on it in his field then I was ready for the road. Many shenanigans followed, including handbrake turns and pushing it to slightly illegal speeds on the highway. It always returned 40 mpg even with me driving and never let me down. I filled the rust holes with bondo and smoothed them as well as I could with a belt sander before spraypainting the affected spots. It was terrible and awesome.

This is an attempt at an artsy picture with it. You can see where the bondo was added at the bottom of the doors.

I later sold it for $600 to buy my first Miata on which I learned to to real body work.