First Car Stories

My first car was a 1976 VW Rabbit, some previous owner knifed the seats and door panels along with tearing the floor open by running into some kind of metal bar or spike. Ended up getting an interior from the junkyard and replacing the floor.

 

My first car was a silver 1975 Ford Mustang II that my Father gave me in ‘81. It had a 2.4 motor in it. Had it maybe 6 months & blew the Motor showing off in front of my girlfriend’s house (now wife). Put a new motor & clutch in it, then a drunk driver rear ended me. Got that repaired, then about a month later, it was sideswiped & totaled on a backstreet by a kid racing down the street. Good times. Lots of great memories with that car.
I then bought my very first new car. A silver & black 1984 Ford EXP turbo…

 

Guy that worked at the arcade I frequented had an EXP, didn't see many of those but I liked them.

My first car was a 79 Mustang notchback. Red with black on the bottom half of the doors and quarters, black stripes on the hood, loud exhaust..and a 2.3 4 banger under the hood. Car was so slow I got talked to by a teacher about how slow I was going up the hill to get to school one day..which might have been me trying to finish a smoke before pulling into the parking lot, I can't recall.

It had the plastic double blade "Kokomo" wipers as did every kid in those times. Haha.

Kept it 6 months and sold it for a profit, $100 plus $250 and sold for $450. Ended up with my 1981 Datsun 280ZX which was a fun summer car but a rotbucket.

 

IIRC 1968 Grand prix in 1976 . Had a vacuum leak at the power brake booster. Fitting was cracked , which led to a rock hard brake peddle and transmission shifting late and hard. Dad cut the fitting cap and super glued a milk cap to it. Good as new. At that time super glue might not have been available at stores, But he had industrial dealings with his machine shop. I got in big trouble with that bottle of glue. I took it to school and put it a buddies shoe he pulled a tile out of the floor on his shoe.

 

1972 volvo 145 station wagon my parents handed down to me with a blown trans....
14-15 years old on my back with a floor jack swapping the trans by myself...
This was late 80's as I graduated highschool in 91...
After that I bought myself a 1972 240z for $3500, ended-up doing a white paint shop with a shit ton of violet pearl mixed into the clear.
Did the paint job in my parents garage, turning it into a spray booth...
Should have never sold that car...
Then after that while still in highschool financed myself a 1991 mustang lx 5.0 hatchback, another car I shouldn't have ever got rid of...

 

1989 Supra Turbo while a Junior in HS. Worked a few jobs from Freshman year onward to save up for it, and had to have my dad drive it home because I couldn't drive stick.

Spent some days after school driving around with him so he could see I wasn't (too much of) a fuck up with it, and then it was just mine to do whatever. Had a targa top which was neat. Learned a lot of maintenance from that, had the factory service manuals, etc. Eventually got in over my head buying a front clip for a 1JZ from Japan, swapped it all but the wiring was just beyond my scope.

Good memories because in the future my dad would be the one to come with my on all of my (sometimes stupid) purchases. Eventually he couldn't drive anymore much less walk so it's kind of bittersweet to reminisce.

-J

 

My first car was a 1974 Vega GT. I should have known better, but I fell in love when I drove it. I guess I had one of the better aluminum block engines, since it only drank 1 quart of oil a month. It looked like the orange car below, except it was white with the black GT stripe. The car handled great, but the engine was an absolute dog. I saw a R&D or C&D comparison of seven cars in its class, and it was the slowest in the bunch, but had the (I think) 2nd fastest slalom time. It was the best handling car in its class, and I loved driving winding roads with it.

The car had three failures that stranded me. The first was a corroded coil when the coil wire plugged into it. A nice gent saw me parked on the side of the road and diagnosed (and fixed) the issue in about 5 minutes. The second was the clutch cable snapped on me. That was a simple fix. And the 3rd was a snapped timing belt on my drive home. Thankfully it was a non-interference engine, and a shop stayed open after their normal hours to fix it. None of these were expensive.

It lasted just long enough for me...got me through college and a year of work before the head gasket blew the week before I was flying down to Florida to start Navy AOCS. My dad asked if I wanted him to fix it, or get rid of it. I told him the latter, and never saw it again.

I ended up buying a 81 or 82 Olds Cutlass Calais, which was a Cutlass Supreme with a tiny V8. Nice looking car, but it had a carburetor problem. I traded it for my first new vehicle, a 1986 Dodge D-100 pickup, which was a rolling piece of garbage. I drove that several years until I finally bought my first Toyota, a 1994 Truck with the 22RE. That was by far the best vehicle I'd ever owned, and still one of the best ever. I should have bought a Toyota in 1986 instead of the Dodge!!!!! But that taught me a very important life lesson: NEVER buy a Chrysler!

 

Haha . . . I had a buddy who put a chevy V8 in one of these and an 8 bolt diff from an Impala. The problem: every time he saw a girl walking down the street he had to let it rip and would always snap the distributor off against the firewall. He went through about eight of them while I knew him.

 

I never even thought about going that route until after I had my dad get rid of the car...lol. A SBC makes those cars really fast...they weigh less than a Camaro, or anything else in Chevrolet's lineup. The engine compartment was huge, and appeared to be designed to fit a 350. You didn't even have to fabricate engine mounts...they were available as a bolt in.

 

Cool thread, love reading the stories.

My first car was a '68 VW Bug that I paid $600 for with money from mowing during the summer. I was a sophomore in HS at the time. It was kind of a unique setup, as the Bug was an automatic that you still had to shift like a manual (no clutch pedal); definitely eased the learning curve when I taught myself to drive stick later on. You could also unscrew the speedo cable from the front wheel, which I did frequently so my parents didn't know I was picking up my girlfriend (now wife) on the way to school. They probably knew anyway...

Parked the Bug when I went to Boot/MCT/A-School, and my parents ended up selling it sometime while I was going through my MOS training. Still miss that thing...

 

My first car. I actually bought it from my parents after my Mom "upgraded" to a station wagon.

1976 Volvo 163e. Bought it in 1986 when I was in the Army. Sitting in my parents driveway in Los Angeles.