# Tell Me a Story- About your first car



## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Today I purchased an old beater, a car older than my 18-year-old, so that he would have transportation to get a job. It's a clean car but the windows crank up manually and you have to lock each door individually!  With a slidey thing, not a button.  The best thing of all... it has a working cassette player. I am totally making him a mix tape. Such a cool mom, just like Star Lord's mom...

It made me think about my first car.  I paid my best friend $500 for her old Cutlass Supreme because that's all the dealer was going to give her in trade.  She smoked so it stank.  It was damaged on every single body panel.  We called it the Raisin because it was brown and wrinkled. 

It didn't go in reverse, so I always had to pull through parking spaces, or park facing uphill so I could roll back out in neutral.  However crappy it was, it had enough power to fly up the Tennessee mountains as I drove between home and school on the weekends without breaking a sweat.  I sold it a few years later for $350 and felt like I'd done well. 

That car was freedom for me.  My mother hated it because it meant I wasn't under her thumb anymore.  She tried to talk me out of it, warned me it was a bad idea... but once it was mine I didn't have to listen anymore.  I could earn a living, drive away, even go take a nap in it, if that's what I wanted.  It was the first thing that was truly mine.  

Helping my kid get his first car has inspired me to add some of those "breaking free" moments to my latest WIP. 

So, what was your first car like?


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

1975 Toyota, 4-Door, Stick (which I didn't know how to drive). I was 17 and just married. My hubs bought it for me for $50.00. He taped paper to the windows and painted the whole thing blue to match my eyes, in his buddy's shop (not a paint booth).

The front seat wouldn't stay up, so we wedged a two-drawer toolbox behind it in the back seat to hold it up. He taught me to drive here in South Carolina, with my foot burning up the clutch trying to stay ready at the top of the hills to hit the green light. 

We were young, dumb and full of... Love  

Trying to save money to build our first house, we lived in a single-wide trailer. I worked two jobs, he worked 3. I did my best to save gas money since I had to drive to Charlotte, NC to work. I spent a whole winter driving with a blanket wrapped around my lower body because I thought running the heat ate more gas.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

75 pinto station wagon.  Cool car.  All my friends liked it.  It would fit all of us.  Was 16 when I got it.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Mine just had an AM radio.  Oh I got the car in 1982.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

1951 Henry J. Yellow. The first American economy car.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

My first car was a '65 Mustang. My dad was a big fan of muscle cars and we had several over the years while I was growing up. I had wanted a mustang since I was a kid, but my parents would not buy me a car, so I had to take out my first loan at the bank (my dad cosigned), and I worked at the bowling alley after school and weekends to pay for it. That was back in the days when neighborhood banks would loan to teenagers on their promise to pay it back.


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## 75910 (Mar 16, 2014)

A 1982 Renault Le Car.  You know those little cars that had the words "Le Car" on the side like you didn't know what the hell it was?  It was blue and I called it Pierre.  It was good on gas and great in the snow.  It was a running joke among my friends but the darn thing ran me around until it was totaled in 1987.


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## Chris Lord (Feb 22, 2014)

Comment deleted due to new TOS on 27/08/2018


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

1976 Toyota Corolla. Got it used in 1984, when I was 21.

I never changed nor added oil.

It blew a piston in 1989 and kept on keeping on, up the hills of San Francisco, until 1991.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Black 1992 Saturn SC2, got it around the time I turned 17, so this would have been around the summer of 2000. I loved that little car, it ran great. But then almost two years later, I got into a car accident and rear-ended a Plymouth Voyager which totally crumpled the front end of my car. Even though the car was fully insured, because there were still a few payments left on it, the insurance company pulled that whole "we're not going to fix the damage, we're just going to cover the rest of the payments and then auction off the car for $50." My dad bought it for them for the $50 and after that I got another 92 Saturn, this one a red SL1 that was nowhere near as nice and had about twice the mileage. My dad's thought was we'd use parts from the SC2 on the SL1 as needed.

Few years later, the SL1's engine completely broke down (right as I was in the middle of making a left turn in a busy intersection no less). Our mechanic said he could put the SL1's front end on the SC2, so we did that and I got my old car back for a few years.

Of course by that time it wasn't as nice any more. The AC no longer worked and soon the roof started to leak. But it lasted until I came to Japan in 2008, at which point my parents junked it and here I got the first car that I bought by myself.


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## Jessica R (Nov 11, 2012)

I never had my own car growing up, but we drove a Ford Tempo around. My grandpa did try to teach me to drive stick shift on his old Jeep. I was driving around the field when it screeched to a halt and smoke began pouring out from under the hood. Serendipitously my gramp was sitting on the porch talking to the fire chief at the time. When they opened it was actually on fire. He eventually got it up and running again.


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## psychotick (Jan 26, 2012)

Hi,

A 1975 Vauxhall Viva HC (HC stood for heap of crap!). I got it from my parents when I went away to university at eighteen.

On a good day with a tail wind and a push it could make the speed limit (80 ks), but on too many days it didn't start at all. It had a bad habit of locking the pinion in the ring gear, which meant if I couldn't free it by rocking the car it didn't move at all until I'd spent another three or four hundred bucks at the garage. The electrics died on a regular basis, and once the entire exhaust system from the manifold back fell off while I was driving!

On the good side ... Oh wait a minute, there wasn't one.

Cheers, Greg.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

My first car was a dark grey metallic 1989 Volkswagen Golf II. It had four doors, not two, which was a very good thing. I got it for my 19th birthday and graduation back in 1992. I think it was a test drive car for a dealership or something like that. I called it Black Moon. Alas, it didn't last very long and the engine completely died in 1995. I suspect there had been problems from the start, which is why we got it cheap. 

I then drove a bright red Volkswagen Golf III for a few months, rented for a reduced price from the local VW dealership, because my Dad had given them hell over selling us a clunker. Then I went to London for university, where I didn't need a car.

When I came back a year later, I took over my Mom's old car, a silver 1981 Volkswagen Jetta. This one already had an automatic shift, the two Golfs still had manual shifts. No air condition, alas, and a car radio that could only receive a single station. On the plus side, it had a tape deck. The car radio was eventually stolen by the world's most desperate junkie and replaced by one that was hardly better. I drove the Jetta for another 12 years until it literally rusted apart. I probably would have driven it even longer and indeed I was sad that it didn't reach the age of thirty, when it would have qualified as a historical vehicle under German law.

Since 2008 I've been driving a silver Mercedes A-class with all the modern amenities. Alas, it's showing its age by now and I dread the day I must have it replaced, especially since I don't like the new Mercedes A-class vehicles at all. Though it was probably too much to hope that it would last for 27 years like the Jetta.


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## kathrynoh (Oct 17, 2012)

My first car was a Ford Fairlane. I had my first job, working in a factory and my friend and I decided we wanted a big old car. She had her licence and lived on a farm and I lived in town so our plan was that she'd drive into town in her cheap to run Datsun and leave the Ford at my place. We went to the big smoke to look for cars and went around the car yards, not finding anything that fit our budget - the whole concept of parent's paying for a car was not a thing. Everything was too expensive.

Finally, we found the car we wanted but it was about double the price we wanted to pay. We had a card up our sleeves though, my friend's friend had once had a fling with the married salesmen! She slipped her friend's name into the conversation and we got that car at the price we wanted.

It cost a fortune to run and I was constantly being told it wasn't the kind of car a girl should have. The women at the factory were we worked always laughed because the back doors didn't open from the inside - once you got a man in there, he couldn't get out 

Btw I've never owned a car with auto-windows or auto-lock. And I wish you could still get cars with bench seats.

I ended up buying my friend's half of the car out and went away to uni. All my friends at uni laughed at my "bogan" car but we always ended up taking when we went out because you could fit everyone in.

Like Myra's car, the reverse went in it and it involved lots of pushing or clever parking. I was pregnant with my son at the time and remember learning a valuable lesson one day. I'd parked in spot I thought I could get out of but someone had blocked me in so I had to push the car out. Very heavily pregnant at this time. Lots of respectable business people walked through the car park ignoring my pleas for help. Then I saw these guys coming towards me - real toughs with the piercings and tats (way before that kind of thing became "hip"). I freaked out but ran over and gave me a hand, only too glad to help. 

In the end, the brakes went and my mum decided it was unsafe and sold it to the wreckers when I was out one day. I'm still not sure of the legality of her selling MY car and I remember saying I wouldn't have had a baby if it'd had meant I'd have to get rid of my car!


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## Missy B (Aug 20, 2012)

It was a 1997 Chevy Lumina. It overheated so I had to stop every thirty minutes or so for it to cool. I once accidentally locked my son in the car while it was running. Thankfully the passenger side window could slid down if you laid you hands on it and pulled. That sucker died when I blew a gasket. From overheating. lol But it lasted a good six months. Worth the $300 bucks I paid for it.


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## trixiearcher (Aug 1, 2014)

The keys to my first car, unlocked both a blessing and a curse.  The 1976 Chevy Camaro was "all that," except it seemed to be towed more than it ran.  I was left stranded in some very interesting places and met people that I normally wouldn't have met otherwise.  I was in college at the time and apprenticing as a photographer with location shoots all over the local map.  My brother who tinkers with cars, replaced this, tweaked that always telling me how "this should do it then..." only for the mule to lay down at the side of the road refusing to move an inch further.

Just before I decided to sell the car, my brother finally figured out that the former owner replaced the fuel tank and did not know enough to include a fuel filter along with that repair.  After I sold the mule, the next owner later said it was one of the "most reliable" vehicles he had ever owned.  Of course it was, I replaced just about every part by the time he carried those keys.


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## Laura_Wingfield (Feb 6, 2014)

I was sixteen. It was a 1985 Hyundai with a long number that I can't recall but it was more like a white Tupperware box on wheels than a car. Got it free from my uncle. It had been sitting around in his garage for a couple of years. On the one hand, it was free and it seemed to be made of plastic, so this came in handy when I backed into a tree or (ahem) backed into someone parked behind me in a parking lot. I'd just stop and give the back of my car a good brush with my hand, thus ridding of it of any tree bark or paint, (fortunately, being made of Tupperware, it did not leave paint on anyone's car) and all was well. 

On the other hand, this car stalled everywhere I went. Once in the middle of an intersection with a semi-truck headed straight toward me. But if I complained to my father, he would ride in the car with me and the car would then refuse to stall. I hated that car. It was possessed. The first time I ever drove it to school, the tie rod broke. So, there I was, an inexperienced driver driving slowly down a gravel hill when my car suddenly swerves and goes into the ditch. It really freaked me out. I thought I had somehow done something wrong. Also, the radio would play when it wasn't even turned on. 

Anyway. I drove it off a bluff a few years later. Yeah, on accident, it was raining and the road was slippery and I was fine. 

All this to say, old cars are great. Death trap cars are not so good IMHO. I suppose, looking back, I might not have been the best driver ever at sixteen though. But still. 

Congrats on getting your son his first car!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

My first car was a 1972 VW Beetle.  Red.  It had belonged to my neighbor and my boyfriend at the time (also a neighbor) convinced me to buy it as he could work on it.  My brother was a bit put out because when he got his first car (he is three years older), he wanted a standard shift car but my parents told him that it had to be an automatic so my mom could drive it if needed.  So he got a Chevy Vega.  

My parents tried to talk me out of the Beetle.  We were a Chevy family, after all.  And the Beetle was, gasp, foreign.  But I was the baby of the family and the girl and the apple of my dad's eye (whatever that means) and got away with stuff my brother couldn't.  So I got my Beetle--spent my life savings on it and a little more that my folks loaned me--$1500 total.  I think this was about 1975.

Loved that car--drove it back and forth to college in the (little) mountains of Maryland, about 3 hours away.  It was great on snow and would really fly going downhill!  Sold the car in 1981 for $1500 to buy my second car.  It was very reliable....

Betsy


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Mine was a 300 dollar piece of crap 4-cylinder mustang.
It was so bad-_how bad was it_-that the passenger seat adjustment rail snapped when I hit the breaks, sending my sister into the windshield. 
And yes, seat belts were optional back then.


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## J.L. Dickinson (Jul 12, 2014)

It was a '94 Dodge Neon that I got at 16 back in '04. 

It was dented and scratched. The fuel door had been ripped off at some point in the past revealing the locking gas cap to the world. The driver's side mirror had been clipped and reattached with a combination of self tapping screws and duct tape. The driver's side window had one broken roller that resulted in it rolling up some what cockeyed, and left a gap that made way for a friged breeze across the back of your kneck during the winter. The only improvement I made to the car was the logical one (I was 16):  replacing the stock radio and sound system. The CD changer and new (used) speakers cost me $100 and an ounce of- well something; I was a teenager.

I used the car for getting to and from school and work, and hauling my buddies and I around on weekends do to do stupid things that thankfully our parents nor the police ever caught us at. My 4 friends and I drifted apart after highschool. One of them ended up in prison, which wasn't really a surprise; whenever we were doing stupid things he was the one that always wanted to push things a little further. One of them died in a car accident; his drunken friend flipped the truck he wouldn't allow the designated driver to drive. The other two: we just lost contact over the years. The car lived on for a while.

I was 21, and it had 180,000+ miles on it when the engine blew. The $1,200 for a new (used) one exceeded the value of the car. I scrapped it for $200+ that went into fixing up an old pickup that I was able to get a good deal on. The car held a lot of memories though.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

My $500 Mercury tried to kill me.

While scraping off the ice one day I had it running to warm up. It was already on its last legs at that time. By the time I got in, it had filled up with exhaust which I didn't really notice.
While driving down the hill I thought it might be interesting to drive on the sidewalk but something told me that probably wasn't allowed in this part of town. I somehow made it to a gas station where I had to climb through the window of the car to get out (I don't remember if the door was frozen or I just thought it was the way one gets out of a car).  
I staggered into the station and asked them if they wanted a free car. Once they figured that I wasn't drunk they had me to the hospital right quick


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## Mark Tyson (Sep 22, 2014)

My first car was a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba. Grey with red interior. It ran awesome. I loved that car! My dad got laid off work and the family got tight on money so he had to sell it. It was ok though because he felt bad and gave me his 1979 Ford F150 to drive to school afterwards. If I was as mature then as I am now, I would not have let him give his pickup to me. I would have just driven it to school and back and still let him keep it. Now I feel bad 25 years later!


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## DawnLee (Aug 17, 2014)

My first car was a 1970s Mercury Bobcat, vomit green. It lasted three weeks. But I have a story about a Ford Escort I had in 2000.

My ex and I had gone through some really hard financial problems and a friend gave us the Escort, which had no heat, a huge hole in the floorboard and a driver's side window that would "fall down" at random times. One morning, at 5:30am, I was driving to work during a snow storm. I had a bottle of de-icer on the passenger seat so that I could clear the windshield as I was driving (no heat = icy windhsield). It was 8-degrees. About a mile from home, I dropped the cloth that I was using to de-ice the windshield every minute or so, so I had to just pour the de-icer into my mitten and wipe the windshield. meanwhile, snow was blowing into my window and up through the floorboards. No lie, got to the hospital where I worked and the charge nurse dragged me straight into a shower, then called one of the docs. I had hypothermia and frostbite from driving to work.

I hated that car and I get a chill every time I see an Escort.


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## m.a. petterson (Sep 11, 2013)

My first 'car' was a used 1966 Honda Blackhawk 160 cc motorcycle that I washed dishes all summer to afford. But, man, it was pure freedom for a 16-year-old.

Rain, sleet, snow, heat -- nothing kept me at home anymore. Every day was a new adventure and story.

I still have it, though it's buried in my mom's yard (another story).


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## Daniel Cane (Oct 16, 2014)

My first car was an old ugly plymouth. My parents got it for me right out of high school. I promptly went to work and saved my money.
Brought a chevelle supersport and burnt a lot of rubber for many years. Four speed stick. Squealed in all for gears.
Now an automatic is just fine.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

After college, my first car was a brand new, base model Honda Civic, 1989. 8k for freedom. The thing came with AC, a 4-speed stick, and poor tires. My friends bought themselves Ford Probes, which cost twice as much as my Civic. I chose a stick because my friends at that time drove stick. I wasn't goot at it at first, stalling the car too frequently during starts and stops, but I eventually worked out of that.

One of the first things that I wanted was a radio, so I had to put that in. I ran wires everywhere and I'm surprised that it worked at all. After the radio was installed, I needed to install an antenna, so I had to go back in and do the radio over again.

That car had great mileage. At the time it go 40 mpg, but when it was well tuned, it hit 45.

My friend kept trying to get me to turn it into a sports car because turning a Civic into a sports car was just a running joke among us. The joke turned out to be on them. Because of it's extremely light weight and easy to modify engine, the Civic became a street racer of choice. Every HP you put into it came straight back out.

I drove the car around during the Gulf War, getting paid mileage. The war spike up the mileage reimbursement, so that driving around fixing computers literally minted me money. After I sold the car, I calculated that my mileage paid for the car and still made me money.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

1950 Chevy with a '53 engine. Cost $50. What a tank! I walked away from many an accident including a head on with a drunk driver. His car was totalled but if I hadn't been driving the tank, I would have had the engine in my lap. 

There were many other junkers after that including a Starfire that if I turned left, the passenger door flew open. I learned pretty quickly how to get around by only turning right.


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## Lehane (Apr 7, 2014)

What timing! I just bought my first car on Saturday, a bright red 2005 Pontiac Vibe. So my story is more about the lead-up, because I just drove it into work for the first time this morning.

I didn't get my license until last year, after I had turned 22 and before my senior year of college. I live in the middle of nowhere, a 20+ minute drive into town, but I already carpooled into town with my dad all through HS -- and he has a grindy little stick shift that I tried to learn, but just gave up on. So I didn't get a whole lot of practice until I forced my mom to let me drive her car sometimes during college summers. I just about lost my mind when I got my license, even though I was about to go to Chicago for another year and didn't need/have a car.

Graduated in June with some paltry savings -- definitely not enough for a car. Mostly bummed around all summer, visited California, didn't "need" a car. Got a job in late August and wanted a car RIGHT THEN. It was at my old high school, so the idea of being 23 and employed and STILL riding with my dad into work? NO WAY.

Well. Way. I didn't find a car and I couldn't afford one, anyway. I appreciate my dad so much for dropping me off and picking me up every day, but god, I felt so stuck. I also was vaguely embarassed by his beater car, and made him park in the lot and let me walk into the building, instead of dropping me off on the drive where the students go.  

Anyway. Test drove a few Vibes, because I'd done the research and knew I wanted it. First one was from a tiny second hand dealer, and it reeked of cat pee. Second one was actually the one I ended up buying, but it was $6k and I couldn't get a loan from the credit union. Third was a former salvage title, good mileage but my dad -- the mechanic -- was not happy with the looks of it. Spiraled into some doldrums. Went back to laboring away on Craigslist.

Then I realized two months had passed and I'd saved enough to buy that red one in cash, and it still hadn't sold. We went to look again, the day after I got the paycheck that would let me pay for it. Needs new tires, radio buttons are a little gross, but LORD is it pretty inside and out. Dad approved. I haggled all by myself, using everything I'd learned from American Pickers, hah. Got it for $600 under asking and drove it home grinning like an idiot, and took any excuse to look out the window to see it, or to go visit it. Drove it 8 miles to the gas station just so I could.

JUST got the insurance, inspection, and registration taken care of yesterday, so it's MINE. All. Mine. Drove it into work alone today. All the waiting was worth it...couldn't have afforded something this nice sooner. I'm in love with it. S i g h.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

I did things a bit different with my first. I went with a new car...and got raked over the coals with finance charges.

The car itself, a 1997 Saturn SC1 coupe, was awesome though.  Good gas mileage, and nearly indestructible plastic bumpers. 

After getting married and all, I went through several other 2nd cars, but the Saturn just kept on chugging along.  At one point, a hundred plus thousand miles later, it just stopped and I figured "Oh well, that's it."  Nope...one new timing belt later and it was back on the road.

One day I was a bit careless in backing out of the driveway and accidentally scraped the side against a tree in our yard. By then the plastic body was old and brittle so the front fender pretty much disintegrated. Thinking quickly, I grabbed a roll of duct tape and proceeded to put it back together.

Eventually wound up giving it to a family friend (at that point the resale value was probably in the neighborhood of having to pay someone to take it), but as far as I know that little car is still running today and that right front fender is still made of duct tape.


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## Small Town Writer (Jun 11, 2014)

My first car was ghetto!

'98 Purple Chevy Prizm

But it was free. I was the third owner. My grandma bought it new, gave it to my brother before he was even 16, and it sat in my uncle's driveway until he was 19. When we finally got it back to our house to put it on the road, the one wheel had locked up and there was still garbage in there from my grandma. They cleaned it up and my brother drove it for four years on his hour commute to school. 

Then he gave it to me.

At that point, he had gotten in an accident with it. They replaced the front fender, but he was too cheap to have them match the color of the rest of the car, so the front fender was silver while the body was purple. 

Also, from sitting for four years, there was a hole in the gas tank, but since Chevy stopped producing Prizms, the mechanic just turned the gas tank upside down. This meant that whenever I filled up with gas, I couldn't let the nozzle run until it automatically shut off because then gas would shoot out at me. 

The horn also blew sometime while my brother was driving it, so they installed a button under the ignition that I would accidentally hit whenever I got in or repositioned in the car. Honked at a few people unintentionally...oops...

There was a chip in the windshield that was hidden behind the rear-view mirror. It didn't grow, so I left it. But every time someone would get in the passenger seat, they would comment about the chip.

The engine rattled. It sounded like a bowl spinning on a table...but constantly. In fact, when I got a new car, I would often forget that the car was on because I was so used to my first car being so loud!

The car would also switch gears on its own. So I would be driving down the road and it'd shift into neutral (luckily only neutral) and I'd have to pull over, put it in park and then back in drive.

Of course, being that the car was built in the 90s, it was equipped with a super-cool cassette player, but that was the extent of my unique features haha. The A/C was broken, too, which was a B in the summer time. Pretty standard first car. I think I remember temporarily having the muffler fall off and driving around sounding like a race-car driver until I got it fixed.


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## meh (Apr 18, 2013)

My first car was an '82 Buick Skyhawk with a sun roof that leaked and no power steering so you got an arm workout every time you drove it. Not only that, but the AC would break every time it got hot. I live in Arizona, so that meant driving around in 120 degree weather with the windows down. The heater, on the other hand, worked GREAT.


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## Cege Smith (Dec 11, 2011)

Quiss said:


> My $500 Mercury tried to kill me.
> 
> While scraping off the ice one day I had it running to warm up. It was already on its last legs at that time. By the time I got in, it had filled up with exhaust which I didn't really notice.
> While driving down the hill I thought it might be interesting to drive on the sidewalk but something told me that probably wasn't allowed in this part of town. I somehow made it to a gas station where I had to climb through the window of the car to get out (I don't remember if the door was frozen or I just thought it was the way one gets out of a car).
> I staggered into the station and asked them if they wanted a free car. Once they figured that I wasn't drunk they had me to the hospital right quick


Whoa- that's a story!! Glad you were okay.


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## davidhaynes (Sep 30, 2012)

My first car was a Ford Fiesta. It was two-tone in colour, with the top half pale blue and the bottom half navy blue. Four of us would pile in and drive to a local pub where lots of girls hung out. The pub was on the banks of a canal so everyone used to sit on the grass in the summer.
This meant cruising into the car park was crucial in making a good impression.
My car had a tape player and a radio which was stuck on Gem am. This was a station dedicated to easy listening music. There was a tape stuck in the player which was, as I later found out from my dad, the velvet voice of Jim Reeves. 
We cruised into the car park, sun-roof open, windows down, cigarettes hanging from our lips to the soundtrack of "Welcome to My World"
Needless to say we were disappointed and disappointing.
I'm not sure if the US Ford Fiesta is the same as the UK model but it was tiny.I bought it for £350 in 1990. The tape was free.

I've used that car in one if my books as I had such fond memories of it. I never became a Jim Reeves fan though, although whenever I hear one of his songs I'm back there in my fiesta with my mates. Happy days.


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## martyns (May 8, 2014)

It's a debate as to what my first car was. Either a beat up old 50cc Yamaha DT 50 which I came off more than once. Or an old Fiat Panda that I wrote-off crashing into a parked Volvo. (Long story cut short = melted snow on the road, sun low in the sky, BANG!)

Then there was my trusty Seat Marbella 850cc bought from an auction for £1000. When I bought it, it was a wreck. The passenger seat was knackered and had to be taken out to be welded - so I spent several weeks looking Like I was chauffering my mate around in it. (It was black) It wouldn't start, wouldn't stop and couldn't corner very well. Eventually the fuel gauge gave up the ghost so I had to carry a 5 litre can of petrol around as a 'get me home' reserve tank. The worst thing about it was the gears, to get it into second you had to do a special move - a bit like a Streetfighter two fireball motion. The motion for third was more like a dragon punch, left, down, right - CRUNCH!

It was utter dog, awful car. But it's 50cc, 2 wheeled predecessor - it beat walking! And it beat motorbiking two, biking was exciting, but dangerous and cold. I'd have a classic bike, maybe a Velocette Venom to stick in the shed and bring out on nice days - but my main transport was and will remain a car I think !


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

I really, really wanted a Pontiac Fiero as my first car, but I'm 6'4" and so my mom took me to the dealer and said, "Fine. You want one, test-drive it."  I couldn't fit into the driver's seat because I was just too tall. Dreams. Shattered.

So I ended up with a used brown 198? Ford Tempo. Tan interior, cigarette burn on the passenger seat. Automatic shift on the floor. Went 0-60 in about 45 minutes and felt like a washing machine as it worked through the gears.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

My family got a Ford Escort in 1984 and that was the first car I drove when I came of age. Sadly it didn't survive through my permit; one cold morning in '94 the back window shattered from thermal stress from the heating elements, and after everything else the car had been through (including a full engine replacement), that was it. By that time it was a second car. Our family went through a few more first and second cars in the following years, all used.

The first car I drove on my own was an '89 Olds Cutlass Calais; I drove it a little on my permit, and then for good once I got my license in '95. Because of a defect in manufacturing, the paint had come up in huge, hideous sections, mostly from the hood. Like the Escort it was also a stick shift. The gas gauge was notorious for screwing you: if you got it down to where it read 1/8 of a tank, it was basically three seconds from empty; I usually kept it well over 1/4 for that reason, and fortunately never ran out of gas. (That's back just before gas went through hyperinflation after the '90s. Don't get me started.) It did however need to run on premium, because the motor had enough troubles without it. I lived in a hilly area at the time, and one nasty hill always required me to downshift to get up it.

The car suffered frequent catastrophes. Once it overheated while I was in line at the bank, because a coolant hose fell apart, leading to my dad attempting a repair in sub-zero wind chill later that night. It overheated again on another occasion; there was no temperature indicator, just an idiot light. As time went on and I left college to work full time, it developed an oil leak, requiring me to occasionally stop and pour in a whole new bottle of oil every couple of months.

The very last indignity was when I was heading home one day, I saw a tractor trailer coming up the narrow street I was attempting to drive down. It had no business being there. Stuck without options, I tried to pull over to the side, but it was near the end of the street. Sadly this turned out to be within the truck's turning radius, and it scraped up the side of my car on its way through without the driver ever realizing it. (This was, needless to say, terrifying.) The car still drove, but it lost both the left taillight and the ability to blink on that side. As the car was already on its way out, I took it as a sign and started seriously looking for a new car to drive.

Two weeks later I bought my very first new car in my own name: a Honda Civic. That was back in 2000, and I still have that car today.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

1972 Audi 80 in metallic green. I bought her with practically zero mileage in 1986. She used to belong to an old man who drove her from his flat the 2 miles to his allotment and back every other day. I congratulated myself on the find until I drove her for the first time on the motorway and she exploded and imploded every single wearing part she had in one go. For ages she would simply switch herself off until the garage realised the tank was so rusty that the little bits and pieces clogged the petrol pipe shut. 

Once the petrol pump malfunctioned at the same time as the accelerator and she wouldn't go slower than full throttle. I was standing on the brake pedal with both feet, and had pulled the handbrake and still she was going at over 40 mph, bucking like a mad horse. I drove straight to the garage and switched her off: she kept firing back on, shrieking like a banshee.  

She needed a year of regular driving and regular servicing and repairs before she became trustworthy. But then I drove her until she had made 400k miles. I sold her to a farmer in the next village and I believe she's still being used now and then. Great car. Oh, I called her Chris.


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## SVD (Jan 15, 2013)

1972 Dodge Demon, Green with a green interior. It was a real 70's green - pea green metallic.

It had the famous leaning tower of power, Slant Six making about 100 HP or so. Was pretty good on gas, but no rocket. Engine was nearly indestructible.

Power steering, but no power brakes. Taught me not to follow too closely. It was all drum brakes as well. Car stopped like an ocean liner.

Had it for about two years. It simply wore out, and got too expensive to fix.

Wish I could find another one like it.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Mine was a Vauxhall Nova. I can't remember how old it was but it had a manual choke. I bought it from a friend for £300. I used to use it once a week to go to the supermarket. One day I got back from shopping and presumably my brain was visiting friends that day because I parked it illegally and then forgot about it for a week. The next time I went to drive it, it wasn't there, so I panicked because I thought it had been stolen and phoned the police. They kept me hanging on for ages then informed me it had been towed. It cost me £300 to get it back, and then I got a parking fine on top of that. A couple of months later it failed its MOT so I scrapped it and bought a Punto.

Moral of the story: don't park in disabled bays. And being over 30 doesn't disqualify you from being stupid.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

***moved this to NQK as I think it will be of interest to many of our non-author members as well ***

My first car was a White Plymouth Voyager.  Nothing special about it that I recall.  Sorry. I'm boring.


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## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

How fun! My first car was a super old Pinto. No, I don't know the year. It was green and so beat up the doors didn't open but had to be held shut with bungie cords wrapped around the window and the seats. The passenger window didn't unroll so entering the car meant squirming through the driver's side window.  My husband and I bought it for $250. 

My favorite memory of the car was a giant red skeleton our friend painted in the back window. Unfortunately we got pulled over because a cop thought it was blood.  The car's ignition didn't work, so it had to be started with a screwdriver on the battery. I never started it, so I don't know the exact magic my husband used. I do know that we were accused of stealing it once by an elderly couple outside of a truck stop. My husband looked at the guy, "Seriously??"

One time when we were driving down the highway the hood blew open. My husband had to drive with his head out the window while I peeked through the narrow crack of visibility at the base of the windshield all the way back to town. The latch was broken, so another bungee cord came to the rescue.

We painted, "Roy," along the driver's door, and sold it two months later for a case of beer and $25 dollars. The guy who bought it said he knew that was his car when he pulled up. Yep, his name was Roy. LOL
Fun memories!


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

First car was a Mercury Bobcat (which was a Ford Pinto with a fancy grill). I don't remember what year, but it was a few years old and I was a senior in college, so I'm guessing around a '74 or '75. Only interesting story I can think of is that eventually the exhaust pipe right before it reached the muffler rusted through, and the muffler fell off one day while driving to work. Earning only a bit above minimum wage at that time, I repaired it myself with a combination of jury-rigging bits from the auto store. When I sold it several months later, I pointed out that fact to the buyer and he was fully aware of it before he handed over the huge some of $800 (cash!) for it. About a week later, he told me the muffler fell off again -- not angrily, more like, "Hah, guess what happened?" Fortunately, he then took it to an actual mechanic to get it repaired.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

I didn't learn to drive until I was 25.  Got my liscence for Hallooween, got a Toyota Tercel the week of Thanksgiving, and totaled it the Friday before Christmas.


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

My first car was a 1973 Caprice Classic, precisely like the one above, even to the 1970s avacado green appliance paint job. It was a hand me down from my aunt, and was really quite a nice car for the time, though it was totally uncool and I didn't properly appreciate it. I drove it for four years, and it never broke down. Only problem with itwas that the (power) left rear window would happily roll down, but wouldn't roll back up without major surgery. So I kept the little switch taped in position.

It was a wallowing gigantic pre-energy crisis car with a very powerful V-8 engine. It actually had a lot of pickup, but both the size and the suspension made it incapable of turning at speed. Even going slow, it turned like an ocean liner, and I would drive down the street and reach towards the ceiling pulling on an imaginary cord, and shout "Tooooot, tooooot!" Because of the abysmal gas mileage and the perceived age of the car, I called it "entropy" which is basically a physics concept that says the universe is running down.

I had no real adventures in it, though i bought some tires for it from a neighbor who'd had them hanging on his garage wall for several years. Seemed like a great deal to get four(?) (not sure of the number now) tires for a purely nominal five bucks, but they were all dry rotted. The good part of that was that I learned to handle a blowout that semester! &#128513; several of the tires blew out, one at a time, as I drove at speed on the turnpike between college and home. After it happened a couple of times, even i figured out not to use those tires anymore, even if it was a great price. It is also the only car I've ever run out of gas in. Seems dumb now, but I was a poor college student at the time!

My first car I picked out and bought myself was one of the first Ford Tauruses, about ten years later. This was brand new car type, released to great hype, and had a very unusual aerodynamic shape for the time. It is the only car I've ever had where strangers would come up to me in the parking lot and admire the car and ask questions about it. It also had every useless gadget and accessory option known to man installed. My father "complained" that the car was no good, because it didn't have an electric butt wiper...


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Lehane said:


> What timing! I just bought my first car on Saturday, a bright red 2005 Pontiac Vibe. So my story is more about the lead-up, because I just drove it into work for the first time this morning.
> 
> I didn't get my license until last year, after I had turned 22 and before my senior year of college. I live in the middle of nowhere, a 20+ minute drive into town, but I already carpooled into town with my dad all through HS -- and he has a grindy little stick shift that I tried to learn, but just gave up on. So I didn't get a whole lot of practice until I forced my mom to let me drive her car sometimes during college summers. I just about lost my mind when I got my license, even though I was about to go to Chicago for another year and didn't need/have a car.
> 
> ...


This was really fun to read! Thanks for posting it.


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## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

My first car was a '68 Datsun, blue, 4 door sedan. Stick shift and manual choke. I purchased it new with some money I inherited from my GreatAunt. I wasn't actually old enough to inherit yet, so my Dad loaned me the money. I was a junior in college. That car took me from CA to WA to MT and was replaced in the late 70s with a VW bug.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

My first car was a 1959 Jaguar XK-150 convertible, which I bought from a co-worker back in 1965 or so.



Looking at this picture, I'm struck by how bare the neighborhood where my parents lived looked 50 years ago. The mature trees in the area make a huge difference to the present feel of the place.

This car is the reason I learned to do my own car repairs. Being British of a certain vintage, it needed attention pretty much constantly to keep in good running order. The previous owner (who against all odds, remained my friend after the sale) recommended I keep the small hammer he kept under the seat handy because every once in a while, it was necessary to get out of the car, walk around to the passenger side, reach down and give the miserable Lucas fuel pump a small tap to free up the stuck points. In the right hand drive model, one could accomplish this without getting out of the car&#8230; just open the door and reach down give the fuel pump (located under the door sill) a rap.

I learned to drive a manual transmission on this car. What fun, a non-synchro first gear with a dicey second-gear synchro. I quickly learned all about double-clutching. I also learned that only a fool buys a convertible as an only car to drive around in the Texas summers. I also learned how high-maintenance leather upholstery can be in a hot, sunny climate. I made a vow to never own a car with leather upholstery again, a promise I kept until the late nineties when I bought a used Volvo turbo 850 which had leather.

Over the years, I've owned over 20 cars, and the Jag is one of only two that I look back on with nostalgia (the other was a 1966 Alfa Guilia Sprint GT).

Mike


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

I got my driver's licensed when I was 16 and my dad gave me his car - a maroon, 4-door, Oldsmobile Firenza. Not exactly glamorous, but at that point just having a car meant total freedom. My dad went out and bought one of the first Ford Probe's that came on the market and they looked a lot more like sports cars back then.

I got into an accident with the Firenza not long after, driving to school. A car rear-ended us. That sucked and we had to use a bungee cord to hold down the trunk.


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## Kathy (Nov 5, 2008)

Mine was a 1957 Chevy which my dad  gave me in 1966. It was the first new car he ever owned. He was in the Air Force in WW2 and was in an airplane crash. He suffered for many years from an injury of his leg. In 1957 he had to have his leg amputated and part of his compensation was a new car that had automatic drive. He was so proud of it. Had it for less than a year and was hit from behind while at a red light. Totaled it. I loved that car.


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

1964 Triumph TR-4. I was born in '71. Dad bought it for me when I was 9 and we started fixing it up. then, on my 18th b-day when I was supposed to get it, he sold it because he was worried about me being in an accident, and he gave me an Oldsmobile Delta '88.. Solid freakin steel, and I was pissed.


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## prairiesky (Aug 11, 2009)

I was a senior in high school in 1963.  My folks bought a Vauxhall Victor for me...not new.  We lived in a rural area, so I drove it to school every day.  At the end of my senior year, we seniors went out of town for our senior trip.  When we got back, my little red car was parked facing the wrong way on the street.  It had a traffic ticket on the windshield.  The junior boys had lifted my car up and turned it around.  I had to go to traffic court to explain all of this.  The boys thought this was hilarious.  I got out of paying the fine as my guidance counselor went to court with me!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

BTackitt said:


> 1964 Triumph TR-4. I was born in '71. Dad bought it for me when I was 9 and we started fixing it up. then, on my 18th b-day when I was supposed to get it, he sold it because he was worried about me being in an accident, and he gave me an Oldsmobile Delta '88.. Solid freakin steel, and I was p*ssed.


I had the Spitfire. What a blast that car was. Someone where I live has one. I've seen it parked at a gym.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

I intended for my first car to be the 1960 Austin Healey Bugeye (or Frogeye for the Brits) Sprite I bought from my dad.









^I wish mine had made it back into this shape.

I spent months working on the body, sanding rust, priming it, taking all the interior vinyl panels out and recovering them, etc. The car was towed to Cincinnati then Atlanta then Columbia, finding a new spot to sit and rust every time I moved.

When kid #3 came along, I realized I would never have the funds or time to get it running and sold it to my younger sister. Now it's rotting in her garage.


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## intinst (Dec 23, 2008)

First car...My first car was a 56 Ford Fairlane bought from the next door neighbors. Never did get it running before they moved. My first drivable car was a 1963 Mercury Comet Custom bought in late 70 or early 71. Got it from my girlfriends dad for $350. He gave me a sweet deal because I was engaged to his daughter, so he wanted her to have access to reliable transportation. The "Custom" part meant it had three tail lights on each side that were different shaped than the "standard" cars, therefore almost impossible to find when two were broken later. Car finally quit running about five or six years later. It had been wrecked a couple of times and had 100,000 miles or so on it, which was quite a lot at that time. The excellent part about that though, still got the girl! 

The first vehicle I bought for my self was a 56 Ford F-150. Man, I still miss that truck, don't know why.  It was 3 colors, not counting rust. Green original paint and red and green primer. Front fenders were cracked, welded and cracked again. The straight six had been replaced with an 410 cu.in. Edsel V/8, but it still had the original tranny. 3 on the tree had been swapped for a floor shifter, but still unsychronized. That girlfriend's dad (father in law by then) taught me how to double clutch it and all was wonderful!  Had a Bosch electric fuel pump that required the tapping trick on regular basis, and the Hush Thrush glass packs I put on it were a misnomer. Loonlover knew I was coming back to the apartment from a couple blocks away. Rear end went out shortly before we moved to Arkansas so I sold it to my cousin for two hundred dollars. He promised to fix it up, but had it sold by the time we started unpacking for 6 hundred. We really haven't got along since.


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## EthanRussellErway (Nov 17, 2011)

72 Chevy Vega.  My dad bought it new for around 2500 dollars.  It was originally a grass green color, but I painted it red.  Kept it in the family until about 5 yrs ago.  The guy who bought it most likely chopped it up for a racer- the thought of that makes me sad.


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