Tell Us About Your First Car..

Just to dilute the acid, vitriol and bile of the most active threads here in the 'off topic' forum, how about a nostalgic look at your first car??

Mine was a 1961 VW beetle, cloth sunroof version. The '61 bug was the first year for the syncro first-gear transmission, the second year for the 40hp engine, but the last year for the no-gas-gauge, so it had a 'reserve fuel lever' I have a few stories about that!!

I bought the car, without an engine in 1967 for $50. It was VERY rusty, holes through the floor boards so you could see the ground behind the front tires as you drove it. Hole in the floorboard under the battery,, I patched them all ... sort of. The fenders were so bad I had strips of metal screwed into the body and overlapping the fender joint onto the fender where I screwed into the more solid metal.. Looked like metal bandaids.

The engine I bought at a salvage yard, from a car that had been hit in the rear, shearing off the distributor, which siezed the distributor drive shaft and the brass drive-gear on the crankshaft was stripped... The generator support was sheared off , the sheetmetal a mess... but the engine was $50, and the needed parts free for the scrounging through the salvage yard's pile of scrap engines..

So I split the engine case, replaced the brass gear on the crank, straightened the sheet metal and made a running engine... all about 9 months before I got my drivers license... talk about temptation... and my bug was so humble that only my dad would ride 'shotgun' for me with my 'learners permit'.. My mom refused after on trip... said the car was unsafe... And she had had several VW's, she had a 250-customer paper route to pay for her late-in-life college classes.. the VW was the only vehicle that would stand up to the start and stop of a paper route.

Anyway, that's my first car, very humble... but I kept it for over a year.. then put myself through some college turning wrenches on VW's... I have owned over 20 air-cooled VW's..several Karman-Ghias, bugs one 'transporter bus.

Greg L

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A 1966 VW beetle 1300. Great little car. I wish I could buy a new one. I could fill it up for about $3.00-$4.00 dollars. I also went on to own several other air cooled VW's. I had a 71 camper bus, a 71 supper beetle and a 74 station wagon. Once they went to water cooled engines, they went downhill.

Me too, a 1973 Baja. Had it for a year and bought a 74' Nova hatch back with "3 on the tree". Yanked the original tranny and slapped in a Muncie M21 along with Camaro High back buckets to finish it off. These two cars are only ones that I never took pictures of...sadly.

I had a Vette.... Chevette.... Forget what they year was but it was somewhere around a 84. Bought it with 56,000 miles on it and was in excellent condition. 5 speed, was really nice car for a kid in highschool until I got my juvenile hands on it.

1962 Falcon Tudor. Still have it.

(Nice looking Falcon!!^^^^) My Youngest brothers first cart was a 1971(?) Super Beetle. I drove it quite a few times and really liked it. My first car circa 1983-84 was a 1964 Plymouth Fury 4dr HT with the 318 poly head motor. It was an excellent car that got really good fuel milage. One of my brothers girlfriends (now his wife) borrowed it and hyroplaned , slide and hit someones porch and destroyed the car and the porch. No one was injured badly. My love of cars came from my father who had Hudsons as everyday cars in the late 60's. They were very cheap at that time and he had many of them over the years. I have great memories of playing or riding in those cars as a kid. We still have a few antique cars.

Wood'nCoal wrote:1962 Falcon Tudor. Still have it.

Why does this not surprise me?

My first car was a 1978 Plymouth Volare, light blue with blue interior. It had a 318 and a digital clock in the dash....at the time there had to be a dozen at the local salvage yard and none had the 318 or a digital clock. The car was given to me for kinda a graduation present in 1993 by a friend of the family who didint want it anymore. The girls loved the back seat....let me explain, at roadside teenage bonfire partys I used to pull the bottom of the back seat out for the chicks to sit on instead of standing all night. Towards the end of the cars life I had some ignition problem my uncle fixed with a long wire(i still don't know what he did) To start the car I had to pop the hood and and connect the wire to the hot side of the battery then use the key to start it. Then to shut it off I had to pop the hood and just disconnect the wire from the wire. Just as that was getting really old(about 2 months) the car quit running altogether and I got a suburban instead. One night at my hardware store job I overheard 2 guys talking about there 318 in a truck or something and asked them if they wanted the car, away the old blue girl went. Jim

I feel a little old mentioning this to you kids.
Edit: I was probably only 12, when I got my first car. Whew! that makes me feel younger

1946 Ford Sedan, then a '50s something Desoto, '52 Chevy Conv., '54 Ford HT, '57 Plymouth, '58 Pontiac, '65 Pontiac (1st new car) and the list goes on >>>

1959 Plymouth Fury hardtop, big V8, big fins at the rear. Bought it from the bank which had repossessed it. I think I paid $280 in 1964 or so. It had non-standard wheels with holes too big for the lug nuts, so the nuts would loosen up and the wheels start flopping back and forth. It had power brakes with some kind of problem, so there was about a one to two second delay when you pushed the pedal until the brakes started to take -- not good considering I drove way too fast like most 16-year-old lunkheads. Had too-hard (I think) brake pads so when braking to a stop on a gentle slope it would set up a vibration like rubbing your finger around the top of a wine glass only MUCH louder, so everybody within a hundred yards would turn and stare. I got most of the problems ironed out, then realized I couldn't afford the gas (even then!) and traded it for a 61 Ford Falcon, terrible piece of junk that only got 15 miles per gallon with its automatic trans and broke down all the time, but at least it had the illusion of being a small economy car.

Richard S. wrote:

Wood'nCoal wrote:1962 Falcon Tudor. Still have it.

Why does this not surprise me?

Because I never get rid of anything? (Well-almost never).

64 impala convertable , fire engine red, $120. bought from used car lot. only had $100 , so the guy sold me the car and said bring in the $20 when you get it. so I did.

Mine was a 69 VW Beetle. Bought brand new for $1969.00! ($69.00 was the radio) Second car was a 1972 Plymouth Golduster with the Chrysler slant-six 225 engine........for a little over $3000.00 new. Most reliable car I ever owned!,,,You couldn't kill them!! (ujntil the body just rusted away )

69 truck GMC short bed 4X4 three spead on the cloum, called it the mule cause it ran like it. Was a good looker too.

Think I paid 500 for it.