Your First Car

1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse Turbo. Revolutionary for its time compared to Honda Preludes and Toyota Celicas.

 

A 1993 lexus es300. Still looks surprisingly good, doesn't it!

 

a 1985 Chevrolet Cavalier CS…"this car rocks!!", said no one ever…I can't complain, it got me through half of my senior year of high school and 4 years of college

 

aha…now I get the gist of this game…post the old car brochure from your link, not just a picture…

thank you, Onager!

 

it was a piece of <CENSORED>, when I look back on it…and what did I get from my parents for a college graduation present…yes…another Cavalier, and the picture is the identical model and color I had…(which, by the way, isn't in that list)

 

A 1954 Chevrolet One-Fifty (bottom-of-the-line trim), which my parents bought new and gave me after it grew elderly and they no longer wanted it. It was equipped with several extra-cost options, all of which soon became standard on all cars:
Engine oil filter
Electric (!) turn signals
Heater
Outside rear-view mirror
Back-up lights
Lap belt for driver only (cannibalized from our '71 Dodge)

 

My first love was a four-door 1957 Chevy Bel Air -- something like the picture pasted below, but of course, four doors...
Chevrolet



I did not have it long. Bought it from a neighbor when I was in high school. It was originally pink with a white roof. I lived in Southern California, so took it over the Mexican border and had it painted metallic avocado green and put in tuck 'n' roll black leather seats and, of course, an eight-track. Had a great summer with the car and the big back seat was quite handy for , uh, storage. But, one day dear dad caught me climbing in the back window of the house at 4:30 a.m. and he sold the car out from under me.

Some years later I got a wonderful experiment from Chevy, called a 1972 Vega... Chevy's experiment with aluminum alloy cylinder blocks in the car did not go well, despite being named Motor Trend's car of the year in 1971.
http://www.lov2xlr8.no/brochures/chevy/72vega/bilder/15.jpg

 

1955 Chevy Convertible

 

Great thread, Onager!

I don't have any pictures of it I don't think...it was way before digital cameras or even disposables.

The Exorcist pea-soup crap green 1972 Fiat 128 4-spd bought used from a guy down the street. What a big POS!

Got me to school and back for a couple of years and only cost $750...those were the saving graces. I'm really lucky I survived driving it.

I'm proud to say that both my kids got MUCH better cars than I did for their first cars.

EDIT: I found a pic of one online, but it's nicer than the one I had. Definitely better wheels. And his has foglamps! I also sprayed primer on the rust spots of mine - which were more numerous than this. I'm ashamed to admit I drove this thing with almost no brakes for a year. What an idiot.



EDIT AGAIN:
Found a picture from the interior of a brochure showing some sexy car models in action at an early 70s car show in Poland...va-va-va-voom! If you look really closely at the one on the right, you can see a little skin around her ankles, I think.

Paulina Porizkova they're not.



This is FUN!

 

1960 Chevrolet Impala - my first car purchase in 1970 from a co-worker

- Inline 6 cylinder - still running like a top when I sold it to buy a 1964 Triumph TR-4

 

1962 2 door Ford Falcon station wagon with a 144 CID inline 6

1963 Ford Falcon-16-17

 

Excellent idea for a thread, Onager. And the brochure site is a good find.

My first car isn't there - I don't think they sold it in America.

I've found a brochure. It's in Dutch, but reading Dutch isn't that hard, so you can certainly get the gist of what they're saying.

Pepopolis: 305 1979 - Brochure/Catálogo



I like this page in particular. Nothing says luxury like a photo that basically says "Look! It's got a gearstick and everything!"

 

1972 Dodge Colt (Mitsubishi) wagon. Sold to me by my parents for $1 when I entered high school, after my mom had stopped driving it a couple years earlier, around the time the radio started blinking when the turn signals were on. (Bad body rust making trouble with ground points.)



The idea was for $1, if I could get it in good driving condition by the time I got my license, I'd have a car. Worked out perfectly! Great car to learn car-futzing on. Dead simple, very easy and forgiving to work on. (Dual-piston fixed calipers, so no slide pins to gum up!)

Mom hadn't changed oil much, so I eventually got my first full engine rebuild experience (went straight to the fourth oversize, some broken rings had chewed up the cylinders something fierce), then transplanted engine, tranny, and front seats into a less-rusty 1974 hardtop found in a "needs motor work" classified:


Had to construct a sort of hybrid wiring harness, as the '72 engine had an interesting box under the seat controlling a solenoid dashpot on the carburetor that the '74 didn't have, while the '74 had seat-belt retractors that were actually electrically locked by a Denso accelerometer located under the other seat, bit overengineered compared to the '72. Fun to take corners exuberantly and hear all the retractors click. While merging the wiring I also made my one mod: the wipers would return to park when the key was turned off. I hate having them stop in the middle of the windshield.

It was my first car with push-to-start ... replacing the battery never seemed important enough to spend money on until I was in college. Kept driving that car until I'd been out of college two years, then drove it up to Volunteers of America as a donation and treated myself to a Mazda 323.

-Chap