your first car memories

how old were you? what was your mood? how much was it? stuff like that.

i was 18 and on may 19 2006 i finally bought my first s.u.v. from a public seller. finally scratched up $4000 for it too. now if i ever get kicked out of the house atleast i have a place to sleep!

what about you guys?

[edit on 23-12-2006 by conspiracymaster]

I bought mine when I was 15 years old, a Nissan 200sx. $4000 talked down from $7500.

I still have the damn thing because it refuses to break down. 200k+ miles and all Ive had to replace is a clutch (my girlfriends fault),alternator (my fault), and both half shafts (probably my fault too). ALL my good high school memories and such take place in that car. I've almost had to live in the backseat but I haven't got that lucky yet

But...I'm ready to move on to bigger and better things. I'll miss my little Nissan =(

When I was 17, my Camaro (it was the same age as me), which I loved even though all of my friends dubbed it "the white trash mobile", picked up this vicious knock after about 6 months in my possession, so it was down for the summer until we could get a replacement for the old 2.8 V6 (which never should have been put in a friggin Camaro in the first place if you want my opinion, but that was the only way I was affording insurance for a Camaro at that age so I'm glad).

Problem was, my girlfriend who had moved away during the school year came back to visit me that summer cause I had just graduated and we were making plans.

So my dad, probably the coolest person on Earth, loans me his '94 F-150 during the days as long as I take him to work and pick him up. My girl and I spend pretty much all of our time out- hanging with friends, looking for places to go, etc, then for want of anywhere to be alone, hanging out in the truck for a while just around the corner from the friend's house where she was staying- because that's about as dark and quiet a place as a 17 year old is gonna find.

99% of that story is censored, but I can tell you that the major drawback to making out in the bed of a pickup is that you're really SOL if you're parked next to a broken sprinkler that just happens to come on at night.

We never did get the intake manifold perfectly sealed on the new engine, and about 6 months later there was some carbuerator problem, and I'd had enough of my first car. I was working at a tow company so I picked up another Camaro. The original idea was to move the new engine into the new car, along with what few other parts worked well, but the home owner's association thought that was a really bad idea, so I just drove the new car as it was. Little did I know it had major electrical problems. I had to jump the starter solenoid terminals with a miniature golf club to start it because it kept blowing ignition fuses and we couldn't find the short. Eventually we just put in a new circuit with a starter switch... which didn't take long to short out too.

'Bout a year later, my younger brother got his first car. My dad was ALL DONE repairing cars. I owned 2 cars, purchased for a total of 2,500 together and bluebooking for about 1,800 together. Dad made sure my brother got a 6000 dollar truck with a just rebuilt 350. I kept my mouth shut but I was pissed.

But as I said, my dad is pretty cool, and come 2002 he couldn't see himself continuing to drive a '94 Ford, so he traded me his truck for my cars- a big time steal.

A few years later I was making good money and so was my brother. He'd bought his own new truck- an '02 Chevy extended cab with a stepside bed, 20s, and like a 4" drop. I wasn't ready to commit myself to competing with that so I just bought his old truck from him. Unfortunately the transmission he had gotten rebuilt didn't stay rebuilt and I ended up back in the Ford.

The irony of it is that I had considered doing some high mileage maintenance on the Ford instead of buying my brother's old chevy. I could have gotten the tranny serviced, replaced all the bushings that were making it ride loose and noisy, fixed the little oil leaks etc... the 4.9 I-6 will run for 400K+ if you take care of it.

But I didn't, so all this year I've been having tranny problems with the Ford. It loses fluid like you wouldn't even believe. It failed smog in October, just high on NOx, needed an EGR, but frankly the tranny problem was so bad at this point that I thought if I took it in again the thing might jump right off the rollers and wipe out the smog station, because that thing was kicking into gear HARD CORE.

Lucky for me, I had just gotten ahead of the financial woes that have beset me since last February, and I had a thousand bucks in the bank. So I've owned car number 5 for about 6 hours now.

Nailed the dealer down from almost 12K to 9750 on an 02 Blazer with 70k miles, then talked him into taking my Ford in trade, even after I told him that I couldn't bring it in for him until I got my brother to follow me, incase it broke down. I managed 500 on the trade.

So for the first time in my life I own a car that's nowhere near half my age and under 100K. In 4 years it'll have 110K on it, it'll be paid off, and I'll be out of college and in a decent job... and my younger cousin will be 16, which means I get to perpetuate the vicious circle of over the hill cars that plauges young people in my family.

I was 14 and very poor. I got a rusty VW beetle for $50.

Over the course of a year we got it running, made the front look like a baja, chopped the back down into a flatbed pickup truck, painted it, put '60's on the rear, and started running around the countryside like I was somebody special. (back then you could run the country roads without fear of being pulled over)

Ha ha, those '60's sure were slick in the snow!

My first car was a 1964 Ford Falcon with a 4 speed in the floor. I was 17 and was glad I learned to drive manual, I bet there are men that don't even learn to drive them these days. Wish I had that car now. Lots of good memories.

Funny you mention it spyder. I never would have learned to drive stick if it wasn't for work. I tried to learn in my grandpa's Ford Ranger, but with the I-4 and the highway geared rearend it stalled too easily to learn in quickly. Luckily we had plenty of big powerful diesels with granny gears for maintenance at the quarry I worked in, so I eventually figured it out.

It's a nice little macho trip to have a truck and actually know how to use the dang thing, but the problem with that when you're young is that a lot of your friends don't know anyone else who can help them out when they've got a trailer or get themselves dug in, and every couple of months somebody ends up calling you too early on a sunday morning wanting help. I've had to forbid my cousin from driving himself to any party being held away from paved roads under penalty of bludgeoning. Friggin ravers.

I learned to drive a stick at age 17, in an Army 5-ton up at Ft. Lewis. It was the prime-mover for our artillery piece, and man was it fun to drive. It really shook yer guts up if you had to ride in back on rough (or non-existant) roads for very long though. I climbed off of that thing with a pretty bad gut ache on more than one occaison.

I bought my first car after I got out, a '64 volkswagen (this was in 1975).

Because of it's flat bottom I used to take it "bobsledding" on snowcovered dirt roads up in the Sierra's.

Got it stuck one day and asked my girlfriend (now wife) to get in the back 'cause I needed the "extra weight" over the driver wheels.......

Don't ever ask your girlfriend to get in the back 'cause you need the extra weight............

It was so snowing, I was waiting outside with my dog for the truck to come. Finally I saw the yellow flashing lights and it was here!!!!!!!!

I bought my first car at 17 for 300 dollars. An 85 camaro with a 92 RS body kit, cowl induction hood, and tuned-port 350. I was the talk of the neighborhood! I got it off a kid i used to go to school with...well, his parents. The kid had gotten in serious trouble with the car, and as his punishment his parents sold it to me for the measely sum of 300 bucks! We had it brought over on a flatbed truck in a snowstorm because it wasn't registered and i wanted to do some work on it before i put it on the road.

That was the best night in all of my car owning life. I loved that car like a member of my family. Lots of great times in that car. I ended up getting in trouble and selling it, much like the kid who i sold it to did. Something about that car brought out the crazy in everyone who drove it. I'll post a pic if i can ever get to a scanner.

The first car I ever "owned" was when I was 16, a 1980 Honda Civic my friends and I affectionately dubbed "The Gerbil." It was an exaggeration though--wasn't anywhere near as big as a real gerbil... $200, manual transmission, light enough in the back end so that as long as I had a friend or two with me we didn't have to worry about parking straight.

Thought the radio was completely busted, so I left it off all the time; had a friend riding with me once who didn't know and turned it on, volume almost all the way up--didn't know of course, because the radio didn't actually come on. We hit a bump, a wire jiggled, and it came on--scared the bejeezus out of all of us. That ended up being the first "appliance" I learned you could get working if you hit it on the side with your fist hard enough.

One thing I discovered with that car, is that if you and the rest of your friends are dedicated (or drunk) enough, you can easily fit ~10 people into a car that doesn't hold 2 comfortably. And people riding underneath the hatchback should wear a helmet in case the driver doesn't pay attention to speed bumps.

The first car I officially own (that wasn't bought by parents or a hand-me-down) my fiance and I just got last week, a '99 Hyundai Accent. I was driving an 85 Camry; front end was starting to go out and I need to be able to commute > 30 mi. one way. This car is pretty sweet so far, although we got screwed pretty bad--bad credit, had to take what we could get. It runs good though, just a couple of dings and they sold it over bluebook by a grand at least. We'll see how it does...

The year was 1986 and I was 16. The car was a 1972 Opal GT. Two-tone paint job was gray on the bottom and red on the top. I sure wish I had that car now.

It was way back when.......

1976 I bought a 1972 Chevy Impala... Paid 750.00 for it. A mechanic I knew had just put a 350 in it and MAN!! it flew... (I think it was a 350, BIG V8 anyway)

Wound up totaling it my first year in college and bought my first of 7 camaro's.

WHEW, what memories this thread brings up.... Made out in it, first time in a car... First BIG crash... First time over 100....

Man those were the days...

Semper

This is not a love story.

My first car was a '61 Chevrolet Corvair. It was 8 years old, and that was in Ohio years.....8 years of snowy, salted roads that had taken a terrible toll. By the time I got 'her', there were almost no floorboards, and no paint on any horizontal metal parts......just rust....lots and lots of red, flaky rust.

What had I done to p_ss of my parents?? Nothing, so far as I could ever figure out, it was just one of those, "you'll appreciate this one day" rationalizations. ( or maybe they just really hated me....) My Dad claimed he'd paid $250 for it, but I've been told that was well above the going rate at the time......? ( Any way, being 17 and in love with a pale yellow mustang, I cried for two days, and refused to drive it for a couple of weeks....but finally broke down and drove it when it was the only alternative to walking to school in the rain!)

The one good thing about it, was a GREAT heater .....it was in the trunk (out front) and when it and the motor (in the rear) ran at the same time ( which was not THAT often, even in the winter time!! ) .....it would sound as if there were two motors! Ha ! That got some odd looks......as if it didn't warrant enough of them as it was!

Sigh.....I really Hated that car.....

I was 15 and I bought a 1964 Plymouth Belvedere from the widow of one of the original Ramchargers for $680. I had a slant six, a "3 on the tree" 3 speed manual. I had that car before i had my permit. When I got my liscense, my dad and I took it on the Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour. That car ran like a champ. I sold it shortly before leaving to basic training.