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Since terrygs thread about his daughter driving, I thought it might be fun to go back and talk about your first cars.

Mine was a perfect car for a 16 year old driver. A 1973 Pontiac Catalina that I bought in 2000 with less than 30K on the odometer. I was the second owner, little old lady drove it to the grocery story and the beauty parlor. I bought it at her estate sale.



This thing was longer than a suburban, handled like an aircraft carrier, could comfortably seat 8, and could have won a wreck with anything short of a freight train. It had a pontiac 400 cu motor in it, but it was only a 2 barrel carb and it needed all 400 inches to get this sucker up big hills.

I unfortunately had to sell it to buy a more reliable car for college in 2005. I would have loved to repainted it, dropped in a modern motor and some decent suspension and kept it as a cruiser.

Do you still have your first car? What was it? And if you've got pics, show em off!

Mine was a 1974 Volkswagon Thing that my dad and I spent a year restoring back in 1985-86. I'll see if I have any pics scanned.

Mine was a 4dr 1969 cutlass. I was the 2nd owner of the vehicle, can't remember the mileage. Tires were slicker than my ET's I had on a Mustang, thus, promptly putting me in a ditch..

Ah, the memories....

The car that I learned to drive on was a 1953 Mercury Monterrey with a 3 speed stick on the column (overdrive), manual steering and manual brakes. The first car that I owned (and that was the year that I graduated from college) was a 1969 VM beetle. I married the side of that one to the front end of a El Camino that was doing 70mph in a 25mph zone on my wife's 21st birthday (we weren't married at that time.). That bug was just not the same after those repairs. I missed that little car but didn't miss the lack of A/C after we traded it for an Olds Cutlass in 1972.

My first car was a 1962 Ford Falcon 2-door. My first new car was a 1971 Vega I bought when I graduated High School.
My first motorcycle was a Cushman and my first new motorcycle was an Indian 90cc dirt bike!

My first car was a 1960 Austin Healey 3000 bought in 1962. It was a shiney black beauty.

An old woman pulled out in front of me on Shelby Ave. in Nashville in '63 as I was on my way across town to pick up my new bride of two weeks. I tee-boned her 56 Chevy coupe. It wasn't my time to die but my beloved Healey didn't survive.

1989 Oldsmobile Delta 88. This was technically my first car, but I had to share it with my older brother. It had a 3800 Series I V6. It looks like a grandma car, but it ran side by side with my friends' 5.0 Mustangs and 350Zs.

It also had an all-digital dashboard. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing. Every time you start the car, it would say, "Good Day (night, morning), Mr. McKnife."



The picture is not mine, but looks similar. Ain't she a beauty?

When I turned 16, I was allowed to "borrow" my dad's little Japanese pickup (first a Nissan, then an Isuzu). He had a company car at the time that he drove most days. Of course, his real reason for allowing me to "borrow" the truck was so he could use it as punishment when I got into trouble. My junior and senior years of high school I think I was "grounded" from the truck more than I was allowed to drive it. He even put "The Club" (remember those?) on the steering wheel and took the key with him so I couldn't take the truck out when he wasn't home. It wasn't until years later that I saw the 60 Minutes episode where a convicted car thief showed how The Club only slowed him down by a few seconds when stealing a car (he cut through the steering wheel with a hacksaw - not the lock - GENIOUS!)



So my real first car - title in my name and everything, was a 1984 Mazda Sundowner pickup that I bought from my grandpa. It had EVERYTHING 5-speed stick, turquoise blue vinyl interior, cassette tape deck that I quickly swapped out with a $400 Blaupunkt CD player (almost as much as I paid for the truck), and most importantly of all - a white metal bolted in tool box (rusted just right to match the rusted white body paint) and matching rusted white HEADACHE RACK behind the rear window. It was grandpa's old farm truck. Best part was the 75-horsepower 4-banger that could get that little two-seater all the way up to a frighteningly fast 77 miles per hour on I-35 - the trick was to run through the first three gears to accelerate onto the entrance ramp, then put the pedal on the floor as you shift into fourth gear ... keep it in 4th, pedal mashed into the floorboard for a few minutes (literally) while it eeked its way from about 40 mph up into the high 60s (with the tac well over 5000 rpm), then wait for a downslope on the other side of rise and shift into 5th with the pedal still mashed to the floor. If you were lucky and the interstate leveled out for a few miles and you did this just right, within a few more minutes you were in the mid 70s. At 77 mph the whole contraption was shaking like a washing machine on spin with an uneven load distribution. Total time to hit 77 mph when leaving the Belton/Temple area for the Cedar Park area - about 10 minutes, or roughly 1/4 of the entire trip.



Anyway, here's a photo of a truck that looks very similar to mine (just without the super cool rusty tool box and headache rack).

McKnife wrote:1989 Oldsmobile Delta 88. This was technically my first car, but I had to share it with my older brother. It had a 3800 Series I V6. It looks like a grandma car, but it ran side by side with my friends' 5.0 Mustangs and 350Zs.

It also had an all-digital dashboard. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing. Every time you start the car, it would say, "Good Day (night, morning), Mr. McKnife."



The picture is not mine, but looks similar. Ain't she a beauty?

My dad's company car - the one he drove instead of the Nissan truck he grounded me from - was a 1989 Buick LeSabre (same car as the Delta 88). Had that same 3800 V6. That is hands down the best engine of any car I've ever driven. Plenty of power (admiting to a crime here, but I once dropped the needle on the speedometer and got it up to approximately 125 on I-10 when I was a young dumb 18 year old). But the amazing part is that when he finally got rid of that car years later, after my brother drove it into the ground, the transmission was shot, none of the electronics had worked for years (no ac, no power windows, no power door locks, no radio) but that engine had well over 300,000 miles on it and still purred like a kitten. My dad told me the local mechanic gave him a few hundred dollars for the engine. Said he would scrap the car and put the engine into an old Oldsmobile he had in back of the shop.

The first car(s) that I technically owned were a 57 Chevy Model 210 and a 53 Merc with a flathead engine, when I was 16. Not sure how I scratched up the money for them but they were junk. So much so that my Mom had them towed-off in front of my bewildered-eyes. They didn't look like junk to me.
The first car that I owned and my Mom couldn't tow-off was a 74 Duster with a 318 in it. I bought that as a young Marine and drove it until I started a family, eventually trading it in for a long line of garbage-cars.

He liked his first car so much, he kept it - forever! I would too

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First car: 1962 Impala Supersport 327 small block, 4-speed manual, non-power brakes and manual steering. Steering wheel bigger than a semi truck. Ran like a bat out of heck.

Favorite car: 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix Model J. 400 big block, power everything. Factory resonators on the factory dual exhaust. The hood alone had to be 8 miles long......Smooth and pretty.

Twas a hand-me-down from my dad. 1966 AMC Rambler.
The thing was a little tank. I once totaled another car with it and only sustained a broken headlight.

Not actual photo but pretty close.

I still drive my first car, and it's an awesome car! I would post a picture of it, but it is very unique and I'd rather say semi-anonymous. In the four years I've owned it, I've only seen two others; one in California, one in Texas. People say I should "trick" it out, but I'm saving my money to buy guns instead

If Pimp My Ride was still airing, I'm sure they would love to have my car on the show.

austinrealtor wrote:Had that same 3800 V6. That is hands down the best engine of any car I've ever driven. Plenty of power

I love those V6s. The car I upgraded to from the catalina was a 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix with a series 2 3800. Of course, mine is a GTP model so it has a supercharger on top of it.

Its a peppy little car. Still my daily driver.