Does your first car hold a special place in your heart?

[CardsFan]

The first car I ever bought was a 1972 Plymouth Duster, bought in about 1975 for about $750. Straight 4, you could crawl into the engine compartment.

A few memories:

The car needed water. I opened the oil fill and started adding water. OH CRAP! Stopped. drained the oil, added oil (I don't think I changed the filter, but maybe). drove the car for 5 more years.

Got T-Boned in my college parking lot. Other driver was pissed he failed a test during finals. Right rear quarter panel. Shop filled it with puttyy, and it sure looked nice.

Until I side swiped a snow bank and it all fell out and rusted. Oh well, my fault. Don't call the insurance company or Dad's Insurance will go up.

Still drove it in 1978 when I moved to STL for my first job.

Sold the car to my future SIL for $500. She drove it for about 8 more years. I bought a 1980 Toyota Celica. Brand new. hey, I was young and stupid.

 

[scrabbler1]

I remembered an odd thing about the 1972 Olds Delta 88 (a.k.a. "The Blue Bomb") which actually was mildly helpful when I was learning how to drive in 1981.


Back in 1976, while on a family vacation in Maine, we had a strange mishap in a rocky area of the parking lot in the cottage campground. The front wheel got pushed upward and caused the automatic transmission shifter to get thrown out of line. A local mechanic was able to fix it pretty easily so we could put the car into Park and remove the car key like usual. But the shifter, located in the steering column, no longer lined up the letters (P-R-N-D) with the gear you selected. When the needle lined up with the "N", the car was in Drive. Neutral was somewhere near the "R".


This caused some initial confusion with my parents but they got used to it. They had to tell outsiders such as our home mechanic and occasional valets to count the clicks so they would know when they could were in the correct gear.


This never fazed me by the time I began driving the car in 1981. And, by some strange coincidence, the Driver Ed car had a similar problem. The letters in its A/T's steering column also didn't line up with the actual selected gear. That confused my Driver Ed classmates, but it seemed perfectly natural to me.

 

[kcowan]

1951 Chevrolet 4 door sedan bought for $35 out of a junk yard. Once I got it running and tagged,it wasn't much to talk about. Here's the only photo I have of it.

View attachment 35172

First cars! I learned to drive on Dads car as pictured above. Then a 53 Ford 2-door. Then a 60 Falcon. Borgward Isabela in France. Ford Consul convertible (POS). 67 Volvo 122S. Etc

Places in the heart:
74 Olds Cutlass Supreme 455 would beat Corvettes
95 BMW convertible

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

I'm surprised to see there are others that had a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500!

Mine was capable of chirping the tires from a standing stop. All of them I saw, mine included, got the saggy butt disease with age.

I drove a '64 Fairlane that developed the same sag. The retaining strap that kept the leaf springs bundled together would rust out and break, letting the springs settle to the attitude of their choice. The Fairlane was a hand-me-down, a base model with a weak 6 cylinder engine and three on the tree. (Dad was an LBYM type). It did have a radio, but the tuner had a habit of drifting off frequency. My idea of a repair was to thwack the dashboard, which developed an indentation over the radio. I drove it to college till it died, then got another beater I drove till it died.

My first car was a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda that I got as a hand-me-down when I got my drivers license in 1970. Don't confuse this with the muscle car 'Cuda's of the late 60's - early 70's. The 1965 Barracuda is nothing more than a Plymouth Valiant with a huge fastback rear window. Nevertheless, it had a 273 V8 and 3 on the tree and would burn some serious rubber.

About a year ago I saw one for sale that was almost an exact replica of the one I had, including the same color, engine, and 3 on the tree. It was in average condition, and as I recall they wanted $12K for it. I loved my first car but I've got to admit that when I saw the one for sale it was a little disappointing. I didn't remember how cheap and sparse these cars were, especially the interior. But they were built like a tank and almost indestructible. I will always have fond memories of my first car.

That first-generation Barracuda has a couple points of honor: Plymouth actually beat the Ford Mustang to market in the pony car category by a couple weeks in 1964, and that big glass greenhouse was the largest single piece of glass ever used in a production car.

I think the later Barracuda models are the ones that command stunning prices, especially the Hemis. Maybe they were just ridden so hard, there aren't that many survivors.