First Cars Thread

Inspired by the Buick discussion started by JR I was wondering what everyone's first car was and what they paid for it.

I bought a 4 door canary yellow version of the car below for $375.00. Drove it like I stole it until the breaks seized and sold it for scrap while going to university.

I owned a second sportier 2 door version that was tremendous until I totalled it on my way for Chines food. Very reliable cars and never once plugged them in during the winter.

 

A Chrysler LeBaron. It was the one year in which the LeBaron was not a huge boat. It was my aunt's car. Can't remember the year, but I got it in 1994 when I was a senior in HS.

 

1969 Dodge Dart in 1977.

 

As I said on the other thread, the first car I owned was a 1985 Buick Park Avenue. Bought it for $100, sold it for $50. Drove it from 180,000 miles to 225,000 miles over a four-year span. Things started falling apart on the car and I refused to fix them because I'd paid so little for it. For example, the driver's side window wouldn't roll down and if I tried it would fall inside the door. Made smoking inconvenient. The interior roof fell off after we got a large amount of snow. The passenger side mirror was torn off because of an ill-placed mailbox.

Things like that. It was a good car, though. I really enjoyed driving it, even though it was a grandma car.

 

1986 Pontiac Grand Am SE, maroon with gray underskirts

I can't find any visual evidence on the Internet that this car existed.

 

First car: My dad bought a Plymouth Dart from my broadcasting teacher for about $300. But I could never get the hang of a stick shift and my sister took over the use of the car. Someone had done a bad job of fixing the left rear fender with putty.

First car bought for me: My dad then thought I could drive a 1-ton Chevy truck with a stick and no power steering. I decided to keep riding my bike.

First car I actually used: A 1978 Chevette Scooter, maroon with a tan hood. It was a wreck, yet indestructible. There were several occasions I thought it was done for good but it always bouced back.

First car I actually bought: A 1978 Nissan (Datsun back then) station wagon I bought from the old man for $800. He had bought it from my aunt for $1300. I got hit once by a volunteer fireman on his way to a fire and got $800 from the insurance company. Despite the damage and bad rust above the left rear wheel well (which I noticed other Datsun wagons made around the same time also got), I was able to sell it for $800.

First car gained from a non-family source: A 1979 Chevrolet Mailbu made in Ontario and originally sold in Canada, which meant that the MPH were the tiny blue numbers. In order to figure out MPG, I had to convert kilometers to miles. It also had the A/C installed post-factory by someone. Two knobs by the cigarette lighter instead of controls in the panel along with the heat controls.

 

1985 Dodge Omni! Bought it for $200 and I honestly don't know what happened to it. I think my mom sold it one summer I was away at college.
Why didn't I take it to college you might ask? It never would have made it.
Best shitty car I've ever owned.

 

1988 Dodge Daytona.

Hell yeah, I was down with the pop-up headlights.

 

I'm hoping someone says they owned a DeLorean. Damn that would be cool.

 

First car I bought in 1989 - a Navy blue 1974 AMC Gremlin for $500. Had only 70k miles on it and ran well. Unfortunately while I was away at college my brother totalled it.

Needing another cheap car for my second car, bought another '74 Gremlin - this one powder blue (although my roommate claims it had faded to purple) with air conditioning for around $500. This one lasted me a year before I needed to upgrade the car due to the driving I was doing while working for the paper my senior year of college. It was a strange feeling pulling up to a $10k a year private/prep school in the Gremlin to cover a game being surrounded by Audis, BMWs, and other high-end cars.


So my third car - or first real car - was an '85 Camry

 

A Pontiac Sunfire that I totaled three weeks later. Then a Mercury Topaz that I kept until it died.

 

Like Angola, I mentioned mine on the other thread. '87 Chevy Celebrity with 108,000 miles on it. Sold it seven years and 80,000+ miles later for the same amount I paid for it -- $200.
Among its nicknames were "El Junke" (called that by a Mexican guy after it broke down on an ill-fated trip to Juarez) and "The car of many colors" (by my wife when she saw a picture of it). The car had a silver body, but one fender and two passenger side doors that had been replaced were blue, and the trunk and roof were pretty rusted. Weird thing is, one time in college I was at the supermarket and saw a car driving through the parking lot that had a blue body and silver fenders. I almost jumped on the hood before I realized it wasn't my car.
Drove the thing cross country at least a dozen times, though. It was a hell of a car. Even after it had been sitting for the better part of two years, when I went to sell it we replaced the dead battery and it cranked right up. I like to think that fella is still driving it around somewhere.