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How About Your FIRST Car - when cost was an object

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Well, when you get married at age 18, your first car is not very fancy. My father-in-law sold me a 1962 Ford Falcon for $1. We needed a price to transfer it. Then I had a used Plymouth compact POS for a couple of years. But my first NEW car, upon graduating from UConn, was a 1971 Peugeot 304 station wagon in dark green. It was totally cool, but expensive to repair.

peugeot-304-break-5.jpg
 
1969 Dodge Dart, Leaning-Tower-of-Power 225, torqueflite. Looked fast as all get-out, but it was slow and got decent mileage, instead. Unbreakable Slant-6 went over 300k by the time we got rid of the car, and the mechanic that bought it used it for a winter car for years, afterwards.
1969_dodge_dart-pic-61297-640x480.jpeg
 
Rixxx said:
How about a 1960 Plymouth police car? I owned it briefly in its ugly shape, was in an accident and for an extra $75.00, I had the car painted blue. Not the beautiful blue shown. It was a boat....





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That was the car my Dad bought when he graduated from Brooklyn Poly-Tech and got a job as a design engineer at Pratt & Whitney. His was light blue with a white top, 413 cross-ram, and just about every option available except the oblong steering wheel.

SOMEDAY I will build one...but a convertible!
 
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Paid $3k in 1975 for a 1973 3/4 ton black ford pickup with 4 in the floor; plus a one horse trailer. PeeWee and I went back and forth to college in them. Junior college had a horse barn and arena. Stalls rented for $15 per month, you feed.
 
SallyH said:
1955 Pontiac

1955 Pontiac Star Chief for Sale | ClassicCars.com | CC-885889

My dad bought it for US$35 in 1966 as a summer car for my brother and I. He was going to junk it but it wouldn't die. He sold it to my brother's friend for $50, he used it for another couple of years and gave it to his landscaper.

Let me tell you, those cars stood up to a crash.
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Yeah. In the late 50's or early 60's, my dad bought a '49 Chrysler Windsor DeLuxe Sedan for $100 to commute to work (8 miles to Glastonbury) with. One day on a trip to see his mother in Everett, MA we were in it waiting for a light to change so we could cross the Charles River. Abruptly, the car rocked forward a few inches. We got out to see what was going on and discovered a '62 Plymouth wagon had plowed into us at about 20 MPH. It's hood was shortened by 2 feet, easy. The only damage to the Chrysler (the bumpers were QUARTER-INCH steel) was a broken trunk handle, which my dad made a replacement for. The Plymouth driver gave him $200 cash to forget the accident and we drove off.

The Windsor weighed just short of 2 tons, and had a semi-automatic transition. Put it in the normal first gear (3 on the tree) position and it automatically shifted into second. In second-gear position it automatically shifted from 3rd to 4th. You hardly ever used the 1/2 position because, despite only having 115 HP, the engine developed over 200 ft/lb of torque, and people weren't in as much of a hurry those days as they are today.
 
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BigBird said:
View attachment 14678Good grief, Java! And I thought I was the only one who started with an Anglia! Mine was a $200 beauty, minted in 1959. 55 m.p.h., and you had to double clutch into "high" gear. My next car was a 1962 VW beetle, and it sure seemed like a big step up.
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You know, reading through this thread is pretty interesting. It's amazing how many of us have similarities from our yesteryear days. Maybe not the same car like us, but similar stories. Brings back a lot of good memories, but some that make me shake my head and laugh. My Anglia developed a bad starter and when I finally scratched together a few bucks to get it replaced (more than I paid for the car, if memory serves) I was told it wouldn't be that easy and other issues had to be addressed. So ...no new starter (reconditioned actually) for me.

This requires one to always pick their parking space cautiously ...always on a downward facing incline. If I wanted to 'go' I needed to start rolling downhill or find somebody(s) to push if I wasn't parked on an incline, so that I could pop-the-clutch. That's how I started that car for the remainder of its life. :eek: Oh, the things we did for love!
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JavaMan said:
You know, reading through this thread is pretty interesting. It's amazing how many of us have similarities from our yesteryear days. Maybe not the same car like us, but similar stories. Brings back a lot of good memories, but some that make me shake my head and laugh. My Anglia developed a bad starter and when I finally scratched together a few bucks to get it replaced (more than I paid for the car, if memory serves) I was told it wouldn't be that easy and other issues had to be addressed. So ...no new starter (reconditioned actually) for me.

This requires one to always pick their parking space cautiously ...always on a downward facing incline. If I wanted to 'go' I needed to start rolling downhill or find somebody(s) to push if I wasn't parked on an incline, so that I could pop-the-clutch. That's how I started that car for the remainder of its life. :eek: Oh, the things we did for love!
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Reminds me of a 1980 Toyota Cressida I had, only I would look for an upward facing incline because reverse gear didn't work.

I drove this car 2 years with no reverse, in mortal fear of encountering downhill dead end streets. Otherwise it was a great car. Only a few times did my left leg get a workout to gain a few feet of clearance from a car parked too close in front. It's amazing what "essentials" one can do without.
 
1972 Toyota Corona ..... my brother made me buy it after I wrecked it coming back from a night out at Friar Tuck's in New Orleans. It got fixed but reverse never worked again... just had to make sure you never parked pointing downhill.
 
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Great car if you are ok with fuses blowing every time it rained. Of course in Florida, it never rains...

I still had a blast driving it around and it somehow survived Hurricane Andrew parked at the Miami airport.
 

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HardHatGuy#2 said:
That was the car my Dad bought when he graduated from Brooklyn Poly-Tech and got a job as a design engineer at Pratt & Whitney. His was light blue with a white top, 413 cross-ram, and just about every option available except the oblong steering wheel.

SOMEDAY I will build one...but a convertible!
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This would be my wish list equivalent. I loved this car.
4fe749d76a64414640bb3e380cebeef8.jpg
 
7043740001_large.jpg

95 Dodge Neon. Got it in 2004. It's weird to think how old that car felt when it was 9 yrs old and an 07 wouldn't seem nearly as old today. My dad is in the parts business and we got it for 1200 bucks, had 120k miles on it. I was just stoked it had a CD player. Kept it for 6 years (last two years of high school and all of college, it somehow commuted three years to ECSU from Vernon) and saw it pass 200k before it just became too much of a money pit. Passenger door panel would always get stuck and I had to tape it to the door. Window was constantly falling off the track. Drove it for a solid year with thermostat stuck and just cranked the heat all the time. When I finally replaced the thermostat somehow the water pump and head gasmet and radiator were fine! Lots of great times in that little monster but I do NOT miss it.
 
CCinCT said:
First new car

Car # 3 1970 Renault R10 $1910 out the door

Drove this to LA and back in 1970. Harleys had bigger engines. Very sensitive to wind gusts - Had to keep the wheel cocked 90 degrees through the Texas panhandle to go straight. The trunk is in front. Had a manual choke and even sported a crank for starting if necessary !

Renault_R_10_Major_2009.jpg
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HardHatGuy#2 said:
1969 Dodge Dart, Leaning-Tower-of-Power 225, torqueflite. Looked fast as all get-out, but it was slow and got decent mileage, instead. Unbreakable Slant-6 went over 300k by the time we got rid of the car, and the mechanic that bought it used it for a winter car for years, afterwards.
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One of the few production engines that could run sans oil.:D
 
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Chrysler really built some boats in those days. The Dodge Custom from the rear wheels back most have weighed 2000 pounds.
 
Rixxx said:
Chrysler really built some boats in those days. The Dodge Custom from the rear wheels back most have weighed 2000 pounds.
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My Pop bought his first new car in 1959. A Chrysler New Yorker convertible, with a 413 engine and a push button trans.

Great (and huge) car that went just over 300k before he sold it in the mid 70s.
 
I got shuffled around with my parents' old cars and then the first in my name was a 1984 Chevy Cavalier. The progression below:

th



th
 
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