How About Your FIRST Car - when cost was an object

[mudcat]

Mine is below, a '59 VW bug, black, with the flat windshield, no gas gauge (the auxiliary tank control under the dash), no heater fan, and 38 roaring horses that could get you up to 85mph on a downhill with a tailwind. It died when I skidded off I-80 during a snowstorm outside of Geneseo, IL.

 

[Adesmar123]

Mine is below, a '59 VW bug, black, with the flat windshield, no gas gauge (the auxiliary tank control under the dash), no heater fan, and 38 roaring horses that could get you up to 85mph on a downhill with a tailwind. It died when I skidded off I-80 during a snowstorm outside of Geneseo, IL.
View attachment 14675

And I bet you used to do some hill watching when driving. You had to make sure you went down the hill fast enough to get you up the next hill. The heater and defroster ran on air coming through the car. BUT I had an AM/FM radio....so nothing else mattered.

 

[BigBird]

Okay, VAMike23 is revealing our coolest cars, and there are some gems in that thread, but who is willing to fess up and reveal their first ever car - the one you had to actually pay for yourself? (no hand-me-downs)

Mine was a late 1950s Ford, an English Ford that is. An English Ford Anglia Deluxe to be exact. Chartreuse in color, and a strikingly ugly shade of chartreuse it was.

View attachment 14640 ​

The price? It was right in my wheelhouse ...$100. Miles? if memory serves, it had around 100k miles on it - the equivalent of a million miles compared to today's models.

And in keeping with today's trend of full and honest transparency, I must reveal that my $100. gem didn't actually come in the condition of the one pictured in the above photograph. Condition wise it was closer to this one.

View attachment 14641 ​

But it was mine! My first set of liberating wheels. It served me well ...in many ways.

How about yours?

Good 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.

 

[pinotbear]

No offense. Really, I mean it.... but how old are you guys. I have never seen any of these things on the road lol.


This old, Nuyoika, this old....

 

[geneticrex]

No offense. Really, I mean it.... but how old are you guys. I have never seen any of these things on the road lol. My first car was a 2001 green Ford Escort.

LOL..................soon to be 57 going on 18.

 

[MilfordHusky]

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.

 

[HardHatGuy#2]

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.

 

[HardHatGuy#2]

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....





View attachment 14665

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!

 

[j66kicker]

LOL...soon to be 57 going on 18.

No worries - 57 is the new 37

 

[Nuyoika]

LOL...soon to be 57 going on 18.

I'm proud of you for not shying away from the answer... I'm soon to be 29... going on 6 as my wife would say.

 

[SallyH]

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.

 

[Bestiarius]

1957 MG A Great for GETTING dates. Not so good ON dates.

 

[Magy Cannon]

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.

 

[Icebear]

1956 Pontiac Starchief $300

 

[huskeynut]

1966 Olds Cutlass convertible. Red with white racing stripes on the hood. Paid $600.00.

 

[Checkmate]

I had to settle for a Lamborghini. Could not afford an Aston Martin

 

[JRRRJ]

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.

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.

 

[Sonny44]

Most of these cars have more style than today's.

 

[JavaMan]

View attachment 14678 Good 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.

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. Oh, the things we did for love!

​

 

[DaddyChoc]

this is the first car I paid for... a 1986 Ford Mustang LX (not a GT 5.0) in 1992, premium only or it would knock like a woodpecker

 

[Bestiarius]

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. Oh, the things we did for love!

​

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.

 

[Beemer]

1983 Ford Ranger. I'm sorry Ford stopped making them, they were nice little trucks

 

[Rocket009]

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.

 

[CL82]

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!

This would be my wish list equivalent. I loved this car.