What was your first car ! Give us some background.

[axisg]

I got dads 1983 delta 88 aka "Das Boat" ! when he bought an 86 Bonneville in 89. It had insurance and valid tags for 8 months. It was beat, no rockers and the floors were shot but it was free and my mobile bar / motel

6 months later I bought my first car.. 1976 Monza Spyder. 305, auto and the weight of a chevette. Tiny tires, little brakes and tons of fun. Couple gallon pails of bondo and some primer then I drove it to Alberta in 2 days flat ( bennies were great back then ). Swapped in a 350 with an RV cam and a 4 speed.

Still miss that car

 

[Texas82GP]

My first car was an 84 S10 Blazer, 2-door, 2wd. Carbureted 2.8L V-6 with a 5 speed. It was gold with black below the lower trim. It had American Racing Outlaw II style wheels on it, but the centers were black. Gold is not my favorite color but it actually was pretty sharp. It had black vinyl 'pinstiping', like what they put on at the dealer. I did a lot of work on that truck. Put a rebuilt 2.8L in it when it developed a rod knock, had it painted. I drove it for seven years and about 90k miles. It's a hard luck story though. I was in the process of gathering all the parts to do a SBC swap when I got rear-ended by a second gen S10 pick-up in early 2000. He hit me at better than 30 mph. He never hit the brakes. He came around the corner of the intersection looking at his kid and was on the gas when he looked up and saw me stopped behind traffic. He shoved me into the Crown Vic in front of me. The front clip was crunched. The rear window shattered. Both quarters were crumpled. It was a total loss. Wrecked in the front, back, and down both sides. I drove it home though. In the end I got next to nothing for it from the insurance company. I sold the SBC core I had and bought an 89 Chevy pickup, regular cab, long bed, 2wd. I'm on my third pickup since then as my daily driver. I still would love to get ahold of a first gen S10 pickup or Blazer and do the SBC swap for a fun cruiser/daily driver.

 

[rad928music]

1974 Pontiac Grand Prix I got in the early 90's.
I didn't know anything about motors or working on cars, Had a Permit and gave the Guy $400 at a beat up Car lot.
Had a "Chrome Out Motor" but not sure what it was, I'm Guessing a Pontiac 400.
I even sleep in it a couple times after work cause I didn't have enough money to make it home a couple times, and I was getting paid the next day (Night Job)..
On time a female police Lady caught me sleeping in it but she let me go, after I gave her a sad story and Puppy eyes LOL.
Ran great until some $#@%&* sucker put sugar in the tank and I spent a month trying to figure out why she would stall on me.
Got it running great and it was fast, too, Sounded like a race car, (No Joke) the previous owner modified it I believe. I parked it in a handi cap spot listening to a friend tell me " park here, it wont get towed"
Stayed in the car pound cause mom's wouldn't loan me the money to get it out,,, I was pissed. lol

 

[87BlazeLS]

This thread is bringing out the best from you guys. Great stories.

I have one That i wrote myself several years ago. That I will be sharing soon. I work as a fiction writer in my spare
time. I have works that have been published in magazines and several books. And more than 25 complete short stories.

So you'll know when you see it. Be looking for : "From handlebars to handcuffs"

 

[Rick_B_86]

82 Pontiac Acadian. 4 speed standard and 2 hamsters on a wheel. 3rd generation hand-me-down but I was in high school and didn't have to take the bus anymore so I didn't care. A major pain to drive in winter on account of the pedals being so close, my boots would always catch the brake when I pushed the clutch. Couldn't go over 90 (km/h) if I had 4 people in the car. Drove it for a couple of years before those poor hamsters finally gave it up. I still have it sitting out back, every so often I consider putting some new hamsters in (after a rigorous dose of steroids, of course)

 

[85442/86buick]

First car , It was a 1973 Volvo 142 , with an automatic . Bought it for $600.00 and immediately dropped $ 400.00 into a Jensen car stereo , which was huge money for a 17 year old working all summer washing dish's at Mother Tuckers in Scarborough thinking $2.75 an hour.
Drove it everywhere , worked on every part of it over the next 6 years... just before my 19 th birthday ( legal drinking age in Ontario at the time ) driving to work for an 11 am start time , knowing i was pushing a over due oil change . it was payday this is was the days before direct deposit... i will change the oil tomorrow ........well I was wrong. ripping across the west bound 401 heading for Yonge St.....is that a truck passing me ??? quick look around no it just me out here........Yes it was the connecting rod from cylinder # 3 punching its way thru the block.
So long story short my 19th birthday was spent installing a $ 300 junkyard engine and not out legally drinking with the boys. That engine lasted till the automatic died 18 months later...... ok it was burning oil at a alarming rate but nugold was cheap......if your a Canadian Tire shopper from that time you know it ...... a recycled engine oil.
So it was time to rebuilt a engine ,first one a B20 Volvo 4 cylinder .30 over & a Volvo Rally sport K cam from the factory sport catalogue .....Yes Volvo had a performance parts catalogue I spent a small fortune on that engine .
But what to do for a transmission ??? drop in a 4 speed ....very simple swap all the required holes , nuts , etc where build in from the factory regardless what the factory installed . And at the time parts cars where everywhere. with twin SU carbs that car ran like a raped ape.
well time for paint , I swear this is true there was a shop called sacsons ( spelling ?? ) on Eglinton Ave east at Bellamy that would supply the paint and spray your car for a $100 ,,,I swear it's true.....Of course all body prep ,masking was up to you if you forgot to mask your front windshield....they sprayed it.
So that car was great for the next 3 years with constant up grades to leather seats , amps , speakers ...etc. Till the day the rear trailing arms decided to come into the interior......... What to do ?? strip it and bolt everything on a 74 volvo 145 wagon but that's a another story.

thanks for reading

Dave

 

[King_V]

1980 Honda Civic DX hatchback with the Hondamatic trans... for those who aren't familiar, it was a 2-speed semi-automatic. You would manually shift between 1 and 2, depending on what you needed, but there was no clutch. Hand-me-down from my dad when I got my license.

It was actually surprisingly zippy for what was an economy car, due to its weight. Quarters were rusting a little around the wheels, and it tended to warp brake rotors pretty easily. Manual steering, power brakes, no AC, and whopping 155R12 tires. Yes, 12 inch optional sport rims.

I had no idea what I was doing when it came to cars at the time. And, while it was rated to have no more than about 600 pounds load, I one time drove it with myself and a (large) friend in the front seats, two small guys and two large guys in the back, and one person in the hatchback area. Best I can estimate, we had around 1100-1200 pounds worth of people in there... and I think the car only weighed 1700-1800 pounds.

It seemed to handle it reasonably well, but it's not something I ever did again.

 

[ssn696]

Prom wagon. No comments on the concert piano outfit, I heard 'em all already. That car was really useful. It could haul 10 sheets of 3/4" plywood or about 50 2x4 studs to my various high school carpentry jobs. Scared the crap out of my prom date on old Smithbridge road - definitely four tire chips when the car landed.
One summer I was driving back from a construction project on Cape Cod, stuck in traffic on a Friday afternoon. Loud noise and water boiling out through the gaps in the hood. Old guy pulled over and took pity on me. Once the car cooled off, he helped me pull the thermostat out - the diagnosis was that it broke, sprung shut, and the steam pressure in the engine lifted the pressure cap on the radiator - all the water was the coolant boiling out of the overflow tank. Chucked the T-stat and actually used chewing gum as a temporary gasket after scraping the remains of the old gasket off the water outlet by rubbing it on the pavement. That Rube Goldberg got me the 150 miles home until I could fix it properly over the weekend.

 

[axisg]

82 Pontiac Acadian. 4 speed standard and 2 hamsters on a wheel. 3rd generation hand-me-down but I was in high school and didn't have to take the bus anymore so I didn't care. A major pain to drive in winter on account of the pedals being so close, my boots would always catch the brake when I pushed the clutch. Couldn't go over 90 (km/h) if I had 4 people in the car. Drove it for a couple of years before those poor hamsters finally gave it up. I still have it sitting out back, every so often I consider putting some new hamsters in (after a rigorous dose of steroids, of course)

Those Chevette / Acadians were tough little cars. With the 4 speed you could actually chirp the tries from a takeoff and they lasted for what seemed to be forever .

 

[Rick_B_86]

Those Chevette / Acadians were tough little cars. With the 4 speed you could actually chirp the tries from a takeoff and they lasted for what seemed to be forever .

Yup. She had over 300Km when the engine finally crapped. This was 2003-4ish, so finding parts was already getting pretty scarce.