I bought my first car in January 2000, my 81 malibu. I can't say that I loved the car imediatly, I even hated it for a short while. After the first nine months I owned it, I was ready to get rid of it, the stock 229 barely ran, was gutless when it did run, had 2 too many doors, was built in the 80's, was green, had green interior, and was a chevy. I parked it in favor of a 79 cutlass with a 350 olds, for some reason that car had more appeal to me even though it was a complete rot box (not just because of the V8 either). The short of it, 2 months later, I was changing the oil in the rot box, and drain plug stripped
, so my only option was to rob the one out of the bu, as I crawled under the car I realized how nice it really was. So the following spring (2001) I combined my best parts, olds 350 with th350 trans, 7.5 with 3.08's, into the 4dr malibu. Still not what I wanted but, it got me around, and looked fairly decent. Car only lasted a couple months before that engine gave up, me being a dumbass didn't help it any, lol. The replacement engine, a worn out 350 olds that lasted another couple of months....Parked it for the winter. Spring hits, I find an engine for $500 with 3000 miles on rebuild, perfect.....I learned how to rebuild transmissions (my other car swallowed my malibu's) so I had no choice but to learn. Drove the car another couple of months (literally) and hit a deer, well it actually hit me, took out my LH fender, windshield, dash board, and buckled my roof. I almost gave up on it at that point, I yanked my drivetrain back out and put it in my 85 cutlass. Bu sat for two years, til I decided to put it back together, drove it around half in primer for a year thought about dumping it for something else, finished the primer (dark gray). Decided to take it to a fairly large car show to try to sell it in 2005, had the sign in the trunk, but couldn't bring myself to put it in the window........I was hooked, I don't know why, but thing grew on me......It's been through a couple transmissions, and couple rearends since then, and I finally gave it a paint job in fall of 2008. It wasn't love at first but I guess one could say it is now, it's the only vehicle I have had that no matter how much bullshit it went through or how much it gave me, I just couldn't part with it.