What was your first car ? Do you still have it ?

[Learpilot]

My first car was and still is my 1936 Dodge Coupe. I got it November 29 1965 or 43 years ago.  I drove it to high school everyday until in entered the Air Force in 1968 (remember the DRAFT). Got back home in 1972 and started a 4 year rebuild. Well after 43 years I am not through. We build the best as we can afford and improve as we get the MONEY and time.

Thanks for all stories.
Rick

[rumrumm]

My first car was a 1959 Impala 2 dr HT. I don't have it anymore, but I wish I did. It started out white with red interior, 283, PG, and it ended up 1968 GTO green with black interior, 327 Corvette engine with dual quads, manual tranny (couldn't afford a 4 speed back in 1967) and a set of 4.11 gears. It taught me a lot about working on cars because I did all the work myself under the supervision of a speed shop owner who took me under his wing. When I sold the car I kept the engine, and it was used to power my first street rod years later.

[HotRodLadyCrusr]

My first car was a '68 Camaro convertible that I bought with my own babysitting money at the age of 16.  It was in rough shape bodywise.  Drove it for a couple of years then sold it and bought a '69 Firebird convertible which was completely redone.  It's been a string of hot rod convertibles ever since.

[wayne petty]

my first car of my own was a 66 gto...  it was taken apart when i got it...  the rear end diff blown out and laying on the ground...   the owner decided that since the rear end was apart... he should do a valve job also..  seems it had 15 bent valves... which was more that he had budgeted for... so the car became mine..

i put it all back together...    and blew it up in a few months...  rebuilt the motor.....   blew it again...    finally figured out what i was doing wrong. and had fun fun fun...  last time i ever used aluminum rod and main bearings.

i drove it everywhere..     even though i sold the car back in 85.. i still have dreams of driving that car....    i even swapped in a muncie... and a 12 bolt posi with 4:11's   then somebody gave me a 402 rat...  that went in...  then the real fun started..     the rat ended up with a 290d .575 lift cam...  so it was lumpy... and the 2-1/8 primary headers were really too loud..  

everybody who ever drove in that car still remembers it...

my sister gave me the best complement...   she and dad flew to new orleans..   she had never flown before....  and was afraid... until the dc10 turned onto the runway... and the pilot released the brakes..    as the plane pushed her back farther and farther into her seat... she said she felt calmed...  comfortable... then she realized... it was just like riding in waynes gto...   it just kept pushing you back harder and harder as the car went faster and faster..      there was also the heads whipping backwards as i changed gears...     oh... and i only had one nut holding on the terror grip on the dashboard above the glove box...  

i still kick my self for selling that car...

i learned a ton on how to properly fix cars keeping that one going...

i actually had to put in a second rat motor... i let a friend drive it at the drag strip i worked at...   they did an 8,000 rpm burn out for the entire 1/8 mile... with the rat...     when i took it home... i barely made it...  pulled it apart...  and found a crack in the lifter valley between the number 3 cylinder all the way to the number 4 cylinder area ... so when i would rev it... oil would squirt into the cooling system...  and when i shut it off... water would leak into the oil pan...

it was black with dusty pink front fenders... i never got around to painting them... i did loose the hood one day...   i never got around to putting the hinges back on...  just lift the hood off and set it aside...   it was a steel hood...  i got through second gear and seemed like i blinked...  then i could see the flex fan spinning and the rest of the motor... i then thought wait... wheres my hood...    the camaro behind my was skidding sideways and still ran it over after it fell...   another friend behind me said it went way over 50 feet straight up and then back down...

[Deuce]

Not me ... I tore up too much stuff  
I rolled my first car.

But my younger brother learned from my actions. He got a 1966 GTO ( first car ) in 1972. Nice original one owner GTO. It had A/C also ( a good thing to have in the Hot, Humid South Carolina low country ). He installed the rims/tires shown in the photo but basically just washed, waxed and did maintenance on the GTO.

As time when on and his finances improved he bought other cars ... for everyday drivers but kept the GTO. Finally the transmission died and he parked the GTO ... to restore it to it's former glory.

But life has a way of changing your plans. Marriage, children, divorce and career changes all came along and delayed the restoration. The GTO sat in my fathers building for many, many years. My brother and I recently moved the GTO closer to my brothers house where he still has plans to restore it. Now with the other delays out of the way and a new house just finished ... he spoke with a restoration shop recently and got a estimate on the restoration. The shop is booked full now ... and with the economy looking like it does ... the GTO is waiting patiently to be redone ... But he still has the GTO ... 36 years later

[348tripower]

This will make ya cry :cry:
1965 Chevelle SS Convertable. 283 2 speed automatic. Manual everything.  It was dark green with a Black top and interior and after 3 years I had it painted Corvette Lemans Blue.  
Now, I sold that car for 700 bucks. That gave me the down payment for a 1970 Chevelle SS hardtop. 396 4 speed 4:11 gears. Red with Black stripes and a Saddle Tan interior. That car was the ACTUAL car they photographed for the brochure. Had to get something more user friendly for the new wife and baby so I traded it. :cry:
Don

[Entoman]

my first car was a 1963 2 door belair.  283 powerpack rochester square bore 4bbl carb, Air conditioned with a powerglide tranny.  I should be shot for all the places I took that car.  It was built like a tank, and probably saved my life when I wrecked it back in 1979.  It hydroplaned due to poor tires, spun twice in the road and then went into the ditch.  A lighter car probably would've flipped.  Bent the frame, messed up a fender.  Pulled it out off the tire with a sledge. and drove it for another 6 months.  I still have the car, but it will probably never be resurected.  The replacement car was a 67 camaro that I still keep in the garage.

[GPster]

You guys have a higher grade of story than I do. Back in the '60 in New Jersey you had to pay for someone to come and pick up a junk car. So people had been giving me there junk since I was 12 and I'd work on them and turn them into a $50.00 runner and my father would sell them (because I didn't have a license and they couldn't be in my name). That realm covered a '53 Buick, '51 Chevy, '47 Buick, '57 Ford 4 dr sedan (that I got without a motor and put a 352 in that was out of a police inpound). When I got my drivers license my father got a work car and gave me the keys to the family '59 Rambler station wagon and said "now you can drive your mother wherever she wants to go". The 196 cu. in. six in it would free-rev to 7,500 RPM so I could double-clutch it into 1st coming down the hill to my HS and do a drift into the school driveway. That car would do 67 mph in second gear but it had a top speed of 71mph. I was working in the auto department of a discount store my senior year and the first thing I did when that car became my resposibility was change the oil to the best oil that department sold. Unfortunately the car had always been run on non-detergent oil so it started the thing burning oil. It could get as high as 20 mpg on gas but it was pushing it to get 20 miles to a quart of oil. But because it cost money to junk a car I had one more shot. A friend worked at a gas station (only pumping gas) and the worker he replaced sold him a project that he had parked at the station. My friend only worked there a little while and when he quit the owner told him get that car out of there or his final check would be spent  getting the junk yard to come and haul it away. Rather than lose $25.00 he gained $25.00 buy selling it to me. It was a '57 Plymouth convertable (closer to a roadster by the condition of the top). The first gas jockey had put a 392 Hemi in it (supposedly out of an Imperial with 130,000 miles on it. It was standard shift with probably the 6 cyl, tranny that was blown. The time it spent on the back of the lot had caused the carb and the shifter to have vanished but what was left was mine. Went to a junkyard and bought 2 trannys out of the core pile and found enough pieces to make one. $5.00 scored me a shifter from someone that thought he was fast enough to need a Hurst and $15.00 scored me a carb that had to be hot. The numbers off of it identified it as an AFB series E wich was supposed to be one of the carb off a dual quad 426 Hemi. Whoever had started putting this thing together must have emptied his wallet buying a flywheel for this set-up as it was a Schiefer (sp?) and then never found a starter to do it justice. Now I need to place the proper time span and time limit on this experience. I was soon to graduate from HS and had already been accepted to a college that I'd leave home to go to.  New Jersey was a state with vehicle inspection so when you put plates on a vehicle it had to appear at inspection. If it failed (and I knew it would) you got a PINK notice to fasten on your windshield and you had 30 days to repair it so it would pass. After that it was in volation. Back to the story. You've heard about finding cars in a chicken coupe, well the only place I could hide this thing at the start (probably April '66) was at the edge of the woods behind a chicken farm(?). A long way from electricity I figured out what adapter I would need to mount that carb and did that job. Figured out what holes and slots and notches of the Ansen shifter kit I needed to use to make the shifter work. By then my parents knew something was going on, Maybe it was the smell of working so close to chicken .... . Then got the battery charged to TRY to start it. First un-planned problem. The starter was toast and I really had no idea what pieces had been used. Again to the junkyard and starter cores. The body of my starter lookes a lot like a 6V 6 cyl Mopar starter that they had a lot of. The nose and the Bendix was different but I used two to make one before. The 12V nose fit the 6V windings case but there was one big problem. The 6V armature had a 5/8" shaft but the 12V starter's nose had a 1/2" bushing and the Bendix needed to be on a 1/2" shaft. My HS had a shop but only a wood shop. Because I knew the shop teacher pretty well and because some of his students had already finished their projects for their grades the teacher took on the job of turning down one end of the 6 V armature. They must have done it in the wood lathe with files but it turned out. I put the starter together and it worked. It worked so well that sometimes 12v driving that Bendix on the 6V starter would drive the steel ring gear off that aluminum flywheel. That big carb and my foot really kept that little 5/16" fuel line under a strain as this vehicle was prone to vapor lock and because my mother didn't want any car junk laying around the house the 2 core transmissions stayed in its' trunk. That of course added to the '60s "Gasser" mystque with the vehicle nose higher in the air than the trunk and no front bumper.The weight of the engine never presented a problem but the width of the engine must have put a bind on the clutch linkage because the pedal would catch momentarily part way up. It was real handy when driving (racing?) as you could take off and not floor it and hit the secondaries on the carb til you heard the cluthch pedal pop clear up. I raced a '57 Chevy one night in the parking lot of work one night after we closed. He was still standing still spinning his tires while I was about 300 foot away at the other side of the parking lot. Of course it didn't always work that well. On time the pedal worked correctly and it took first and second gear out of the tranny and cost me a cluster gear. That was the only part I didn't have a spare in the truck of. I drove in high gear only and no backing to park for a week til a $12.00 J C Whitney cluster gear arrived. I was on the volunteer fire department and worked for the city road dept. that summer along with my discount store evening job and caddying on Saturday, Although the car was fun it's 30 days was running out. So to be the third person to avoid the $25.00 haul it away fee I donated the car to the fire department for practise fire fighting. It wasn't to be a total end because someone had given my father a '57 Chrysler 2 dr hardtop. It had a Poly engine in it and someone had pulled the heads to do a valve job and decided against it. It was parked in a safe place and could stay until I got back from college for next summer.  So I used the city's back-hoe to pull the Hemi out of the plymouth in the impound lot. I didn't have a truck and this was all "YOUR PROBLEM" so I put the engine on a borrowed 4 wheel cart and pulled it about 1/2 mile on the sidewalk to my parent's house. I put it against one corner of the house and put a tarp over it so it would be covered and not look like a pile of old car parts and be safe til next summer. That tarped over motor kept that corner of the house so much warmer that my father decided to investigate. Termite damage had gutted that wall so the engine was moved out of the way. The tarp must have blown off and my mother told me that my little brother had filled every opening (intake manifold) with sand. I flunked my first year of college and decided that Ohio was a friendlier place to live than the New York Metropolitan Area so I never went home. I figure my father made a present of that Chrysler and 765# lump of cast iron to someone and that '59 Rambler sat at the side of the house for a couple of years with everyone being told it was my car and I was going to fix it when I got home. After that first car I sayed away from it for awhile. Other than a '60 Corvair with a 15" rear tire rake. I didn't get into anything seriously until about'72 when I built a '53 Studebaker with a De Soto Hemi, Straight front axel and flip front end. That was sold and vanished. Looking at what I have now and the number of comments I make here I must spend more time talking about it. GPster

[enjenjo]

My first car was a 48 Plymouth coupe. It was a present from my dad for my 14th birthday. It ran, but badly, and I wanted a hot rod, so I worked for a mechanic down the street for a few weeks to get a 50 Cadillac engine and trans. Being a dumb kid, I didn't know it wasn't supposed to fit, so I managed to get it in. my uncle welded in motor mounts, and a driveshaft, and I scrounged enough parts at my grand dad's junk yard to get it running. At that point I found out my dad never figured it would run again, so he never got the title. So I traded it to another of my uncles for a 41 Ford pickup. He used the Plymouth on his farm for several years to haul seed and fertilizer, until one spring it wouldn't start, he pushed it out of the way behind the barn, and it sat there until he passed away. His son asked me if I wanted it, but by then it had been setting for 25 years or so, and was too rusty to do any thing with, so it was scrapped. The 41 pickup was another story.

[Crosley.In.AZ]

1959 Biscayne 4 door , 235 chevy 6 , 3 on the tree.

I helped build the engine for the car since the car was towed to the house by some friends mom & dad bought the  car from.

Went from there to a 1965 Chevelle deluxe 300 4 door car, 230 chevy 6 with power glide.

1962 Biscayne 2 door car.  4 speed , 302 cid motor  I built with a huge camshaft :Sig Erson 990C tore the engine up , sold the car.

1959 BMW Isetta , 1 door car.  450cc Honda engine transplant... much faster then

1971 Honda SL 350 motorcycle


Then came the 1968 Chevelle SS 396 car... much faster than previous cars

[tomslik]

58 ford4dr fairlane, 332/2 speed auto.
ran low 18's.
then came a 66 fairlane gt convertable
more fun but went thru 9 9" diffs....
not a typo,9 of 'em.
then came a 64 1/2 mustang 289/4speed
and THEN walking shoes;)

well, that was my ford days, anyway...

and no, i no longer own any of 'em...
the 66 i wouldn't mind back but i heard it was wrapped around a phone pole....

[kb426]

57 Ford 4 door. 312 and auto. The engine was broke and after a couple of tries, I bought a good 272 and put the 312 intake, carb and exhaust on it. Not too much power but better than walking. I had no love for 4 doors then or now. I've had several keepers since then but never enough money to do so. Even the 32 will only be here until someone wants it worse than me. Then the next project will begin.

[RottenRodney]

Oh, I juss cain't resist this kind o' thang...

Ordinary kids git a sandbox, or maybe a swangset to play with in the back yard, but not me. My back yard was a junk yard, so I had a '47 Crosley Wagon to play with.



That ain't me doin' the modelin' in the pitcher though. It's my cute, cuddly little deamon-seed son, and dag-nabbit, he's all growed up now too.

The Crosley is still in the family -- hell it'll always be family. Here's an abbrevieated version of an elongated story: My grandfather owned and opperated the Crosley dealership in town. He sold this one new (to my great uncle Bill), and later on took it back as a trade-in (with a rod out the side of the sheetmetal block) on another. It then became my toy. More years than I can recollect 'ave passed since that time, but juss a few years ago, my dear ol' dad decided I wasn't doin' nuthin' with it, so he took it upon himself to give it a proper restoration -- you'd poop! It's farkin' beautiful now. The real kicker is; Uncle Bill (the original owner) got to take it for a spin recently; juss before he . . . well, I miss him now.

RR

[UGLY OLDS]

1952 Ford business coupe..( no back seat-just a wood floor & a rubber mat) ...286" of rompin-stompin underhead Ford boiler...Isky cam..Navarro Heads...Relieved with a 1/4" drill & grinding stones..( LOTS of grinding stones) ..4 stromberg 97 "calibrated leakers" ..(Calling them carburetors would be an injustice..)      Mallory dual point dist...

Like tomslik my car broke ...Often...VERY often ...12 ( No bs..12)  3-speed transmissions in 9 months...Put a cluster out the bottom of a case during a 1-2 power shift one night...
Found a guy that liked it lots more than me ...( Read $$$)

Bought & built the first of a string of '63 Ford Galaxies ( All big block) that broke ...Often..VERY often... I put the pinion gear out the front of a nodular iron "N" case 9" one night again hitting 2nd gear..( lets see..428" cu in ..4400lb car...power shifting ...NOT... )

65 falcon "street runner " best street $$$$ I ever owned...A variety of hot & hotter small blocks ..it too broke ..often..snapped an output shaft in a t-10 trans during an "exibition of speed" as the nice officer said....
There was soooo many more ............................

[reborn55]

Dad gave me his 54 Chevy, 4 door sedan, Corvette 6 with 3 speed.  Had the car for a few months, then busted a couple of rings racing a 352 Ford down the Interstate.  Ran it out of oil and locked it up--on to the junk yard.  Did out run the Ford though.