Friday, September 02, 2011

Your Turn

After that story I posted earlier, we have to talk about your first car. We can also talk about your first road trip. You know, the one you never told your parents about. Or at least not all the details.


31 comments:

  1. 1991 red Volkswagen Fox that I bought in 1997 for $2,500 and drove for three years before I rear-ended a Japanese tour bus when I braked in snow, but slid into anyway. My first and ONLY car so far. I miss that car. It had a moon roof.

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  2. 2003 Volkswagen Jetta. It had dark blue paint and cream leather interior. I still miss that car. I bought it, I paid for it, and then some dumb bitch ran through a red light and t-boned me in the intersection.

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  3. My current car is my first car - I'm 36 years old and got my driver's license only about a year ago. My car is a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire, it has like a million miles on it and cost me $500 (plus the cost of stuff I've had replaced and fixed over the past few months). It has a mystery dent in the passenger side door (it appeared one day, I can only assume someone backed into it in a parking lot or something and decided to split), a new dent on the driver's side front part from my very fist ever car accident (not my fault). It has hail damage and lots of scratches and weird marks - it looks like a piece of shit but it runs really well, never had a problem starting it even in the bitter Alberta winter. I love my car with all my heart and argue with myself every day as to when it is actually necessary to drive (P.S. I don't drive every day).

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  4. In Massachusetts, when I got my license in 2001, you could get it at 16 1/2 at the earliest, but you couldn't drive with any passengers under 21 unless they were your sibling (odd, I know).

    First drive, I grabbed two of my friends from work and we drove up...to Lowell. Industrial city, "bad" city to us suburban kids. We blasted rap and thought we were the badassest badasses who ever badassed.

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  5. Oh Maja, how jealous I am of thee. You see, my first car was a 98 Clio 1.2 and it departed this life on Tuesday past. A heap of crap it was under the bonnet, but on the outside it looked like a right wee racer. It died on me when I went to start it after work, bad times, so queue me being stranded 30 miles from home while bickering on the phone with the insurance people who, because it was out-of-hours, would only bring me to a mechanic in the local area I was stranded in or to their depot, which was also nowhere near where I live either. Either way, this would be screwing me out of £££. I am now in the process of complaining to both my broker and insurance policy writer. I thought I'd love my first wee car forever; but after this week, not so much. Oh and I passed my test a year ago tomorrow, that means I can FINALLY drive without 'R' plates - but have no car to drive!!Dammit!!!

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  6. A 1961 Blue Dodge Dart - we were born the same year. It was really owned by the little old lady down the street. She drove to church once a week and must have hit something everytime she took it out. She died and her son gave me the car - interior showroom perfect, exterior one ding after another. 17 years old and 17,000 miles on it. It had a vent you could open to let air in - right between my knees. It would blow my skirt up in the air.

    Drove the car, named Granny, to FL 3X's and never told the 'rents. We were going to visit random relatives of friends that didn't exist.

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  7. My first car was a hand-me-down from my Mom. A 1976 4-door pee-yellow Chevrolet Malibu sedan. We called it The Lemon. It was such a Mom-car, but it got me from Point A to B and I was happy :) My first road trip was to see KC and the Sunshine Band in concert when I was supposed to be grounded... wow, that was a long time ago. Anyway, it was really a nerdy car, but it was wheels - that's all that counted. My parents made up for it when I graduated college and they handed me the keys to a brand new, 1984 dark brown Mazda RX-7. (they also handed me the payment book!) Now THOSE were wheels!

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  8. Didn't we do this already this year?

    1973 Newport. 19 feet of awesome. The last pis is like mine: http://www.penn.com/~mweimer/chrysler.html

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  9. NYC here. Never owned a car.

    Road trip was a flight -- a friend's boss had a private pilot's license and was going to be in my college town for business. He gave me a lift home even though my mother had "forbidden" me from flying with him. Saved me $50 and a 6 hour trip.

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  10. '85 Powder Blue Ford Taurus. I hated it. Wish I had a cool car. I eventually bought an '88 Ford Ranger and was in heaven. I really wanted a truck but had no need for one. I still kind of miss it.

    My first serious road trip was for my delayed honeymoon. For our first anniversary we drove to Las Vegas and followed the old Route 66 path from Illinois to Arizona. It was an awesome trip with stops at the Grand Canyon and drives through Utah and Colorado on the way home. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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  11. I loved my light blue opel Kadet. I'm not sure the year as I got it (very) used in 1976. I'm sure it was WWII surplus but that little car would not die! My next car was an Opel Manta (coincidence - no particular loyalty to Opel). It was cute and sporty looking and I made a fortune on it because it kept getting hit but never required repairs to keep running. I eventually sold it to my litle brother who finally killed it.

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  12. First car was one I bought myself. A Geo Metro that was like riding a go-cart.

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  13. 1985 Ford Escort. Sold it to pay for my honeymoon. Yes, it was worth it. My first road trip was in a Yugo! Ah, memories...

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  14. I got my license in the mid 70's - the best muscle car years. Oh how I coaxed & begged for a Chevy Nova from my parents. A used 1 would be fine. How cool I would be with my own muscle car.. sigh.

    Imagine the joy on my birthday when sitting under a big red bow in the driveway was a used 4dr, apple green Chevy Nova. Oh the horror!!! My dream of being cool absolutely shattered. I remained a virgin all through high school & I know it was that cars fault! (sob) (sniff).

    Life lesson #1 -
    BE SPECIFIC WHEN YOU ASK FOR SOMETHING!!!!!

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  15. My first car was a 1964 Mercedes Benz 220 SEb black 4 Sedan. Purchased from a cousins estate for $1000 in fall of '72 or early winter of 73.

    Sold in 74 for little more than scrap when the transmission died.

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  16. @thisoldbroad - my parents' first car was a Chevy Nova - blue with a half-black roof. I think they were gifted it from my grandparents in the late 70s. I have such fond memories of that car!

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  17. 64 Chevy Chevelle. Had no first gear, ate oil, but it was a great little car.

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  18. I inherited my mom's neon blue Datsun B210 sometime around 1980 and drove the hell out of it around our tiny little town across the lake from New Orleans. My BF's dad wouldn't let her get her license till she was 18, so I let her drive my car sometimes. And sometimes I would steer while she worked the pedals or vice versa. And we drove cocktailed quite a bit (we were in Southeast Louisiana in the early 80s - if you were old enough to see over the bar, they would serve you.) We should be dead - but we had a lot of fun.

    Cut school and took the Datsun with another friend to Gulfport Mississippi one day. Drank on the beach all afternoon. Coming back, we missed a turn off the highway and ended up going home to Mandeville through New Orleans - which is kind of like going from Houston to Dallas via Austin, or LA to San Diego via Palm Springs. We were so freaked out.

    Good times, good times.

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  19. My first car was an AMC Hornet woody wagon. It had bungy cords holding the rear hatch on, and the drivers door lifted right out of the hinge for easy summer driving! (my boyfriend actually did the Fred Flintstone trying to stop it one day when it stalled and he lost the power brakes...true story)
    We gave it away to some kid down the road, and he didn't get 3 miles before the battery blew up and punched a dent right into the hood! Aaa....good times....

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  20. A hand-me-down 92 Ford Taurus SHO. It was massive and a total car nerd magnet. On my first trip home from college it died :(

    Not sure about the first road trip, but the one no one knows about was me and my best friend sneaking out of our Howard Johnson in the middle of nowhere during a rugby trip with some Miami U boys, crossing into Michigan and going to Ann Arbor to get plastered. Good times.

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  21. First car was a Lexus SC430. I'm the youngest of 5 and the only girl, so I was def spoiled growing up. I look back & am like my parents got a 15 year old a little convertible? My daughter will be in a tank!!

    And first secret road trip was New Orleans when we were 17. We thought we had seen the world bc we lived inside the loop of Houston. No ma'am. We only lasted one night & turned our buts back around at 9 am the next day. We always used to sneak up to College Station to to try to sneak into North Gate. It's memories like these that scare the crap out of me now that I have a 3 year old daughter!

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  22. Anonymous9:08 PM

    So many cars over the years. I learned to drive in a '53 Chevy and in 1960 bought a '56 Chevy. Some of my favorites have been the various VW bugs, mostly red, I loved every one of them...an MG convertible that was fun to drive when I could wrench the steering wheel out of the hands of my teenage son...1962 when we bought a '63 Chevy, brand new, and that was the first year that directional lights were amber colored so everyone KNEW it was a new car...

    New cars coming out used to be a big big deal. They were hidden from the public until the day they were first shown at the dealers, usually in September. The dealers threw huge parties and everyone would go, they had bands playing, free food, free gifts. The Chevy dealers always gave out bottles of Wind Song perfume.

    I hadn't even owned a car for years, using the buses, but when my COPD exacerbated the first of the year and I was left with 36% lung capacity, running after a bus became less feasible and I bought a used 2003 Vibe and am just delighted with it.

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  23. My first car was an ancient Dodge Dart -- A granny car for sure, but at least it got [slowly] around.

    High school road trips began when basketball season started; football games were too important to miss [SEC values were inculcated early].

    We'd go to NOLA from the MS Gulf coast. As somebody mentioned before, as long as you could get the money over the bar top, you could drink all you could pay for. On the way home, we'd drive slower and slower until we heard the game's score on the radio so we'd know whether to show up at home elated or bummed out.

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  24. Oh, hell, i might as well be honest. We only drove slower to get the score if nobody had any liquor. We were all Episcopalians and all carried flasks. If anybody had some left over from the drive to NOLA, we'd park and pass it around until we got the score and the flasks were empty.

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  25. And since i'm being so damned honest, i might as well say that since we were all Episcopalians, so were all of our parents, and they undoubtedly knew what was going on. Hence, the fear parents have when their children are out and about.

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  26. My first car was a 91 Honda Civic hatchback, that we nicknamed the 'Black Plague'. No air and manual windows, it was broken into three times, had a wheel fall off while I was driving, and finally died a sad, pathetic death on the off-ramp to my dad's house after moving home (timing belt went and took out the engine).

    Good times :)

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  27. LOL Carla!
    My first car - 1967 VW Bug. You couldn't have the heat and the windshield wipers on at the same time. Kind of a bummer during snowstorms, and I grew up in NY State.

    1st road trip - to play in a music festival in Vermont. I was about 17 or 18. Brought my best friend along. I was doing fine, then hit a really bad note and felt completely humiliated! We went out and got drunk afterwards and ended up in the middle of effing nowhere at these guys' filthy house. Ugh! Talk about bad choices! We drove home with my friend vomiting out the window the whole time. Turns out she was preggers from her hometown boyfriend. Man, not a great trip!

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  28. 1991 tan Honda Accord named Rhonda. She played mixed tapes beautifully!

    I can't think of any road trips in high school, so I'll go with the most memorable one from Clemson, SC to NOLA where my extremely generous (& naive) father let us stay in a condo he had rented for the racing season. He left to go out of town & let 4 college kids stay at his place! During Mardi Gras. Good ole dad. Anyway, it was one hell of a drive!

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  31. Elspeth - that's so funny. My folks were Texas Baptists. They treated our years in Mandeville (across the lake from New Orleans) like Sarah and Abraham's sojourn in Egypt -- all those Catholic Cajuns with the drinkin' and the partyin' and the having a good old time whenever they felt like it - Mom's always been convinced we wouldn't have been drinking in high school if we'd still been in Houston.

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