Your first car? / Car history?

First car (which I still own) is a 1974 Karmann Ghia droptop, pictured here… You do NOT want to see the right front fender…


My current ride is Isis, the obligatory red, 1990 BMW 325IS with a 1989 motor. Sat for a couple years before I picked her up, so some of the decaying rubber has/is being replaced including the drive shaft. Man is it fun to hop into after a long day at a bottom-of-the-barrel design job.

How can anyone not read your post and not think that getting rid of that daytona was the worst move ever!! :open_mouth: you should have found a crappier pic of that car, thats the sweetest pic of a daytona i have ever seen!

do you have any pics of the impala with the tiny tires? that still comes up in conversation every now and then…

i need to work on my own version of this thread.

Okay so I am the same as Lew…For some reason I cannot find pictures of my car history. So every pic here is from the internet accept for the last one which is my current car.

It all started with a 89 Jeep Cherokee. Took a few times to get it to pass inspection for emissions, but I was a great high school ride.

The first car I contributed money (I paid half) was a 92 Honda prelude. The jeep started to die when it came time to go off the college and given the I was going to school in Savannah and lived in NJ, my parents started to get nervous that I would end up on the side of 95 on the way down. Looked exactly like the one in this picture. Even the wheels were the same. I loved this car and it was my baby. I did a few mods and started to think that I was the man. :wink: I decide one day my sophomore year that it would be a good idea to drag race a few civics in downtown and got caught by the cops. :frowning: That was a hard phone call back to mom and dad and when I got home that summer Mom made me sell it. I was crushed.

I then used that money to buy a 98 toyota tacoma off my father. The truck had been in the family for a couple years and I drove it for almost ten years. Another great car and still to this day I miss it. I got rid of it because it was dying, and on its last leg, but also Toyota recalled them because of improper rust protection on the frames. They bought the truck back from me for 150% of KBB excellent value!! Could not pas that up.

From there I needed to get back in a quick car. I have always wanted a WRX and thought this is my time. I have had two, bot 08’s. One tangled with a Jeep in an intersection and the Jeep won, the other (the blue one) is my current ride. Its fast, handles like a dream, but I have grown up a bit now and try to stay out of trouble.
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Well, I’ve only had one car so my list is going to be fairly short.

Parents got me this for me when I turned 16. Has been with me all through high school, college, and internships. While it is a horrible gas guzzler (12-14mpg) it does help when your moving across the country every 3 months. Torn about getting rid of it since it is paid off. Probably will have it until it dies.

2004 Dodge Durango

I’ve never bought my own car. I had several primary cars when I lived in Palo Alto during high school.

Used the E320 (Dad’s mid-life crisis purchase) for my driving test in Santa Clara. Very heavy car. Always felt weird driving it.

The family car. My go-to car whenever I go home to the bay (having In-n-out withdrawals now). Old car that’s been through a bajillion family trips to Tahoe.

My darling in junior and senior year. Her name is Hermione (the 7th book came out the time we bought her). Awesome, awesome, awesome car. Great mileage, light, compact. Very spacey inside.

… but I have grown up a bit now and try to stay out of trouble.

Trouble, like my old Meyers Manx or a Mercedes 300SL (I should be so inconvenienced); harder to get out of, than into …

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'77 Dodge Aspen. First Car. My dad bought it for $500 from a guy that used it for towing. V8, RWD. Engine ran like butta, AC was the best I’ve ever experienced in a car. A few minor faults: the turn signal lever got lose and eventually would spontaneously trigger the horn. One night I was coming home from work around midnight and it had a nice long 30 second honk before I could get it to stop. Also, the driver side window wouldn’t roll down all the way. Good car to promote humility.
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'88 Nova. My college car. $500 also. Rebadged corolla, but the body has much nicer proportions IMO. I especially like the shape of the rear trunk. Simple, minimal interior. I miss minimal, open interiors. I guess having 15 airbags protect me is nice, but I like to see out the windows as well. Finally died when the auto transmission did. Engine would have run forever.


Current Car. Again, simple minimal aesthetics. A friendly box with a soft wrapping shoulder. I particularly like the composition of the back. Nimble 4WD great for college road trips between Oregon, Utah, and Arizona. The current and next gen CR-V are dead to me, lost to the plague of bulbous crossovers and more of a volvo knockoff than a CR-V.

Mini Cooper (with Carburator!)

Smart Roadster Brabus

For more info on the Smart Roadster Brabus :wink:

I really miss those cars!!!

Nice Designez!

bitter chocolate nissan cube, baby :sunglasses:

1986 Volvo Wagon. This thing was a tank. It lasted over 250,000 miles.

That’s what I hear. The only one my family ever had was a disaster, mainly electrical system problems. An 84 I think. We gave it to some missionaries. After that it reportedly ran great! Guess it just wasn’t our car.

This thing was a tank.

I viewed the earlier Volvos, in general, more as hazards to navigation.

Perhaps better suited to more stationary domestic duties…

Tell me about it… I had to parallel park that bad boy during my driver’s license test.

Another fun fact: the previous owner of the car was so obese that the driver’s seat was half collapsed.

The 240 is a great car Lew! It won the European Touring Car Championship twice:

RWD and a surprisingly light chassis. The only let down is the solid rear axle, but honestly, it didn’t take that much away. The engine cases have a very high nickel content, so they are very reliable. The surprising thing is how light the car is considering how massive the suspension components are (2850 lbs and my 2002 Focus is about 3000 lbs). The turbos were way ahead of their time too.

I have yet to buy my first car, but here’s what I’ve driven so far.
1994 Toyota Tercel - Mostly my High School car, but I drove it occasionally for the first year and a half of college - You know how you always hear about how these cars last forever and such… well I ruined the engine on it at about 125,000 miles. Then my mom decided to put a replacement engine in it, while I hated the car (and it got sold this summer), and it wasn’t driven more than 10,000 miles after.

Second and current car is a pearl white 2002 Dodge Stratus R/T coupe. I really love the car and am an avid forum-member. It’s mechanically the same as the 2001-2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse and Galant. I’ve done a few things to it such as lower it, interior lighting (gauges and dials, no F&F stuff), and some other minor aesthetics.
One of my favorite photos of my Stratus during a meet, was near the Tail of the Dragon (US 129) on the Tennessee, North Carolina border.

My first car was an Acura Vigor. I really loved it, it simply has an amazing Acura parts engine performance… How much I miss that car of mine.

I’m about to drag this thread down with my car history. Having only recently learnt to drive I have had a Peugeot 206:

and a '97 Ford Fiesta (with far more dents than the one pictured):

However, I thought my Dad’s car history might interest you. All pictures from Google unfortunately.

1968 Triumph GT6 Mk1. This still remains in his garage and is being fixed up as we speak:

Then at the ripe old age of 24 he started a family and the GT6 wasn’t suitable anymore, so on to a Triumph Herald (with a heavily modified engine):

Then an incredibly long list of boring sensible family cars, then a 1929 BSA “Beeza” which became a project when my siblings and I grew up and moved out:

and cars currently owned by him (not including the aforementioned GT6)

2004 Honda Civic Type R

Peugeot 106 Rallye (which I have my eye on for when my current car dies):

Isuzu Bighorn:

I’m sure there are a few others that I’ve forgotten, but these bring back memories :slight_smile:

Haha, cool thread…


Well, the first car that I learnt to drive on was a 1996 Mazda Protege. I wanted to make sure I learnt how to drive standard and this did the trick…
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From that point I decided to “upgrade” and get this old school 1989 Mercedes 190E. I was under the false impression that German cars were built like tanks and were made to last forever… I poured my heart and soul into that car and it did little to return the favour and punished me with repair after repair. Aside from the times it was in for some astronomically expensive repairs it was good fun. Got to basically take apart the entire dash and interior to work my sound system into it and learnt the ins and outs of how that thing was put together. Also tried to give it a more Euro look by ordering the clear corners and installing those and some other details here and there. While it was a really fun car to tinker with and work on because everything was just so exposed it definitely didn’t live up to my now obviously false expectations.
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A pretty hilarious shot with my buddy’s hideous 89 Corolla wagon… To this day probably the ugliest car I’ve seen on the road with any sort of regularity.

These days I traded in the automotive lifestyle for an urban life with a bike. Some of the new electrics coming down the pipeline are definitely appealing though…

Thanks for sharing your stories guys. Good for some laughs :slight_smile:

My first car was a 1968 Plymouth Valiant. My parents bought auto parts in the fall of 1967 when I was 4 years old.