A Monday Funny: Remembering Those “Great” First Cars
Presented for your Monday enjoyment: a thoroughly crude (and ABSOLUTELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK/AROUND CLERGY, PRUDES, OR CHILDREN) but thoroughly hilarious tune from Adam Sandler. I think any guy or gal with limited $$$ who ever owned an old “beater” of a car can identify with this one.
Ah, memories – and ONLY memories today, thankfully. (smile)
Category: Pointless blather, Who knows
Proud owner of a 2005 Chevy Cavalier.
Has an oil problem (hasn’t bothered me in a while), got it with a broken windshield wiper fluid line, widespread electrical problems, shifter sticks, car has rust all over it, my tach doesn’t work, and my horn won’t honk.
I love my car.
I should talk about some of the engines I’ve driven/rode on. Oil problem? How’s two quarts A DAY sound? That’s not even going into an aux pump that had to be started with a screwdriver and a 9/16 box-end, or the long tradition of pumping a hose lay with the hood open/can tilted to prevent overheating…
That’s supposed to say “cab tilted.” Fat fingers.
FW – that’s correctly spelled “Cadaver”
First POS car – 1961 Econoline with no A/C, bad starter (had to park on hills) and a broken right front spring so when you hit the brakes it dove for the ditch – almost wrecked the first decent car I drove afterwards by reflexively yanking the wheel to the left when I applied brakes.
I had a Ford Pinto once. The roof rack blew off on 33rd Street in front of the old Memorial stadium. Why? The sheet metal holding the screws rusted out. The parking brake didn’t work as a brake but it held the driver’s door closed when one end was tied to the door handle and the other to the brake lever. Um, the engine? It ran great—but only downhill. The slightest incline and the power would drop. Yes, I was the guy who caused that 10 mile backup! Back then I thought everyone drove with their horns and had only a middle finger on their right hand. POS doesn’t come close to describing that wreck.
I passed a Pinto on I-95 a few weeks ago. I hadn’t seen one in so long I slowed down and took a picture of it.
Pinto, that was the “Bomb” man.
2/17 Air Cav…You Too Brother!!! Me…a Ford Pinto, 3 on the tree. No radio except the old Radio Shack “AM ONLY” I found and put in with a wire hanger for an antenna. No parking/emergency brake. The engine had sawdust in it to keep it quiet as did the tranny! WAY nice when I found that on the first oil change! Took three oil changes and new head, valve cover gaskets and valve seals to fix that. I put more clutches and throw out bearings in it that POS than I can remember. What a bitch, hauling that tranny down to the ground and back into place by myself. Several teeth missing on the flywheel so starting was a “sweet spot” I had to hit. Plus EVERY thousand miles or so, I had to tweak the fuel and air flows on the carburetor, whether I needed to or NOT, or else it would decide to DIE in the middle of traffic! Always, it seemed, in the fast lane with no shoulder and no chance of making it to the other side of the highway. Yea what memories. My first and last POS and my first urge to really kill someone. The used car lot-lizard, ass hole who sold it to me and then…went out of business three weeks later, never to be found again.
Jebeebus! That was worse than mine Sparks! I think the only reason we weren’t hit from behind and turned into a couple of rolling fireballs was that no one wanted to get near our eyesores.
2/17 Air Cav…Yep. one of my “fun time” memories was parking it next to something shiny and brand new in a parking lot. Folks would give me a wide berth in parking lots. Wish they did now.
Sparks & 2/17……the story can finally be told. Both you guys are suffering from PTSD!
Pinto traumatic Stress syndrome!
Smile
No,it’s PTDS(Pinto Tiny Dick Syndrome)—SMILE.
1971 Ford F-250 that had been used as a construction truck. Cost me $200.
Rear gas tank leaked, king pins were shit, burned a quart of oil every 50 miles or so, and clutch that was all but worthless.
The parking brake didn’t work as a brake but it held the driver’s door closed when one end of a rope was tied to the door handle and the other to the brake lever.
1952 ford station wagon. Great for parking with your date. Had a pillow and blanket hid under the folding back seat, so my parents didn’t see it. Blew up while driving to college. Right next to a pig farm. What a smell! Left it along the interstate. Never saw it again.
65 Plymouth Valiant. My Dad bought two of them at the same time; one to drive and one for parts. I’m the youngest of seven and was the seventh one to get it as a first car. AM radio, bolt on under the dash 8 track (oldest brother), bolt on under the dash FM receiver (other brother), and had the “liar’s A/C” Anyone remember that? It was a lever that slid from red to blue but other than that the air was the same damn hot air you had on heat. entire front passenger side wheel just fell off one day while going down the road. It finally went to a disadvantaged couple at our church; never knew what happened to it from there.
1977 Chevy Impala. My very own urban battle tank (as heavy as it was, it would go off road very well because of the HUGE engine it had.) The heater never turned off — great in the winter, and all four windows down in the summer always, even when it rained, or it’d fog the windows. I drove with a case of oil in the trunk, because it went through a quart a week. (Messy, but the engine was very clean!) Speedometer was set at EXACTLY ten miles an hour faster than I was actually traveling. Radio only, no tape player. That car got me through college.
1974 International Scout II with a bastardized fuel tank. 3 Speed, 304 with bent A-Frame.
I still miss it.
500 bucks.
Actually I’ve been pretty lucky, my first car was Pontiac Tempest and it was only 4 years old when I got it.
I had been delivering newspapers to a neighbor for years, a contractor who got divorced, and I dropped the paper on his table in his house and started his coffee for him. He paid me $10 a week for a newspaper that cost $1.10 for the entire week at that time including the Sunday paper (gives you some idea just how old I am).
I asked him about how much he wanted for the car and he said it had belonged to his ex ( he used a fair amount of expletives in the process) and told me if I could get it off his land it was mine….I came back with a battery, some fresh gasoline and a can of ether and drove it away….set of tires and a paint job and I had a great car that was four years old….been lucky with cars ever since, except for that one 1980 Ford Granada, that was my “piece of shit car” and I bought it brand new….what a pile of crap, went through a half a dozen trannies under warranty and had paint (silver) that flaked off and left the primer coat visible….
Yeah, well, as shit on wheels go, try topping a Henry J.
“Where’s dad?”
“Working on the…”
“Got it.”
I called a company once to haul away a car. The guy arrived with his tow truck and said, “50 bucks.”
I said, “That’s all? I thought you would charge more.”
He said, “No, I’m paying you. $50 is the minimum.”
Now, that was the best car deal I ever made.
I left a rusting 56 pickup in my Dad’s yard when I joined the Army. A guy who worked with Dad spotted it years later and bugged Dad to buy it. I finally gave in and told
Dad to sell it. The Guy paid Dad $1000 and hauled it off. Later the Guy started telling everyone how he took my Dad in the deal. My Dad finally got feed up and told everyone that I had sent him $100 to have that POS hauled away and he was going to do it until some Jackass paid him $1000. He finally shut up.
A 1986 Oldsmobile Delta 88. The driver’s window rolled up crooked leaving a little gap no matter how many times I put it back on track. The rear passenger door was refered to as a “reverse cop car door” as it could only be opened from the inside. I swear that if you got that car up over 70 mph you could see the fuel gauge slowly move from F to E.
My first car was only six years older than I was. I found the 41′ Pontiac Business Coupe in a collapsing garage behind a buddies Grand Ma’s house. I paid $20.00 dollars and she came home on the end of a stiff rope.
She was a classroom on wheels. I learned how to change a clutch, install a floor shifter and chase corrosion in the electrical system. The rear end blew and locked up, and the block cracked over the winter she sat in front of the house. I sold her to a classmate for a hot rod project. A much newer car (1946 Cadillac Fleetwood) took me through HS graduation.
324 v8 1955 4 door Oldsmobile Delta Rocket 88. With a fricking skid plate. Think I got 8 mpg going downhill. Great drive-in car!
1967 Buick Skylark station wagon with oxidized blue paint. If you leaned against it, you got painted blue. Had a place behind the backseat where the spare tire went-a trapdoor kinda thing. Pulled out the tire and made it the beer cooler. That car was real chick magnet (not). Paid $110 for it and sold it for $140 when I got my 64 Chevy II. Drove the Duece to sign my enlistment papers sitting on a bucket as the previous night’s date failed to get her cigarette out the window. The next morning found that the seats had been smoldering all night. Had to be at the recruiter’s by 0800 so I pulled the seats out into the front yard, hosed them down, got a bucket and went and signed my papers. Bought new seats with my first Basic Training check.
1974 Vega GT. Not a Vega Vega,a Vega GT.
Had a 2bbl. and a 4 speed.
Also made a loud cracking noise every now and again like it was gonna bust in two.
Yellow.
My first car(s). I bought two 1953 Chevys from my paper route money ($50 for the pair) and used the parts from one to get the other running. The picture was taken in 1970 and those are my cousins.
Aaahhh, 1950’s cars, I still think that was Detroit’s best style. They were built like tanks, but they got what, about 3 or 4 city blocks to the gallon? But hey, gas was what, maybe 25 or 30 cents a gallon, and there was no such thing as self-serve gas back then!
Bells when you pulled in and bells when you pumped. Oh, and you had to reset the counter–the little handle, and turn the pump on–the big handle. No ethanol, no warnings that you might blow up or hurt a fetus, or whatever else they warn you about today. And nearly everyone paid by cash. If you didn’t it was a PIA, what with the mechanical hand-held thingy that ran your card, and the carbon copy. Oh, and every gas station had at least one guy named Bob, with a cigarette and soda machine–and a pinup on the garage wall.
My first two cars were ’53 Chevy’s,too. Rolled one into a snow covered Iowa ditch, never broke a window.lol. They was tough!
1974 Duster with a recent paint job that covered up a generous amount of bondo. $750.00 with an additional $375.00 a couple of weeks later to replace a wiring harness in the dash. Seems that the previous owner did not believe in fuses and replaced them all with nice copper wire wrapped in electrical tape, which resulted in a total power loss accompanied by a cloud of smoke. I sold it a couple of months later for $750.00.
First law of electricity: never, EVER let the smoke out. Once you let the smoke out, nothing works any more.
Mine was a 1985 Toyota pickup. Actually, judging by the different colors of primer showing through the spots where the paint was flaking off, it was originally no less than four 1985 Toyota pickups totaled, junkyarded, and finally cannibalized into a single (allegedly) functional vehicle. And it was a piece…of…SHIIIIIIITT!!!
EVERYTHING was wrong with it, it broke every six seconds, radio didnt work, drove like crap, vents ALWAYS blew hot air unless it was cold outside, got shitty gas mileage, no balls whatsoever pulling an uphill grade, but it was essentially a zombified vehicle–it just wouldn’t die! Bought it at the end of my sophomore year of high school, not knowing what I was getting myself into. Sold the Goddamned thing two weeks after I graduated.
Actually, my little sister had to sell it for me. I couldn’t bring myself to take somebody’s money for that pile of shit.
You sound like you took my approach to selling things. First off, you price it too low and then you tell each prospective buyer every damn thing that’s wrong with it. We would not make good salesmen.
1973 Capri 2600 (aka “the sexy European”). Bought it in ’78 after graduating from high school. Still have it. I drive it less than 1000 miles a year, and not at all during the summer because no A/C. If the weather is nice, though, and the traffic is not too heavy, it’s still fun to drive, especially with the sunroof open.
Mine was a 63 Chevy P/U with 3 on the tree. The Purple People Eater, purple rattle can body with white cab.
I always liked British sportscars, and the first car I bought with money from a real job was a $400 ’58 Austin-Healey 100-6 with busted first and reverse transmission gears, goofy shocks you had to keep filling with mineral oil every few thousand miles, and a laughably unreliable electrical system; anybody who has ever heard the term “Lucas: Prince of Darkness” knows what I’m talking about.
Still, driving it was some of the most fun you could have with your pants on. The one and only time I gave my mother a ride in it she said, “You’re going to kill yourself in this thing.”
I also remember barely talking my way out of a speeding ticket one cold winter night in Houston when stopped for doing 70 in a 40 mile zone.
The cop, apparently not one to suffer fools gladly, listened to my explanation that the speedometer didn’t work (true), that the heater didn’t work (also true), and that there was no top (it was home in the garage). I also made the mistake of pointing out that I had been “moving with the flow of traffic.”
Cop said: “Moving with the flow of traffic, hell. You were flying low, son.”
He then proceeded to give me a weapons-grade ass chewing concluding with the statement that he never wanted to see me, or my lame POS foreign vehicle on his city streets again. Ever.
Since he didn’t write the ticket, I counted myself lucky. Fair’s fair, after all.
Unlike most of the rest of the cars above.. you don’t even want to know what a 100-6 will bring nowadays.
If the speedo is broke, but you have a tach… you have a speedo.
72 Olds Delta 88 2 door with the factory gold 350 ‘Sky Rocket’ engine.
Dark green exterior, dark green interior, and no AC. Summers were ‘fun’ in the Phoenix area.
Damned boat got this really squirrely ‘swish’ in the suspension when you’d get it over 100, felt like you were floating. But damned if that heavy piece of American steel didn’t slide just perfectly through the corners doing my best Dukes of Hazard impressions around the cotton fields around home, lol.
Wish I still had that car……..
Btw, wrapped a 79 Caprice 4 door around the front of that 72 Olds, and walked away without a scratch. Shifted a fender and cracked the front cowl, no biggy, but totaled that Caprice.
That Olds was a tank.
My favorite car was a 1946 Willys CJ2A, fun to drive, but it topped out at 45 MPH, which kept me from getting a speeding ticket (off-road, that machine was next to indestructible!!). After high school, I had a 1979 Chevy Monza (About as extinct as the Chevy Vega) with a 4-cylinder engine which seemed anemic at best. It ran well for a while, but then kept falling apart like many a 70’s GM product. I had an ’83 Ranger after that and have been a Ford Junkie since!!
1976 Dodge D-100 pickup a friend of my Grandpa’s had sitting in a field for two years. We put new gas and a new battery in it, and the 318 fired right up. I got almost home when the ants living in the seat cushion decided they didn’t want to share anymore. The lights would generally work (Trooper Tucker was nice enough to let me know when they didn’t), the stereo always worked, and the cooling system worked for about 40 miles, haha. I had it for about a year and a jackass put sugar in the gas tank of it and about ten other cars at a high school dance. Shelled the engine and that was that. Helluva good time though!
Here’s a secret I tell no one. It was not a POS. But one of the all time ugly cars I owned back in the day. The only excuse I have is my wife at the time talked me into buying it. They say love is blind, and stupid too.
A 1975 Gremlin X!
I know, I know one ugly car. But in my defense, it was X!
Nah,a Gremlin X with the 5 Liter engine wasn’t too bad. Looked pretty hot when you jacked up the back end with air shocks, and you could light up the tires if conditions were just right. Now a real ugly car of that era was the AMC Pacer. There was nothing you could do to those pigs that improved the appearance.
Claw…I actually test drove a Pacer when they came out. Still had the Gremlin, still had the same wife. Told her not only no but hell no, when she wanted to buy it. One AMC product in a lifetime is enough!
I never had one,but my older sister had a Canary Yellow Pacer. Ugly,ugly. I was so ashamed for her. It looked like a grounded Tweety Bird.
Claw, back in the day, one nickname for the Gremlin was The 5 O’clock Car because it always looked like folks on the assembly line had gone home before it was finished. Pacers were sometimes called Moon Buggies because of all the weird green-house glass. About the only thing uglier than a Pacer was the later Pontiac Aztec, but that’s debatable.
It always seemed to me that the real nice AMC ride in those days was the AMX with the 390. It may have even had cup holders to keep your Fresca handy.
Perry……..My roommate in college had dark metallic green AMX, with a 390. Suspension was stiff, but it was faster than hell.
Fastest car I was ever a passenger in was a Super Bird with the 440 6-Pack. Speedometer went up to 150 MPH. Couple of times on US54 going north out of El Paso, I swear my buddy Casey from Ohio,buried the needle. Not for sure now,but the poles were going by at a pretty good clip.
Yeah,I would take a 69 Javelin AMX 390 if you were to hand me the keys and a title. But only if it had cup holders. If not,no deal. I refuse to hold an open can of Fresca between my legs.
Sorry,people,I can’t relate to having a car. Never owned a car. Did not have a vehicle of my own until I returned from Vietnam and bought a pick-up truck with my own money I had saved. 1970 C20,350 CI,4BBL,Manual tranny,Lime Green in color. So,yeah,I was weaned from John Deere B tractors to pick ups.Have owned GMC products all my life.
1976 Camaro. Baby shit brown. And some jackwagon installed a 6 cyl in it. Purchased it from a dealer attached to a junk yard. Tells you what kind of shape it was in. Still fast enough to get 3 speeding tickets, in 3 states, in a 24 hour period. Happened when I put Biloxi, MS in my rear view mirror.