Our car stories keep on rolling
Ican’t resist sharing more of the entertaining first-car/best car/ worst car stories that readers have sent following my recent column on the topic. Among those received are these excerpts—many thanks to these contributors:
John Moulton: I’ve owned many cars; mostly stick shift. Guys were astonished that I owned a 1965 poppy-red Mustang GT fastback with a four-speed that I traded for a 1968 Torino 390-hp V8 automatic. The reason? Keeping my hand busy with shifting and the presence of a large console was too much when going on a date! So I got the Torino automatic with a bench seat. It worked better for my future wife. And for me.
Steve Littrell: We were driving a baby-blue ‘68 Plymouth Valiant convertible when we finished school at the University of Texas. Moving to Dallas, my wife Karen needed a car to get to Richardson West Junior High. This is when our Fiat 850 Spyder came into our life. A beautiful wife in a totally under-powered red convertible was fabulous. The 850 Spyder lasted until her seventh month of pregnancy.
I learned to drive in a ’62 VW stick, and enjoyed a Toyota Corolla SR5, my first five-speed. Great fun. Although it had an automatic transmission, my 2016 Buick Cascade convertible fit my advanced age. No stick offered. The Cascade had to go when we decided we needed a travel trailer and a Ram pickup.
When the trailer outlasts its usefulness, a Ford Bronco with a seven-speed standard looks very inviting.
From Steve’s wife Karen Littrell: Steve forgot to mention his second-generation Mazda RX7 that lived in the repair shop. Fun car when it ran.
Gregory Stanford: My worst car was a 1969 two-door Chevy Impala. When each of their kids turned 16, our parents’ policy was to lend each $500 toward our first car, conditional upon us paying the loan back in six months and us paying insurance and all operating cost for said car.
I was so eager for this freedom (we lived in a rural area, and I had been riding the bus for my whole school career), I picked the first car we looked at, even though my dad (uncharacteristically) was subtly encouraging me to think about looking around some. I insisted this was the car, so he made the deal and I followed him home driving it.
The next morning as I left for school I experienced that glorious feeling of freedom that I will never forget!
Three months later I was learning how to rebuild a 350 Chevy motor, which I guess wasn’t a bad thing, as it was a good experience. This behemoth’s best feature was being built like a tank, as it survived quite a few encounters with concrete-filled parking posts, cross-ties used as fence posts, forays down into and out of ditches, and other adventures in amateur driving.
My best car was a 1977 Trans Am with T/A 6.6 engine. The T/A designation meant the car was equipped with a high-performance 200-hp 400-cubic-inch engine instead of the standard 180-hp engine. I bought it in 1980 from a girl whose parents gave it to her as a graduation gift, and it was loaded with every available option. The sticker that was in the glove box said it was $7,700. It had around 39,000 miles on it and not a blemish.
I was 20 years old and fully ensconced in the reprobate period of my life (about 6-7 years I’m not particularly proud of, but I own every bit of it) and I drove this car with my foot embedded in the floor board. I raced it, ran from troopers in it. I put over 75,000 of the hardest miles one can put on a car, and it never let me down.
The most awesome stock vehicle I ever drove was a 1970 W30 Oldsmobile 442 2-door coupe. I saw it for sale in a parking lot on 28th Street in Pine Bluff and immediately recognized it for what it was. The lawyer who was selling it in 1979 had purchased it new; it had around 100,000 miles on it and he wanted $2,000 for it. At that time it might as well have been $25,000. I knew there was no possible way for me to obtain it, but I had to drive it!
So I pretended I was a possible buyer and he gave me the keys to take it out by myself (in hindsight, not a wise choice on his part). In this car you had to make a concerted effort not to burn rubber when taking off. I had never felt such power under me. I turned down a side street that I knew had a long stretch with no stop signs. At about 35-40 mph, I punched it hard, and it turned sideways on me! Fortunately this scared me enough to immediately take it back to its owner and leave well enough alone.
Jack Hill: My first car was a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere two-door hardtop. If you saw the movie “Christine,” there it was! My parents paid $500 for it in, I think, 1964, so I could take it to Fayetteville for my senior year at the UofA. I paid them back with the wages of my first job as a copy boy at the Arkansas Gazette.
I reported to Bob Douglas, and every night took a copy of the first edition to A.R. Nelson at his home in the Lakewood part of North Little Rock. I got to work around the esteemed likes of Bill Whitworth, Leroy Donald, and Pat Carithers. After I graduated, I joined the Peace Corps and went to Panama, rather than that Vietnam war thing. I didn’t want to give up that car, so I made my parents keep it.
More rides followed, including a 1959 Mercedes 190D (my first diesel). It was cool, but its floor was plywood, the radio and heater did not work, and the wipers quit on a road trip to St. Louis with Jimmy Weisman. So we bought shoelaces and made the driver’s wiper work.