What was your first car?

[jarneilh]

My first car here in Australia was a 1962 FORD. I went to a car yard and selected what I wanted and a mate of mine said "don't buy it", I said "why", he said, "look at the name, FORD", I said, "so what ?" he said it means
Fix Or Repair Daily

I said "och away ye go". with a chuckle, and I paid for it. Now, we were still in the car yard and we were sitting in the car waiting to drive off when it started raining. Engine running, I took off, I switched on the wipers and and BANG. Car stopped. Distance travelled, 4 meters.

Still in the car yard, the salesman "shifty character" said it was my car now, and did not want to know me.

Never bought a Ford since.

Jim.

[morag]

My husband couldn't resist getting a fiat spider - lovely little car but he was a bit afraid of the Fix It Again Toni...Fiat play on words...it is a great wee car, though I called it his mistress...treated that car better than me or the kids, only slightly better than oor pets
Our first car as a couple was a Karman Ghia...wish I still had it

[Hughie]

Any of our new members want to contribute to this topic? Even if you don't there is some good reading and viewing.

[BigIan]

Hmmm, my very first car, bought before I could even drive, was a 1966 (stop cheering all you English! ) Mini Countryman, you know the ones with the wooden frame on the outside of the rear body?

It cost the grand sum of.......nothing! That's my sort of price!

I was given it by old Mr Smith who owned Kyleshill motors, probably because I was always pestering him, hanging around his workshop and trying to learn as much as I could, even in those days.

It was, allegedly, "Old English White" although a more accurate description would have been "faded, off-beige, with very large brown patches and an almost woodchip style paint finish thanks to the rust"!

It had a hole in the front drivers wing that you could drop a small child through! There was also a massive hole in the front bulkhead on the passenger side which wasn't discovered until after I'd passed my test and took my mother out for a drive in the pouring rain.........and speeding through a deep puddle resulted in her having an impromptu shower!
(she didn't find it at all amusing!).

That car served me well for a year or two and, when starting to date girls, it was perfect because the cylinder head gasket kept blowing with the result I had the perfect excuse to have to park up in some secluded spot "to let the engine cool down!"

The only thing holding the floor together was the layers of bitumen underseal, inside and out! In fact I'm sure the fumes from the bitumen were probably toxic!

And yet, for all its faults and unusual design features, like sliding windows (!), drawstring interior door handles, rear doors that open going over a bump, a gear stick that was three feet long and disappeared under the dashboard, and a floor mounted headlight dip switch, as well as the aforementioned "passenger shower facility" etc, I loved that wee car!

Maybe that was why it was replaced with yet another Mini?

[wmh]

my first car was a family hand-me-down , a green VW beetle , reg number OAG177 , it was really reliable and kept on going for years , when I was finished with it I parked it up in our garage at dads house and then moved it from place to place for years , I moved to Prestwick last summer and finally got the courage up to scrap it, it was last road taxed on 1976 , the disc was actually still on the screen when it was scrapped.

wmh

[Retsum]

First car was a 1954 Riley Pathfinder (4 cylinder, 2.4 litre). I bought it (1965) when I was a research student from my supervisor for £25. We kept it for about three years until the chassis rusted away. Interesting thing about it was the gear stick was on the right between the seat and the door.

My wife had just started driving lessons and I thought I would help out by giving her some experience on the Riley. There was a network of small roads near our flat in Hillhead so lots of right and left turns and hill starts etc. So we are coasting down a fairly steep hill towards a minor T-junction and instead of hitting the brake, Janette hits the accelerator and we shoot across the junction, up onto the pavement, through a hedge, up a short lawn and come to a shuddering halt about two feet from a sitting room window. We sat in stunned silence waiting for the irate owners. Nothing happened - they must have been out, and the neighbours likewise. So I run round to the drivers seat and reverse back out through the gap in the hedge and away! It had been a lovely, well trimmed hedge around 3 - 4 feet high and 2 feet deep but the Riley had gone through it like a tank and there was now a neat, precise rectangular gap. We should have put a note through the door. That was the end of my interference with her driving lessons.

[Hughie]

Any newer members want to contribute to this interesting topic.

[morag]

I don't drive, never held a licence, my daughter recently did though and I'm so glad for her it's a VW, think modern version of Beetle or Rabbit..yes, I'm that auto uninformed. But it's a neat wee car and given it's smallness has a lot of cargo space, she wanted that because she wants another Gordon Setter some day soon.

[frank quinn]

The first car I had was an Austin 1100.A nice wee motor but rusted away very quickly.
I had it for a few years & on its last "test" ,I asked the motor engineer "have you got
a pick & shovel".He asked why to which i replied,After a test like that I think I will
just bury it on the spot. Pare we thing it was.Consequently I got a trade in for a
Mk.Cortina. Now that was a car!!----

[ardrossanrentboy]

first car was a 1952 Sunbeam Talbot Mk2 bought in 1963 from the tin shed garage opposite the Palazzo in glasgow st. (was it Wallace's of West Kilbride, or were they next door? ) It was bought mostly by Laurie Savarrio (then aged 14 or 15) by 'borrowing' the money from his gran and as I was only 16 and held only a motorbike licence we hid it around the top of ardrossan never parking it in the same place twice. Had a faulty fuel pump which wouldn't manually prime so I had to suck some petrol along the supply pipe then jam it onto the carburettor to get it started. We couldn't afford the petrol unless we recruited paying passengers from the Melbourne and the Eglinton cafes. Unfortunately we parked it in a field north of Lawson Drive and when we next returned to it there was no glass in it, the roof and bonnet had been jumped on and a turd of cowshit rammed up the exhaust pipe. We failed to find a buyer for it.

[ardrossanrentboy]

just made a wee list of cars I've owned and it totals 30 cars or vans and 5 motorbikes. Longest I kept one was 7 years for a Black Volvo 240GL Estate 2.4 7 seater automatic. Holidayed across Europe in it for 5 summers.

[mo_gacky]

my first car was a white Austin 1100, bought it for £30, learned to drive in it? rust bucket// when you went over big puddle you got soaked, then bought a Vauxhall chevette custom built and passed test in that, went on to few more but never ever forget the Austin loved it happy days.