A members first Vehicles, pictures or similar pictures and information. A members favourite vehicle, and why? What brand do you prefer an your reason?
My first vehicle was a Monte Carlo it looked similar to this picture I found. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Pontiac! The old GTO's, Firebirds, and Trans Am's! A 1970 GTO and 1973 Trans Am would make me happy. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ...but, I digress. Having cubic dollars is not an attribute of mine. However, I managed to scrape a few pennies together over the years in order to play with my toy, a 79 Firebird that I changed the front end to a 73 nose and shaker hood . I removed the original 301 and built and installed a 400 that produced over 400 HP and ran 12.84@110.68 on street tires and pump gas in the 1/4 mile, first and only run. I built this car from the ground up myself, to include the paint. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Dang nice. You have a 5 point harness in that thing? --- I grew up with GM made cars in the family. Mostly chevys, But I like many cars. Even a old Ford Edsel. I saw a Edsel this past week an the work done was great. It had a hood scoop, it was raised. Looked good.
First car, VW Beetle. Same color as here, previous year model (1971). Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Have had three more since then, and all but the second one were the limited auto stick shift models. Great cars. Not for everyone, but those who love them are diehards. Wish VW had made a modernized version of them instead of the "new" Beetles.
Thanks. No, no harness. I don't have the car anymore, I sold it a few years ago. I just picked up a 2002 Isuzu AXIOM. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Awesome SUV. It has a DOHC 24 valve V6 in it. It has 207,000 miles on it now. I just changed the timing belt on it. The engine runs like brand new. What is really cool is that there is an Android app called Torque that acts as an OBDII scan tool. That and the use of a $10 ebay bluetooth dongle gives my phone the ability to be used as a wireless scantool in real time, while driving down the road. With that app you can view all the OBDII data as a gauge as it updates in real time. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
My first car was (despite its looks) incredibly fast. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It was a V6 Ford Pinto. I never did find out how fast it went because the speedometer only went up to 110 MPH. The needle went a little past that before reaching max so maybe the speedometer reached 115 MPH. It was a Ford Pinto. I was going to fix another car and was buying 2 doors from the wreckers. A guy behind me in line said $150 for two doors, I'll sell you my whole car for less than that. Buying a car that was aimed for scrap at a scrapyard, and stopping the sale of 2 doors is not condoned by scrapyard management and some very hefty fellows made sure it was clear we were never to come to that scrapyard again. I paid $100 for it and it was running but had no battery in it. The guy drove it to my house and we even fueled it without turning off the engine because of the battery problem. Despite the fact that I have owned much better cars since, cars you own when you are a teenager will always carry a special place in your heart. R,I.P. little buddy.
First car was a Volvo 240 diesel wagon. Currently I'm a fan of the Ford Focus, and own a 2013 Focus ST with a 250HP ecoboost I4. Best car I ever had.
That's not a car, it's a death trap. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That thing had to be super fast with a decent V6 in it, the HP to weight ratio is approaching 1:1. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I drive this one every day... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Oh, it wasn't that the Pinto was any more likely to catch fire than other cars of the era(it wasn't), it was that a memo was found at Ford seeming to say that the specific fix(which cost about $14.00)was too expensive to be cost effective. That sent 60 minutes into one of their "Blood in the Water" hack jobs. All cars after 1974 are as safe as any other 70's era car is. GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Mine was a 1965 Ford Galaxy 500 Same color as this one (but without the large engine. Mine had a 289 V8 ) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Two cars later, I had my one and only "muscle car", a 1971 Camaro: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This car had had it's suspension altered by the previous owner and it cornered like it was glued to the road.
WoW some Nice cars. My first pick up truck was a 4 door 4x4 chevy S10 ZR5 it looked similar to this picture I found. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
While technically owned by my Dad, this is the first car I learned to drive and the one he let me use as "my" car. A 1962 Buick Special (Motor Trend's Car od the year). It had a 198 v6. However, by the time I got it, mine didn't look as good as this one : Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The car I think I loved the most was my 1984 Honda CRX. It was the first new car that I'd ever owned . It wasn't the 1.5L sport model shown here, but the 1.3 "commuter" model. Still, it had plenty of get up and go, and took corners like it was on rails. A very fun car to drive. In addition, it got 50 mph on the highway. I put over 150,000 miles on it in four years ( I had a long commute at the time) before it was wrecked in an accident. The bonus was that, while I paid 6500 for the car new, even with all the miles on it, its value came back as being 4230 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
A 1957 Zündapp Supersabre. A single-cylinder 250cc two-stroke motorcycle, made in Germany. It had a top speed of about 75mph and the two-stroke engine made quite a racket. No oil injection in those days. You had to mix the motor oil directly into the gasoline, so the exhaust was very smoky. This is the "Sabre" with a smaller 175cc engine but it looked almost exactly like this. Telescopic forks in front, hydraulic shock absorbers in back: this was the state of the art in motorcycle suspension in those days, and many larger bikes used much more primitive technology. Chain drive, although Zündapp made a shameless copy of the 600cc BMW opposed-twin, complete with shaft drive. After the war Germany was desperate to get its manufacturing sector working, so patent infringement was not a major worry. I bought mine in 1962 when I was 19. The motorcycle craze was just hitting the USA, as the cheaper, heavier, quieter and cleaner Japanese bikes with their plastic fenders and other post-war technology created a new image in opposition to the gigantic, grease-slinging, window-rattling Triumphs and Harley-Davidsons that were the province of "outlaw" bikers. Small European bikes were rare so we weren't automatically identified with either group. Like every other vehicle manufacturer in Europe, Zündapp had built military vehicles for the war. A 600cc or 750cc two-cylinder model with a sidecar is a collector's item. The webpage above has links to photos. This bike was already pretty worn out when I bought it. I managed to keep it running for two years and traded it for a brand-new 250cc Maico, another German brand. Eventually I had a good enough job to afford a BMW. I had three of those before I hung up my helmet. I picked one up at the factory in Munich and spent three months riding it all over Europe, from West Germany to Czechoslovakia to Greece to Yugoslavia to Italy to Spain... one of the fondest memories of my life. And some of those countries don't even exist anymore. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
This 1959 BMW Isetta was not my car (I was 16 and still in high school) but it was my mother's first car and the first one I was allowed to drive by myself and even take on dates. It had a bored-out motorcycle engine, a single cylinder displacing 300cc--about 18 cu. in. It had only one seat with room for two occupants, and the door was on the front of the car, opening forward. It was slightly smaller than the modern SmartCar, and it certainly did not have that vehicle's massive steel frame and other safety features. The engine was in the rear, leaving no room for a trunk. The rear wheels had a significantly narrower track than the front, making many people think it was another one of those three-wheelers that Germans loved because the tax laws defined them as motorcycles. Because of the location of the door, the gearshift lever was on the left side. The transmission, like the engine, was reworked from the small single-cylinder BMW motorcycle, so although it was retrofitted with a reverse gear, it had no synchromesh. Driving it was a constant series of ear-splitting gear-gnashing noises. It had a top speed somewhere between 45 and 50mph, with acceleration to match. And because the horsepower was so low (it was advertised as something like 13, about the same as the Zündapp motorcycle I posted above) you absolutely had to keep it up on the cam, constantly downshifting into the gear with the most torque--and making those gnashing sounds. This car was sold by gas stations rather than real car dealers. So when my dad bought it, he insisted on getting his S&H Green Stamps with the purchase, about six books full. We quickly realized that this was not the ideal car for my mother to learn to drive in. Within a year he sold it and got her an English Ford Consul. That sure improved my dating life! Sweet guy that he was, it still had a stick shift, but at least it had synchromesh. She kept driving into her 80s and never had an automatic. Although in her youth she had been afraid to drive, it was poetic justice that her last day living on her own (my father died two years before her) was spent in her car. The police found her sitting in her stick-shift Toyota Corolla, resting on top of a flattened mailbox, on the sidewalk on the wrong side of the street. They made us put her in a home.
I go way back to the AMERICAN GRAFFITI and HAPPY DAYS era. First car was a used 1949 Mercury coupe I got for $75. Sorta like this one: http://expertautoappraisals.com/recent-pre-purchase-inspection/1949-mercury-coupe-2/
My first car was a 1977 Datsun 200SX, new, in a metallic blue color. It was a lovely vehicle which sadly met it's demise in a single vehicle accident on a remote Yukon highway. I was visiting friends in Faro when I got news of my grandfather's passing and was headed back to Whitehorse, to fly to Vancouver with my Mother for the funeral. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I never got there. Not sure what happened but suspect that I hit loose gravel on a corner and lost control. I spent two days over an embankment, in and out of consciousness, before I was able to orient myself and crawl up the very steep embankment to the highway and flag down a vehicle for help. Having a broken arm and seriously damaged knees didn't help much. My 'near death' experience...
spidergoat My Pinto is bone stock except for the 16 inch Mustang GT wheels and tires. It has a 2300 four speed in it, but I will be putting a Rover 4.0 liter V8 aluminum engine in it, hopefully this summer. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Along with a Mustang Cobra Independent Rearend Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Motor Daddy No, I have never worked for Ford. But the Pinto got a bum rap. Grumpy
