These Are The Stories Behind Your First Cars

In many ways, your first car is your portal to the outside world. It's your ticket to freedom. Your way to get around without having to rely on your folks or a city bus (if you're lucky) to get you from place to place. Because of that, and because we are car enthusiasts, our first cars hold a very special place in our hearts. That idea is what led me to the question I asked you all last week.

I wanted to know what your first car was, and as a little bonus, I wanted to know the story behind it. Cheeky, I know. I learned a lot from you folks: chief among which is that most of you are very, very old. I mean, very old. One person's first car is nearly 100 at this point, and that's just preposterous. Even so, most of the cars here would be real winners at Radwood on any given day, and who doesn't love seeing that?

That's enough out of me, though. How about you head on down below and check out the first cars of your fellow Jalops?

It was 1996. I was a junior in college. I fell in love with a 1979 Triumph TR7 with 27,000 miles. Yellow with a green tartan interior. Black steel wheels with chrome trim rings. Pop-up headlights. 5-speed. And the coldest air conditioning in any car I've ever owned. Odd.

It was lovely. It looked exotic. It was $4000. I overpaid. It made ALL the right sounds. It was entirely flingable. It was unreliable, with a serious backfire issue. It overheated, so I installed an electric engine fan, and then wired it to the two AC fans (originally installed to drag air across the condenser). 3 fans. I wired a switch so I could turn them on from the cockpit. It sounded like an airplane when those were on.

I warped the head a few years later at 40,000 miles. I moved out to LA and my dad sold it for me. I miss it. What a weird, wonderful car.

Submitted by: Corey Stringer

1989 Chevy Cavalier Z24 5spd! The poor man's Camaro.... which is the poor man's Corvette.... which is the poor man's Ferrari. So I essentially had a Ferrari.

Submitted by: Gudmndur

Technically it was the broken 1969 Toyota Corona DX 2 speed automatic 2-door in the driveway.

I was 16 and just got my license, and mom said I could have it if I got it running. $7 for a carb rebuild kit and 2 days later I had it running.

Drove it about a week and she permanently borrowed it back from me to commute to work.

So then I bought the same car a few years later in college for $60, but it had a manual, 4 doors, and the top cut off. My little brother had a whole bunch of roll bar stock left over from a rally car build he and a friend did (80's Toyota Corolla, RWD, obvs), so I welded up a roll cage for it, which stopped the B pillars flopping around.

That was great until winter, so I built a peaked wooden roof for it, out of cheap cedar fence boards. I did not get any second dates after the wood roof went on.

To this day the cheapest car per mile and total cost that I ever owned.

Submitted by: DieselOx

1967 Chevy Pick Up that I owned in 1974. It was the neighborhood car. If another kid turned 16 and offered you more money than you paid, he could buy it from you. You also had to make an improvement to the car. I changed out the 8-track player for a cassette player. It had astroturf covering the wooden bed and a bench seat from a car tucked against the cab. This was the perfect drive in vehicle.

Submitted by: Dean Lockwood

My grandfather could no longer drive so he gifted it to me in 2004. It was rather low mileage (87,000 miles) and was over-maintained, so all it needed was an oil change and rebalancing. It took about a month to clean it up (including removing a ton of cigarette residue on the headliner and seats) but it was a fun car. However, my parents didn't think it was safe driving it back to school in Philly, so we sold it a couple of months later and they bought me a Mazda3 (also stick shift).

Submitted by: vuwildcar07

This was in 2002-2003, so the car was already 25 years old. My dad paid $450 for it. It had an 8-track player in it that I upgraded to a CD player with all new speakers for about $500. The headlights stopped working at one point (bad switch in the steering stalk) and the steering would shake uncontrollably between 40 and 50 mph. Those cars had the same engines as the '77 Corvettes, but the power went to hauling 2 tons of steel around. Still, it had power, and I had to run it with "open headers" when the 20' of exhaust fell off one day when I hit a dip. It had three bench seats, one of which faced backward out of the combo door/tailgate with power window on the rear. I could take 12 people out to lunch comfortably. I lost my v-card in the front seat of that car. My dad realized after a while that it was a menace to both me and society and needed to be taken off of the road, and he traded it for a 1998 VW New Beetle, which destroyed my 17 year old cred.

Submitted by: Daniel Bax

A planned hand-me-down from my mom. My parents bought it new knowing in 7y when I turned 16 (1997) it'd be my car. I remember having a 10% choice in the car shopping those years prior. Not sure if my vote really counted but it was the one I wanted more than the other (cant remember what the other car was).

I LOVED that Nissan. Pre-Renault era Nissan was the best. the 3.0v6 didn't make as much power as the 3.5 VQ but it was smoother, made a better sound and was just a terrific 90s fwd sedan. It worked for me at that age with the halo car too – i was OBSESSED with the z32 300zx and knowing there was SOME Dna shared was awesome.

Submitted by: Nathaniel Kuhn

Burned oil, gulped gas, alarm system would go off whenever it felt like it causing it to blare it's ship horn randomly, sunroof leaked (and wouldn't open), passenger door wouldn't open from the outside, odometer stopped rolling, gas gauge didn't work, radio/cassette player didn't work, rear brakes would stick, transmission eventually quit.

But I had the best summer in high school ever driving that thing around town.

Submitted by: Greasetank

1994 Ford Escort Wagon, with a manual transmission. Bought it off my uncle and it served me well through several years of grad school. Versatile little car. Hauled a big old couch on top of the roof, probably exceeding weight limits, but it did the job. I would love to have another car like that.

Submitted by: Lar Mul

A 5 speed 1984 Toyota Celica GT hatchback. Pops got it brand new in 83/84 and handed it down to me my senior year in HS(the 99 and the 2000!). I learned so much driving and car control in that car. It had skinny tires on it, google says they came 185s, but knowing how cheap my dad was he probably had 175s. On a rainy day, a downshift and a slight turn of the wheel would get it sideways. I learned that "neat little trick" wayyyy before drifting was popular in the stated. I also remember having to prove to people it was RWD.

Submitted by: Marcus C

My first was a 1933 Ford Model B, V8 flathead with dual carbs and Hedman Headers. Bought for $125 with my own money at 15 1/2, before I even had a driver's license. Lucky for me it never actually ran...

Submitted by: Oofy Prosser