It's interesting how much I can remember about my first car and how much you probably do as well. What did it look like? What color was it? What kind of seats did it have? What did it smell like?
The obvious follow up question is: How did you get it? (work and save up, a gift, or another way?)
Mine was a 1984 Chrysler E-Class. (I got it in 1995) It was two-tone, brown and tan, four doors, manual everything except for wipers and transmission. I'm sure now people would laugh at the motion of rolling down a window or reaching throughout the car to lock each door individually. Here's the closest picture I could find on the internet (not my actual car, but very close)
The manual in the glove compartment made sure to tell me that this was not the New Yorker, which had better features, but the E-Class. The cool car at the time for a high schooler to have was the Grand Am.
However, I learned a lot from that car.
- You have to take out seventy-two screws to remove the dashboard to install a cd player.
- Orange traffic barrels are filled with water, lots of water.
- If you don't manually lock ALL of the doors people will steal your stuff. If you find a case logic cd holder with really bad music in it, I'll take it back.
- How to hunt a deer on the back roads that jumped out of a corn field ( I won, but lost, the deer definitely lost) Bonus: learned about liability only insurance. The deer did not file a claim.
- A state trooper will give you a ticket if you go 60 in a 55. I still don't speed more than three or four over to this day.
Looking back I'm appreciative that my grandparents fronted me the money (which I later repaid all $1500) and trusted me enough with the opportunity of freedom and responsibility that came with it. I probably wouldn't have trusted sixteen year old me as much as they did. What about your first car?
