Long, long ago I owned a few used cars. At one point in 1964 I had a wife, two kids and the following cars in the driveway/yard: 47 Ford 2-door sedan 55 Plymouth Belvedere 55 Chevy Belair 2-door hardtop 56 Chevy 210 2-door sedan 56 Ford Fairlane Victoria hardtop. All but the 47 Ford were in bad shape, with dead/no engines in the Fairland and Belair, blown first gear in the Belvedere and enough body rot in the 210 to make winter driving hazardous to our health. Had a dream that I'd be able to fix all of them up but a little run-in with a train on the way to work nearly ended and certainly changed my life. Had to get rid of all the high-potential cars and learn to live with just one - a 62 Rambler station wagon - donated by my parents (it was an automatic and easier to drive one-handed). The Rambler had to go so I bought a brand new car in the fall of 1967. A much more practical family car - a '68 GTO. Those little kids in front of the Rambler and the GTO are now 46 and 47 years old (driving SUVs). I bought one more new car (71 Vega GT) but it turned out to be such a disaster that I have never bought another new car. Ok, one small exception -- in 1989 I bought a new Toyota Camry in Sydney, Australia so I'd have a reliable car to drive for the two years my wife and I lived there. The GTO, Vega and the rest of us moved from Poughkeepsie, NY to Boca Raton, FL in 1975. As much as we all loved the Goat, it had a black interior and no a/c. In Florida that's not a lot of fun. We could live with the heat on a sunny day but driving in the rain with the windows rolled up on a 90 degree day is just plain crazy. Replaced the GTO with a Lincoln Town car and the Vega with a 69 Corvette 427 4-speed convertible with a/c. Wrecked the 69 and replaced it with the 72 454 auto coupe. Family cars in Florida were mostly just refrigerators on wheels - Lincolns and Buicks. After 30 years, I retired from IBM in 1994 and the next year went to work for AOL. That lasted until 1999, when I gave up working outside the home. I now play with my two Corvettes (72 coupe and 87 convertible) and an 04 PT Cruiser Turbo. My playroom is a simple 3-car garage with a/c and enough tools to break just about anythiing. I realize my cars disqualify me from the majority of the discussions on this site but when I finish work on the 72, I'll be looking for another project. My wife knows there'll be another project car and this time it'll be a real oldie. It's hard for me to get my head around the definition of oldie these days. When I bought my 47 Ford in 1964, it was considered a cl***ic oldie but it was only 17 years old. If you buy a 17-year old car today, it's a 92 and that's five years newer than my "new" Corvette.
Welcome from central florida! And don't listen to hrm2k...I envy your sense of history and having been there first! But it freaks me out that a brand new car when I was 9 qualifies as an antique. What the hell does that make me?!
welcome back see as we get older we get to play again but this time with money and a real dream so go for the gold my friend
Welcome from the Niagara Region of Ontario, the land where Snowbirds are born. Isn't it sobering when something you bought brand new is now in a museum? Been there, done that.
The Jalopy Journal
