History OK - This will be Fun - What was your very first vehicle ?

I’d had 12-15 cars before my first “hamb friendly” one. It was 55 nomad.

 

The first car I owned I found in the back field of a ranch in Montana behind my Cousins ranch in 1964, I was 14 at the time, the old rancher gave it to me. It is a 27 Model T Touring body and parts. I still have it, it is the body that I built my Modified Roadster out of. The first driving car I owned was a 41 Plymouth 4 dr sedan that I bought for $15 from a friend of my Dads. I learned a lot from working on that car, got it going and sold it for a whopping $35, I have been buying and working on old car junk since.....

 

Mine was a 1949 Chevy Fleetline, was given to me by a family friend. My dad had been trying to buy it for years, it just sat in the back of one of his properties for a probably a decade or more. I was going into auto collision for my junior year and he heard about it. While we were there visiting during the summer break, he asked if I would be interested in it. Of course I said yes, so he said I could have it. Went down and picked it up a few weeks later. Started working on it, got it running, once I was into class enough tore it down and started on it. Time goes by and with school, friends, etc. Was coming along, I moved away to go to college. Between living on my own and going to school, a car sitting around wasn't what I needed. More or less working part time, really just needed money. Ended up selling it. Unfortunately not to long after, he ended up passing away that year. That is the only car I regret getting rid of.
https://www.barnesfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Bernerd-H-Bud-Hannah?obId=2120374

 

An Off topic Dodge Dart. Hand me down from my dad. I do recall that I had to pay him but I don’t remember how much. It got me through high school and first date with the wife. I am not pining for another one. Dart that is.lol. Snowman ⛄️

 

First car was free from the farmer’s widow next door to my buddy. 1939 Chevy when I was 12 in ‘62. Hid it in the woods from the folks and rode my bike to it every day after school. Had a morning paper route to support it. A year later traded it and twenty bucks for a ‘46 Ford because it had V8.

 

1965, At the ripe 'ol age of 15 I managed to drag home a Model A 4dr for the sum of $25. It was soon replaced by a 53 Merc 2dr ht at the cost of $40 and it ran quite well except for the vapor lock issue...

 

The 51 Merc that I bought from the school Crafts shop teacher in early 1963 when I was 16 years old. I owned it for 32 years before I sold it when it wasn't for sale.
I don't have any photos of it when it was green when I bought it.
This in 1988 with my now 39 year old son.

As it looked when I first got it going in the late 70's with a Buick 350 in it.


As it sat behind my grandfather's barn from 1967 until 1978 when I towed it to my place because he was going to have where it sat leveled off and turned from family orchard/garden to field.

I towed it home and my buddy found me a 350 Buick and turbo 350 out of something not long after.
Hanging with a few more Mercs in front of Paul Harpers house up on the hill in Roslyn Wa during one of the first if not the first Run to Roslyn. My 15 ft camp trailer is still hooked to the back of it in this shot.

 

In 1958 I was 13 and bought a '35 5W from one of my Uncles for $17.50. My best friend and I completely disassembled it to the bare frame and bolted it back together. I owned it for less than three years and sold it to a high school friend for $50.00. I had bolted on Evans cylinder heads and installed 6" shackles on the front. It has been the only Ford I've owned with a Ford engine. Sure had fun and it was a great learning experience.

 

In 1962 at 15 years old, I traded my motorcycle for a ’35 Chevy pickup, it was in pretty nice complete condition. Then in short order I began to trade down. First to a ’37 Olds sedan and then to a pretty used up ’34 Olds sedan. Of course none of them ran.

Then I bought a ’41 Merc coupe, without an engine, for $20. My parents decided the Merc was a nicer car and had the Olds hauled away when I was at school. With help from some friends I swapped in a 283 in the ’41. I had my first runner! Drove it for a few months and demolished the trans. Sold the engine back to my friend and the car for $20 .

The ’41 with the ’34 Olds in the background.

 

I was 14 and bought the T coupe to throw my paper rout in the winter of 1956 the T Tub with my brother Pat on the running board and my Dad standing by him came shortly later for spare parts. My neighbor Mike race car that he ran at Devil’s Bowl that I helped him with and he taught me how to weld and do a lot of other mechanical things that I am still useing today

 

Mine was a 1956 Ford Fairlane 2 door sedan. My dad bought it for my sister and me to drive to high school. It was 1964 and he paid $450 for it. My sister was a year ahead of me in school so when she graduated, she left home and the old Ford became mine. I tried my best to make it cool. I removed the hood and trunk emblems, bondoed the holes and sprayed rattle can paint on it to match. I got some Dodge Lancer spinners for it. Then bought some 1962 Falcon Futura bucket seat out of a junk yard and installed them. I got a Spark-O-Matic shifter and took out the automatic and installed a 3 speed manual in the floor. I played around with the old Yblock like putting a screw in the linkage so that it was a mechanical opening for the secondaries on the teapot carb. I had a lot of fun with that old car. I even drove it to Biloxi when I was in the Air Force and made a few trips with my buds to New Orleans. When I got my orders for overseas I sold it to my cousin for $250. Last I saw of it was in a small junk yard behind a service station. Someone installed a 390 in it...something I wanted to do. But it was in rough shape so I didn't try to get it back. By that time I had another car.

 

In '72 I bought a '61 F100 swb unibody with 223 six/3 spd for $315. Ran it for six months or so, got passed every damn morning on the way to school by a guy with a 4 cyl Datsun.

That summer I found a rusted out '57 New Yorker with a good 392/Torqeflite and replaced the 223/3 spd. First day of school the following fall.... Bye-Bye Datsun.

 

Reading through all of these cool stories reminded me of my “almost” first car.
It was 1963 and I was only 13. My Dad always drove old fixer uppers while Mom got the better car, so he always had an eye out for those back row cars at the local car lots. One Sunday morning he told me to get dressed we were going for a ride. We drove to Santa Monica and he pulled over in front of a used car lot on Santa Monica Blvd. We went on Sunday because there were no salesmen and my Dad had no patience for car salesmen. Sitting in the back row was a black and white ‘53 Stude Starlight coupe. It looked great. Dirty, but great. $150 was written on the windshield. My excitement skyrocketed, I’ve always loved those cars. He told me that he wanted me to have something to tinker with and learn on, with Mom’s permission, of course. He thought that this Studie would be good.
As we looked it over, he noticed oil on the ground under the engine. He looked under from several different angles and found the oil pan torn and the block broken where it had thrown a rod. No sale. I was devastated. All the way home I argued that we could get another engine from the junkyard, he could drive it to work until I got old enough to drive, they didn’t have to pay me my allowance anymore, anything!! I must have driven him crazy. But he didn’t budge. Mom wouldn’t go for it if it didn’t run. Period. Two years later I bought my ‘40 coupe.

 

1963 Catalina convertible in 1970. $200,00 red with white top and chrome reverse wheels. I was 15. Ended up having a bent frame from a previous wreck. Learn to drive in it. Then I got a 67 Marauder S55. Been kind of a Merc guy ever since. lol Larry

 

53 Chevy Bel Air 2 door Hardtop. Would like to find another I could afford.

 

I know this is HAMB era but its definitely the most uncool car mentioned yet - I wanted a Mini-Cooper and dad thought "kid wants a small foreign car" so he bought me this awful piece of French junk for $50 - a 1959 Renault Dauphine that kept blowing up in a big way. I didn't put more than a dozen miles on it in the year I owned it. It never made it back to the driveway under its own power - I became proficient at swapping pistons in this junker.



My second and third cars were way cooler a 1965 Corvair Corsa turbocharged convertible and Dean Jeffries' old 356 Porsche Custom Karrera.

 

1983 My first car was 6 years too new for this site. I was on the hunt for a particular car to spend my grocery store bagging and shopping cart retrieval money. A homeroom classmate who lived on the other side of town said " hey Ron, you're looking for a Chevelle, right? There's one for sale on Vinton st" Single mom wanted $600 and I bought it for $500. I killed that poor car. Sold it a year or two later for $300. First HAMB friendly car I bought was the 57 in 1990

 

My first 65 and older was a 61 Falcon two door, black with red and white interior. I payed $100 for it and a buddy pulled it home over ten miles with a chain. I had dreams of putting a hopped up small block in it. But I didn’t have the equipment or shop to do such a project, something 17 year olds don’t think about, I don’t have the car but I still have the title fifty years later…

 

I was 13 when I bought the 1950 Ford truck in my avatar, with money I earned picking tomatoes. I bought it at a farm auction in the next county. My Dad quit bidding at 100 bucks, even though I was tugging on his shirt sleeve. The auctioneer said, I think the kid wants you to bid, so I started bidding on my own. I think we ended at 220 bucks. The guy I was bidding against offered me a Boss 302 for 200 bucks that he was going to put in it, I had no idea what a Boss 302 was. I had it running for highschool graduation, learned a lot of skills , still have the truck. Drove a 65 two door Plymouth Savoy with the leaning tower of power and a 65 yamaha 250 till I got the truck on the road. Those were happy days.

 

This was my dad's first car - a Ford V-8 60 powered midget racer - Panama Canal Zone 1944





My grandfather had a couple of Miller race cars back in the 1930's - this is a shot of one of them at Langhorne Speedway in Pennsylvania in 1932?

 

My 1st ever was a 64 Tbird Landau. Metallic turquoise with a white vinyl (nylon?) top and turquoise interior. Clean car, no rust to speak of, had blackwall tires but all stock. It was given to me by my uncle who had it given to him. I buffed it out nice and kept it pretty clean. Had a leak in the power steering box. I kept a qt of fluid in the car, and if the wipers didn't work it needed fluid. Yes, wipers were hydraulic. Weird.
So I come home one day to find mom n dad sitting on the porch. "Hey son, you like that car?" "Yeah, it's pretty cool, gotta get after that leak one day but I like it." "Don't bullshit me, do you really like it?" "Well, yeah..." and he could tell by my slight hesitation that I was mostly happy to have a car. "Yeah, that's what I thought. That's a fuckin old man's car, what do you really want?" "68 or 69 Camaro." "Then let's sell that son of a bitch and get you one, you're too young for that fuckin thing." Dad was brutally honest most times. 20 min later there was For Sale sign in it for $750 or best offer. Was gone in a week, and I built a nice 69 outta 2 totaled cars. I was officially diagnosed with the terminal disease we all have.

 

First car was an O/T camaro when I was 16 then a few years later got my 53 Chrysler Windsor , flat six duel carb ,split exhaust, and fluid drive trans .

drive that thing EVERYWHERE for 3 years then sold it .

that’s my 69 Lincoln in the pic , that became a black on black car with black vinyl roof . Man I miss that car .

thatss my buddies 64 vette red on red it was a burn victim when he bought it , roof melted real bad from an interior fire , 4 years in body shop jail and it came back absolutely pristine !!

 

I barely made the cut off. It was a new 1965 Pontiac Tempest Custom 2 door hardtop. I ordered it new from Boomershine Pontiac in Atlanta Ga. My dad had to sign for me because I was still 17, but had already graduated high school. I paid for it with all my grass cutting and paper route money from the last seven years. My dad made me promise not to modify it or he would not sign for it. I guess I learned very quickly about lying to my dad. I started modding it within two weeks of getting it home.

 

Dad handed down his very rusty '63 C20 pickup to me in HS while I tinkered with my slightly OT Chevelle. It was green, my pals named it 'The Toad''. Later I had its replacement, a less rusty '66 panel truck. It had shag carpet & bean bag chairs in it. Late teens/early 20's. It was the group transport vehicle to concerts. 6 cyl & 3 speed on the column. These formerly $100 trucks bring real money now.

 

My "almost first car" was a '32 Chev coupe that a local Mobil station owner used to haul the used oil filters and other service station junk to the dump. Every few months he'd put a battery in it and haul a load, so it ran and drove. He was a family friend and said I could have it for $35, but my dad said NO! as he didn't want any junk sitting around the farm.
A year or so later, when I was 15; I wasn't living there anymore so was able to finally purchase my First Car. Two other buddies and I each put up 5 bucks and we drug home a '52 Studebaker 2 door with a sick six and overdrive. Needless to say none of us knew what we were doing and the poor thing never ran again...

 

Mine was an OT by 3 years Mercury product often confused with another Ford product but had way cooler tail lamps and hide away headlamps. I miss that thing.

 

Got my 1st car at 12 in 1976. It was a 1965 Ford Cortina GT , learned how to R&R a cylinder head. Then in 1977 my uncle sold me his 57 Chevy for $1.00 I still have it

 

When I was 14 my Grandmother's friend had a 63 1/2 Galaxie with a 390 and 3spd black with red interior for sale for $35 and I bought it but I had never driven any thing with a stick except for a tractor, so I kept it at grandparents house and drove it for about a month and I turned 15 and decided I was good enough at shifting, so I brought it home. Mom was not happy. Dad really did not care, I sold it at the end of summer for $50. Dad and I were fixing up a 58 Ranchero so I really did not need the 63.

 

Is it finished yet?