There was a little chatter in the automotive thread about this, so I thought this would be a good Friday distraction. Lets hear about your first car, or truck, or motorbike. We don't need a full listing of every vehicle you ever owned, just the first special one. That being said, I'm making the thread so I get to break that rule because my first one wasn't really a daily driver, and I only owned half of it.
Behold, a really really bad picture of the '79 Chevy Vandura. When my friend and I graduated high school, we decided to take some time off and do a road trip. So we bought this thing, sometime around June 1996 for $3750. Mechanically it didn't need much work(though we would later have all 4 tires blow on us due to cracking and age) but the interior needed a little customizing. It already had a U-bench seat/bed a counter and a sink. No fridge, furnace, water tank or any mechanical, just a drain pipe out the side. So we put in an upper bunk, laid some sweet brown carpet, gave the topper a fresh coat of paint and installed a booming system. We used a Coleman stove(outside) and a BBQ for cooking. had a cooler and a big water jug. We brought our bikes on the back and a propane tank. Pretty minimal. Oh, it also had the 4 barrel carburetor, so when you stepped on it it's dump fuel form a fire hose. It was always a delicate balance of going fast enough, but not opening those extra 2 barrels. One cool feature for its age was intermittent wipers. No other features, but those were neat!
We spent the fall from the end of September to mid December touring the US. It was awesome. When we were done, we kept it for a few years for various camping and ski trips. Surferguy came on one to Fernie! Good times. Eventually we both needed money and sold it for $3250.
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So my first real car was a 1987 Chevy Corsica with the 2.8l V6. One of the shop mechanics had bought it for $800 from the original owner as a bit of a deal for work done, and was going to be his daily driver. He knew I desperately needed a car, and sold it to me for the same $800. He later regretted that, and told me every day how great a car I had gotten. This thing was a great little sedan. One of my favourite quirks was that the aftermarket cruise control buttons had stopped working. I pulled it from the mount and realized I could engage it through various combinations of the 4 wires. So I would be cruising down the highway, pull up a few wires and spark them together in front of friends. I eventually installed a toggle switch down to the left of the driver seat, which was very convenient. The car had loads of power and a great sounding engine for what it was. It also had a low coolant light on the dash that was always on. I called it my A-OK light. as long as it was on, everything was A-OK.
I had that for about 4 years, but the fuel lines eventually rusted through. Replacing them meant dropping the fuel tank, which had rusty bolts and rusty straps. It was bound to turn into more work and more problems than it was worth.