Goodbye Buick Electra
My first car was a used (but in good shape) 1970 Buick Electra. It was white and a mile long. It probably got 14 miles per gallon. Tops.
I didn’t care about that. I’m not a car guy, but I loved that car. I loved the sofa like front and back seats. I loved the retro-kitch of it being decked out with six…yes Six cigarette lighters. (I guess the designers figured that even the kid in the the middle of the back seat might need light up a smoke once in a while.) I loved the gigantic jack I had to buy in case I got a flat.
I really loved that one night, while it was parked on Wilbur Street in Newark, a Honda Civic smashed into the rear end. And that while the Honda was demolished and needed to be towed away, the Buick suffered only a scratched parking sticker.
Too bad the guys who ran GM sucked so much. Too bad they were turning out indestructible coal burning battleships like my car well after their day had passed.
My mother was going to ditch her ride back in my junior year of HS (my first year with a license), but there was almost no value to it (at least to her), so she just tossed me the keys and told me not to do anything that would make her want to kick my a$$.
a 1966 red Pontiac Tempest convertable. Mom inadvertantly propped up my HS “standing.”
Thanks Mom!!! 😀
Holy crap! I had a ’71! Anything caught in the door being shut you pretty much kissed goodbye. Mine wasn’t a ragtop though, and it was a four door. The a/c could freeze meat in three minutes on a 100F day. And the heater warmed the three cars behind you on the highway.
Mine was a 4 door and not a rag top, but that was the only picture I could find.
You are right about the heating and AC. I tried to see how hot I could get it in the car one winter and had to stop at 93 degrees.
I saved for several years for my first car. It was an original BN-1 Aystin-Healey. It was used and the owner thought the clutch was shot. He took my cash offer and I had a car before I had a license. My great aunt owned a number of free-standing garages nearby my Baltimore home and it lived there for about a month.
I learned a lot about car repair and those wire wheels needed a lot of attention. I sold it two years later and got a new Twin Cam MG-A that was a true garage queen.
I can remember only one dream about a car. I drove to the garage where the car was kept temporarily. I open the door and it is there, covered with dust. I put in gas and a new battery. It starts and I back it out. Then I woke up.
That is the limit of my nostalgia.
Perhaps the old neighborhood had some meaning. When I lived there I had dozens of older relatives, a living grandmother and great aunts and uncles. All gone now, except in some scattered dreams.
A few years ago, I drove by the house where I lived from age 3 to 21. I had not seen it since I was 25. I felt an ovewhelming rush of nostalgia and sadness. Not for anything material but for the people I had loved.
Even my first love. I never told her but got a strange warning in another dream. It was G-rated.
My first car was a baby blue ’93 Thunderbird. When I bought it off someone on base, I didn’t know anything about them, and thought it was an old blue haired Sunday cruisemobile based on its looks.
Boy was I glad to be wrong.
Drove it until the transmission nearly fell out. Apparently the previous owner like the power so much that he never put it in overdrive, and tore up the next highest gear.
It would get maybe 15-17 MPG, Maaaaybe 20 on the highway if I drove the speed limit the whole way on cruise control. It was heavy, had a horrible turning radius, but had a soft ride and a 502 V8 that would want people to start racing at stop lights.
I had a plan to paint it plaid, but Maaco said it would cost $1400 because of the layers of paint. I think they just didn’t want to do it.