My parents shipped me off to Roosevelt Military Academy in 1967. My choice was that or being an emancipated minor. The farmer across the street, in Aledo, had a barn full of old cars. I bought a 1930 Oldsmobile for $60., got it running, but never drove it because I was only 15.
This is not the car, but it sure looked like it. I was forced to abandon the project when my parents wouldn't pay to ship it home.
My next car my parents wouldn't have approved of, had they known I bought it. They went on a two week cruise while granny was supposed to be watching us. I was 16. I went on a 2-week building rampage. The day they left I came home with a '61 Corvair. I moved their cars out onto the circular drive as granny watched me take over the garage. With hacksaw and cutting torch I removed the top, removed the doors, cut the floorpan away between the doorposts and shortened the car by 3 feet. Bolted the halves together and drove it to a friend's father's station to do some welding underneath. The hoist was tied up and I didn't want to get caught driving it so I walked home. Came back the next day to find out that my friend's grandfather came in to run the night shift, thought someone had abandoned a POS behind his station, hooked it up to his wrecker and towed it to the scrap yard where it was promptly crushed. probably did me a favor.
Short one with the look of displeasure on her face is granny and the tall one is me.
When I actually got my license at 17 I shared a car with my mother. It was quite the date car. It was a 1967 Delmont 88 in canary yellow with a white painted top. To top it off it had a baby-puke green interior. I wrecked the fender and bumper, fixed it and changed the exterior color to match the interior. I taped the whole car and had an Earl Scheib paint job on it. They must not have left it in the oven long enough as my arm stuck to the paint when I casually signaled for a left. It was a totally uncool 4-door, too.
My very first car that I purchased with my own money was a 1968 Firebird that I bought in '71 for $1,600. It was an automatic with a 2-bbl 350, but it was a Firebird. The insurance was outrageous. I had already racked up a few points. My fiance, now wife of 38 years, suggested that I put my car in her name. It dropped the premium from $650 a year (a king's ransom for a 19 year old in 1971) to $250 a year with better coverage. Unfortunately, I didn't understand the scope of what I had just signed until I got a notice 2 weeks later that I had been made an EXCLUDED DRIVER on my own car. She had my car, my bank book and my stereo. I married her to get my stuff back. I was allowed back on the insurance once we were married. It became her daily driver as I had a work truck that I brought home.
On our honeymoon I took all of our money and lived like a king, until 2 days before our trip home. I had run through $5,000 and only had $10 to last us the last two days of our honeymoon. It was the last time I was in charge of money. Came home to no money and no job. This is the Ford Grenada Consul I wrecked on our honeymoon. Failed to remember that I had half a car on the left of me. The Spanish speaking owner was not happy that I blew all the windows out of his MG Canback.
I got some money on loan from a crooked car dealer and bought myself a 1968 Ford Country Squire that looked good for about 2 weeks. That's when the rust came through and the paint fell off.
That lasted me until 1974, when I got the Dodge van. My nickname was Bear and I had a thing for Pandas, as you can see. When we moved into a new neighborhood the next door neighbor ran in the house yelling "There's Hippies moving in next door!!!!!".
I bought a '70 Grand Marquis that had had a dash fire. It was too big a project. It languished and my landlord told me it had to go so I got a few bucks for it at a scrap yard. It languished because the fire was so hot that the carb melted and zinc rolled into the combustion chambers. I gave up. Besides. I needed a haircut.
Sometime in here I bought a 190SL.
