Who among us wasn’t absolutely counting the days until they could actually drive to school by themselves? No more indignity of being dropped off and picked by your uncool Mom or Dad, and the total lack of control of the car stereo that that entailed. Better still, no more waiting for the bus and the horrors within that were the garbage appetizer and rancid dessert to start and finish each day of school.
What sort of car you were allowed to drive or owned yourself scarcely mattered; yes, cooler was better, but literally anything that got you to school and back (and to parties and dances and your girlfriend’s house, etc.) was some level of cool by default. Because freedom is cool.
Lucky for me, the cars I drove to school were a mix of cool then and cool now. Cool then: the family’s Jeep J10 Thriftside, an example of which is not pictured below. That’s a Gladiator, because finding a usable pic of a J10 with a Thriftside bed was pretty dang hard. Aside from a different grille and blue paint instead of that sweet seafoam color, my (family’s) Jeep was just pretty much just like the pic, right down to the steelies and manual locking hubs.
Cool now, the subject of the topshot: a Toyota Tercel SR5 4WD wagon. This was primarily my Mom’s car, but I did take it to school a few times a month. It was not appreciated at the time beyond being a set of wheels to cart myself and the gang around, but it’s one of the Cars Of My Past I’d most like to have back.
The first car that was solely mine was a 1974 Super Beetle, one of three at my high school. The other was a sweeter-looking Super on mag wheels that looked faster (less slow) than mine, but was not, as proven by our stoplight drag races on the way to and from school. The other Beetle was also a Super, but equipped with the AutoStick three-speed semi-auto trans (you still had to shift it, but there was no clutch). This Beetle was the slowest of all, and I’m pretty sure it was also the slowest car at school, period. Mind you, the Spanish teacher drove a Chevette Scooter, so that’s saying something.
What did you drive in high school?
58 VW van, 64 Plymouth Valiant all the way through HS, 64 Olds F-85, when running, 66 Olds Dynamic 88 one summer before it blew up, 66 Dodge Charger drove it very occasionally as it was a project car. I also owned a bunch of motorcycles including cr250 and 500 Hondas motocross bikes, Yamaha RD400, Suzuki GT750, Triumph Trident 750, and an XS -650 Yamaha.
’91 Toyota Pickup, bought used in ’93 for well below blue book. I drove it for 9 years and put almost 200K miles on it. It was a base model: no A/C, crank windows, manual locks, no rear bumper, vinyl floors, and vinyl bench seat, 5 speed manual. It was a powertrain with some sheet metal and a seat, and I loved it. There’s nothing like that today.
A brand new equivalent 1993 Toyota Pickup cost $6300. That’s under $15K today.
They not only don’t make ’em like they used to, they REFUSE to.
How many Mavericks has Ford sold again? Hey, Nissan – are you watching this? Or can you see it from the toilet you find yourselves in? Maybe try dancin’ with the one what brung ya and see if it helps.
Brown, faux wood paneled Pinto Country Squire.
First car was an ’83 Grand Prix bought from a neighbor across the street. That lasted a couple of years to be replaced by a Dodge Ares which I think was also an ’83 I think? Either way, this was the late 90s so they weren’t new or good cars, but I loved them anyway.
I rode a bicycle. I thought it was nuts that any high schooler would have a car and I still do.
I was that guy.
After my first car collapsed due to rust, and the slant-six became a flat-six, I was offered the chance to buy a 1976 Chevy G10 work van for $1, as long as I painted over the old company logo.
So 14 rattle-cans of black primer later, I got to drive an almost windowless (well, it did have the rear windows) van with the 292-six and an automatic.
I added an under-dash tape deck and some fog lights and it got me through school.
87 Toyota Camry in light blue in and out. It ran like a top and was a blast to drive even though it was auto. The fastest I’ve ever gone was 120MPH and it was in this car on a straight stretch on a back road in the country
My first car was a 1974 Vega Kammback. It was blue with brown racing spots.
My second was a 1974 Javelin with a 360 and 4 speed. I had a love/hate relationship with that car. ????
The family car: a Ford LTD Station Wagon, green with the fake wood siding.
A 1976 MG Midget. Inca Yellow, with black stripes on the sides and an Autumn Leaf interior. My folks both worked so if I didn’t drive the MG I was taking the bus.
there was an almost identical example for sale near me not too long ago, and I was sorely tempted to buy it. But the “classic car” dealer it was at always seemed to have some sketchy cars on the lot so I assumed it didn’t run right or it had been left with the windows down or some dumb thing, so I passed.
The important thing here is that we get to the part where I drove a bitchin’ Camaro in high school. At least, that’s what my friends nicknamed it – there are far more bitchin’ Camaros than mine was, but I loved it – and over time, it became known as simply “the Bitchin’.” It was a 1978 base coupe with the standard 305/2bbl/Turbo 350 boat anchor for a drivetrain, with 135 screaming horsepower – which was still plenty enough to propel me into trouble a few times. It started off Light Metallic Blue with a powder blue interior (not very bitchin’, if you ask me), but I had it repainted a very dark metallic blue, along with adding a Z28 hood off a car in the painter’s shop yard, and it looked fantastic, body-matched Rally wheels and all. She was slower than a tax refund, but boy, was she pretty. I found out how slow one summer night in 1988 when my friend John challenged me to a drag race in his silly little 1979 Ford Fiesta… and ate my lunch. That was the night I learned what “power to weight ratio” meant, the hard way. Cringe.
But Joe, with that profile pic, a Camaro and not a Firebird? Yeah. Don’t get me started. After shopping for a second gen Firebird for the last ten of my fifteen years at that point, with good examples being plentiful within a reasonable teenager budget the entire time, they all disappeared from the market anywhere within 50 miles of me just as my parents were getting serious about buying me a car for my 16th birthday. Every Firebird I came across was either too expensive, more powerful than my parents trusted me with, wrecked or damaged, or rusted out. I was doubly frustrated at the rust, since we had just moved to Kentucky from south Alabama, and dealing with rust and used cars was a new experience I didn’t care for. I got rusted out of having a Firebird as a teenager, and after decades of meaning to pick one up sometime, they’ve now gotten too expensive for me to even think about it. I have still never owned one. I got some feelings about that.
Did your folks drive it up from the Bahamas?
No. And my dad wasn’t the mayor. Never mind that.
One of 3 cars:
1) 1972 Ford Ranch Wagon. Ex-police equipment car. Fifty percent fibreglass, 50 percent Bondo, all crap.
2) 1979 Ford LTD wagon with a 302…and a variable venturi carb.
3) 1984 Ford Crown Vic ex-RCMP car with a 351…and a variable venturi carb.
Looking back, I should have told my dad that fuel injection was a thing….
I drove a bright blue 1987 Volvo 240 DL Wagon. (For the record, I’m not dating myself with that, this was 5 years ago.) I still miss that car dearly, it’s the one vehicle I’ve owned that never stranded me, and it was pleasingly mechanical in a way a lot of the more modern machines I’ve driven aren’t. RIP
I had a dark blue 240 sedan, though this was back around 2000-2002, so it wasn’t a total antique at the time. A slow, relatively reliable tank is a pretty good choice for a 16 year old.
I went to a boarding school, so I didn’t drive anything, but some of the day students…a friend of mine got himself a nice, mildly souped-up BMW 2002 roundie that he wrecked after a year or so of somewhat unhinged driving. Two students were driving MGAs (in 1986), one BRG and one white (not year round, this was Massachusetts). And not just the day students–there was a 911 Carrera with Virginia plates in one of the parking lots and I was asked a couple of times if it was mine, since I was from Virginia; it turned out to belong to a kid from North Carolina.
Had a football teammate in high school whose first car was a very late model, almost brand new Bronco – this was 1988, and I think it was a 1986. He flipped it one night partying too hard after the game. His dad replaced it with… a similarly like-new C4 Corvette. Like that was a good idea or something for a teenager that already wiped out a Bronco screwing around.
The punchline? Of all the dads who should know better, his dad was an insurance adjuster. Sheesh.
I drove a bike, a pair of Nike Blazers, and my monthly copy of Car and Driver.
I didn’t get my license til I turned 18 – which being in July, was after I graduated.
Reading DED Jr and the others is how I knew how to drive a manual transmission before I ever got behind the wheel.
1986 Chevrolet Suburban Silverado 4×4 1/2 ton.
All dark blue cloth interior, three rows of bench seats (that weren’t very comfortable), manual hubs, and it was the last year of the quadrajet carb. It made it to almost 200k.
It was mostly good, but I really wish it was a TBI motor because those were easier to work on vs. the last Q-jets. I also which it had a better heater for that much cabin.
Please tell me it had barn doors on the back, though.
No barn doors! Tailgate with the electric roll down window. Honestly not sure which one I preferred, because we did have a later burb with barn doors. Different pros/cons for different situations.
Learned how to drive on the old man’s 1959 Imperial Lebaron. Pure land yacht, fins, rocket tail lights, 413 wedge, a push button torqeflite, and a metric fvck ton of chrome.
1st car, not said land yacht unfortunately, 82 Honda civic wagon with 5spd. The paint was shot so I rattle canned a landscape and stenciled a bunch of grateful dead bears dancing. …It was the 90s!
Yamaha Towny
Kawasaki KZ650
Triumph TR7
Pontiac Grand Ville
Those are just the ones I held the title to; family cars were
Toyota Starlet
VW Rabbit diesel
Camaro convertible (1st gen)
Back in the early 80’s my dad had an auto parts store so on days i drove into school, it was usually the small delivery truck so i could make deliveries on the way home. it was a mid-70’s Chevy C10(?) with a cab on the back. 6 cylinder, with a three on the tree.
My senior year I got my brother’s hand-me down, a salvage titled 1977 Rabbit. It was bliss. I still miss it.
1978 Jeep CJ7
1996 Geo Tracker
1991 Mazda Miata
There were three things I hated in high school. Algebra, Preppy kids, and having a dry vehicle.
Hand-me-down 1979 Buick Riviera Type S with the Turbo V6 making a whopping 170hp and all the turbo lag you could handle. In retrospect, it was way more interesting and luxurious than I deserved. And it was such a weird mix of technologies – turbo, but carbureted, FWD but longitudinal.
If I was lucky, I got to drive my Mom’s Volvo 740 turbo wagon.
Nothing sadly I had to either walk the ~2miles to school everyday or my mom drove me when she didn’t have work. Couldn’t afford a car until I was 19 and that was my POS 97 Dakota with a 5.2.
A very rusty 1979 VW Scirocco, or sometimes my dad’s ’85 Golf. Or for very special occasions like prom, my mom’s ’87 Audi 5000.
First a ’72 Mazda truck that was kinda fun but no a/c and was built well before Japanese vehicles became known for reliability (it did not help build that reputation). It was replaced by my dad’s former company car, a 2 year old ’71 Impala 4 door hardtop, gold with gold panty cloth upholstery and a black vinyl top. That had visible rust bubbles under the vinyl – in Texas, where the only salt that car ever saw was the occasional box of Morton’s in a grocery bag. Also, one of the first glued in windshields, that came loose and leaked onto the a/c duct and then onto the accelerator foot, with the flow through ventilation that always had the fan blowing, but no heat because the control valve had rusted shut (on a two year old Texas car). There wasn’t even primer on the upper part of the rear quarter panels inside the trunk – just surface rust. It did hold up pretty well to being hit by a semi, though.
They just don’t build them like they used to… thank Chthulhu.
“Panty cloth upholstery”! LOL! I know precisely this panty cloth – my granny’s 1973 Delta 88 had it in blue, and my mom’s 1974 LeSabre, bronze with a brown/gold interior, may have even been upholstered in the same panties as your Impala.
1994 Accord EX Coupe (4cyl Automatic) the first few months I had my license. Then sold the Accord because I wanted a truck. Got a 95 Chevy S10 SS- 4.3L Auto, standard cab shortbed with posi. Did a lot of burnouts in that truck through high school.
Occasionally drove my parents 1998 Grand Cherokee as well, usually if the weather was bad.