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?
My first car was a 1965 Plymouth Fury 3, two door, with a 383 and 4bbl. The year was 1999. It wasn’t great in Minnesota winters, which is what ultimately led me to get my second car, a 1991 BMW 318is, in 2001. That beautiful little car led me on a long journey of BMWs which culminated in a 2008 535xi, but I digress. The other car I spent a lot of time in during high school was my dad’s 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee, 5.2l. I hooned that thing everywhere.
Only car of these that I still own is the Fury, it is patiently waiting for me to get a suitable place to yank the motor out and rebuild the whole thing.
2000 Saab 9-5 Aero 5MT. 200k miles, and boy what a neat nightmare. 1 of 200 in its’ year and color, had the rare vented seats option, first in any car. That car got me into and out of old cars and serious DIYing.
At first it drove well and I was over the moon to have such a unique first car. I’d bought it from an enthusiast so I wasn’t that worried about mechanical condition, but I had it inspected at a specialist about a year into ownership since it was leaking fluids pretty bad. I received an insane laundry list bill. I decided to DIY it all, having no experience beyond a year of autoshop. Redid basically the entire top end along with hoses, serpentine belt, front main and brakes myself. Then I replaced the leaky oil pressure sensor… and it immediately proved the old one wasn’t working. I found out the bottom end had low oil pressure from a previous owner running out of oil. The crankcase was rusty. I had the rod bearings done, thanks to sunk cost. The front lip was missing and the whole front end was askew from a poorly repaired accident. I took apart the front end and rebuilt it better, learned to paint and did a proper automotive tri stage rattle can job on the front lip.
By this point I was thoroughly done with this car and its’ money pit ways, and about to head to college where I needed something that actually functioned. Despite my best efforts to detail and buff it, it still didn’t act like it had seen the work I gave it- cracked leather, dents, a leaky rear main, bad CVs, electrical issues and dying paint, so I sold it for a decent loss. Which was very wise. Nine months after the sale, I realized the car also may have had a slightly tweaked frame from the accident thanks to a strut brace I sold to a fellow enthusiast because it didn’t quite fit, where it worked just fine on his car. So was it objectively a horrible first car? Sure, but it also taught me numerous mechanic skills and lessons about how to do proper diligence on future car purchases. I also met numerous people in the Saab community I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to know. For the cost of a few grand that’s not such a bad deal.
A 1990 Geo Prism LSi hatchback in blue. 700$. So thoroughly rotted DT would gasp upon seeing it. It was the ultimate shitbox.
Junior year: 1994 Nissan Sentra E (poverty spec: manual, steel wheels, no ac, no power steering, no side-view mirror).
Senior year: 2004 Subaru WRX Wagon (also a manual, but just a bit of an upgrade). My reward for maintaining good grades.
At 16, in 1975, I bought a 1955 Chevy with a 265 V8 and 3 on the tree. I restored it in the 80s and kept it for 30 years.
‘86 Bronco II, 2.9L 5 spd Eddie Bauer edition. One of the most unreliable vehicles ever to come out of Dearborn.
My dad and I spent countless hours fixing that thing, only to have it fail again in the most absurd ways. We even repaired the rust that encircled the bottom of the body.
The only thing that could be said for it was that we bought it and sold it two years later for $2500.
When it wasn’t broken, an ‘03 VW Golf. But it broke more than I’d like so I often was stuck driving my mom’s 2001 Pontiac Montana. Or, if I got obscenely lucky, she’d need her van and I could take one of the farm trucks to school. We had an ‘86 Chevy K10 and an ‘87. GMC K (V?) 1500 that I absolutely LOVED to drive. Probably cemented my love for rusty old trucks which ironically held up better than that much newer VW.
Was 2003 still too early for VW to figure out electricity? Because I miss my 1995 GTI VR6, but I don’t miss the countless electrical gremlins that came as a factory option. They would “brick” the car long before anyone ever used that word as a verb – naturally, most often trying to leave the gas pump on my way to work. I finally got them all fixed by the time I sold the car… to a kid who bought a much better GTI than I did. That’s my worst “bought as a lemon but sold as a great car” car.
1968 AMC Rambler, 3 on the tree gramma spec and a 1980 Rabbit C
1987 GMC S-15 Jimmy. 2.8L V6, 3 speed auto, 4×4. Purchased in 1993 when I was 15 because it was cheap. It had a blown rear main seal and full perforation rust holes in front of the rear wheel wells. My father and I pulled and rebuilt the engine and then it got sent out to have the rust holes batched and a repaint. I had it repainted purple and black.
It is to date the slowest car I have ever owned or driven. Both top speed and 0-60. Even slower than my 90 hp Jetta Wagon TDI.
1960 Chevy El Camino. My Dad dragged it home from behind a bowling alley, and we rebuilt it.
He paid $150 for it, and that was probably $300 too much. But we had a good time getting it going.
We were never going to agree on music to play while we worked, so we’d just put NPR on and listen to Car Talk and classical music. I remember walking out one morning to Rites of Spring by Wagner, then pounding out dents to the 1812 Overture.
Until it was finished, though, I rode my Kawasaki KZ 440 LTD.
Pounding out dents to the 1812 Overture hits me right in my music-major feels.
I rode my bike, and I liked it. I’d race and keep up or pass the mopeds and line of cars turning into the school parking lot on the way to school, and hammer home after school with a neighboring cycling classmate. I was proud of the independence my bike gave me and never got a single ride to school K-12 (even when mom offered rides in heavy rain).
My high school ride was a 1969-1970ish Steyr (of Pinzgauer, etc. fame) Clubman 10-speed that had been left in my garage by an uncle. It was lower mid-range in quality, but looked classy. Found a picture of the exact color/model frame here: s-l500.jpg (500×333) It was already quite ancient by the time I found myself big enough to ride it in junior high (1981). I fixed it up and it was my commuter through high school. Though I had already been a free-range Gen X kid since kindergarten, that bike was my first taste of freedom many miles away from home, as I did 20-30 miles on it by myself on backroads starting in junior high. (Later got a nicer road bike in high school, but that wasn’t the commute bike.) Unfortunately, I destroyed the Steyr on my very last day of high school riding home when I stood up to accelerate and the chain skipped, dumping me on the ground with the frame bent to heck.
’76 Mustang II hatchback. I bought it used and needed to replace engine bearings within the first year.
I bought a 66 Nova at 14, but didn’t get it on the road until the summer after graduation. I actually drove (and destroyed) a 77 Catalina then a 77 Firebird to school.
When I was 16 I bought my first car, a metallic blue ’67 Mustang with dual exhaust and Cragar SS’s. Guy ran a red light and wiped me out, though luckily only minor injuries. Then got a ’76 Grand Prix, T-Tops and a 455, wow. It caught on fire in my driveway one morning. That car always had electrical issues. So then I bought my dad’s ’83 gold Toyota Tercel, yawn… But it worked out nice for delivering pizza and got around good in the snow and I drove the piss out of that and it never broke and got good mileage, and had A/C. So a win I guess. Graduated and 2 weeks later bought a Mustang GT.
My kingdom for a BOP Colonnade with t-tops and a 455. Wowzers. Put out the fire and I’ll make you an offer.
There was a car I used to see once in awhile when I lived in Portland that just made me swoon – a 1973 Buick Century Gran Sport. 455 and a four-speed. It was the quintessential “gentleman’s muscle car.”
The first was a 1978 Olds Cutlass Salon that my mom bought new and passed on down to me as a new driver in 1985. It was a 2-door with the weird, sloped back, and camel tan paint with a camel tan vinyl interior. It had the gutless 260 V8 and sluggish THM200 automatic. As a Road & Track reader, of course I saved my pennies and eventually bought my very own sports car in October of my senior year: a rusty 1973 Fiat 124 spider. It was fun, but it was also falling apart.
I went to high school in regional New Zealand. You had a choice of four or five cars from the 1980s. You either had a Ford Laser/Mazda 323 (underneath its the same car) a Toyota Corolla, a Honda Civic, Mitsubishi Mirage/Lancer or Nissan Sentra/Pulsar as your first car. Naturally I had a 1988 Mazda 323 1.3 4 speed manual. I crashed it pretty quickly and then had a JDM 1993 Toyota Carina ED (its basically a 4 door Celica). Loved my Toyota I had it all through University as well!
Class of 1972 and I bought a 1963 Valiant convertible for $300 in 1971 at 16. It served me well for years.
https://driveshare.com/car/1963-plymouth-valiant-8740
El Camino! It was an ’87, the last year they were made, and both my brother and I learned to drive on it. Every time it needed to be smogged, we’d take it to a shady mechanic who’d tune it so that it could pass the test, but not pass anything else, then he’d undo whatever he’d done as soon as it had passed. It had a bench seat, a cassette player, good old GM air conditioning with a crotch cooler vent, and a magnificently nautical sense of roadholding. I was embarrassed by it at the time, but now I miss it. It was 15 years old when I was driving it, significantly newer than the 23-year-old car I daily now, but it felt so, so much older.
Just before the start of senior year, I got my ’65 Corvair, so I paid for a reserved spot in the school parking lot for the year. The girl who parked in the spot facing mine did a double take every time I opened the “hood” and pulled my backpack out.
’68 Cadillac DeVille convertible. 472 ci, 375 hp, 8 mpg with a strong tailwind.
The amount of gasoline that car used was amazing, and not in a good way. But you could fit a ridiculous amount of beer in the trunk and it was very suitable for extra curricular activities when on a date.
2005 Subaru Forester. It wasn’t flashy but it was a pretty great first car. I still kinda miss the Weather Band radio
In high school, well I learned to drive and regularly borrowed my mom’s ‘01 Ford Escape, v6, bright yellow. That heavily tweaked Mazda chassis and the duratec v6 are both underrated, it could genuinely be fun. My car at the time was an incredibly rough ‘67 Impala SS. It was primer grey. And constantly breaking down. I thought it was cool (until I was baking on black vinyl with no A/C) but nearly no one else did, haha. I learned a lot from it, maybe most of all that I’m not actually a muscle car guy, much as I thought I was at the time. Which brings us to my dad’s car, a ‘99 Miata. It was a stick and I didn’t learn to drive it till the end of high school but once I did I realized I was a sports car/slow car fast kind of guy through and through.
late to the party
my HS ride: 1981 Volvo 245 Wagon in Green
1967 Impala/283/PowerglideHoly fuck we’re all old here
My first car was a ‘67 Impala 327/power glide but that was in 2006, haha.
Hell with both o’ y’all. I was SUPPOSED to have had my uncle’s 1966 Impala coupe for my first car, but… God DAMMIT, Uncle John A…
https://imgur.com/a/kMtJBJW
If it makes you feel better it was a real pile that tried to kill me several times, haha
I had an ’88 K2500 that was my grandpa’s old farm truck. Dad got me some American Racing wheels for it for my 18th birthday and at some point we removed the running boards so it would look less like an old farm truck. Having a V8 was cool then and GMT400s have only been more appreciated with time.
Dad owned a repossession agency while I went through grades 6-12, so we had a colorful family history of vehicles. We also lived 11 miles from town, so transportation was crucial.
A partial list (not in order):
1982 Dodge Mirada – lord god what a POS. Took my NY driver’s test in this and aced it.
1983 Isuzu Impulse Turbo – sister’s DD for a while. Hilariously fast after the turbo lag
1982 Dodge Ramcharger – Mom’s truck. She still talks of this wistfully
1979 Honda Civic – this might have been my favorite. A clutch like a Ferrari, and 40mpg
1981 Mazda B2000 – the shop truck
1982 Mazda B2000 – the second shop truck. Disgusting sticky steering wheel
1976 Dodge D200 wrecker – the 440 in this sucked gas at terrifying speeds. But it had a gumball on the roof!
1983 Audi 5000 wagon – the electrics in this were made of wet spaghetti
1973 VW Westfalia camper – my DD for junior year
1982 Nissan Sentra wagon – my DD for senior year after an accident in the VW made me realize how unsafe it was
1984 Camaro Berlinetta – don’t get too excited, it had the gutless V6. Dad loved this.
Various shitboxes with a dealer plate