My grandfather (not pictured above, that’s a stock-photo gentleman) drove a gold 1972 Chevelle. I know it was a base model, because it had the wheel covers seen in the topshot (which we exclusively called hubcaps back then), and I recall my Dad talking about how it had a V8, not the six-cylinder, so there was a 307 under the hood. I don’t know how Papa wound up with the Chevelle (which he almost certainly purchased used), and he was never one to talk cars much. He once noticed a crack in a tire’s sidewall and “repaired” it with duct tape, so suffice it to say, he was not a wrench.
My grandmother drove some kind of large early-70s Buick sedan, I want to say a LeSabre. All I recall of this car is that it had a green vinyl interior (all the better to stick one’s thighs to) and air conditioning – a delight in the humid summers of New England – but she never turned it on, because it “ruined the engine.” I’ve heard of planned obsolescence, but installing a Ruin Engine button right in the dash was a bold move for GM.
In case you missed it, “What did your grandparents drive?” is the question I extend to you. Some of the gang obliged with their own answers:
Antti Kautonen
I’ve mentioned my granddad’s white Corolla, but he traded it in for a very, very grey Ford Escort 1.6 Zetec in the early 2000s, with grey velour seats. Somehow it was a car that was even more invisible than a basic white Corolla with unpainted bumpers. Eventually when he gave up driving and the Escort wouldn’t pass roadworthiness inspection, I helped him sell it instead of wanting to get it for myself as a hand-me-down car.
It’s also why I like the first-gen Focus so much, because it actually showed so much design and engineering intent compared to the Escort, which was “just there.”
The Bishop
Are you over fifty years old? Then, by law, your grandparents owned a Dodge Dart or a Plymouth Valiant with a Leaning Tower of Power Slant 6 and an automatic. In most cases they were dark metallic green with a black vinyl top; my own grandparents had a two-door “Swinger” model, despite the fact that they were very much not swingers. I’m not sure they even knew the meaning of the word.
Your parents probably inherited it in the eighties as a “third car,” which meant you were not getting a new (145 horsepower) Z-28 for your sixteenth birthday.
Thank you, Antti and Bish! Your turn, gang: what did Mee-maw and Pee-paw get around in?
Top graphic images: GM; DepositPhotos.com
I’m in the UK
He had a Mini Clubman Estate
Example Picture 1
Example Picture 2
We used to fit 7 of us in it, including me and my sister in the boot
All 4 of my grandparents were city dwellers, and only my paternal grandfather drove. The only car that I associate with him (before he had a massive stroke and could no longer drive) was a 1963 or 1964 Oldsmobile 88, which was a “hand-me-up” from my father, rather than trading it in. He stopped driving around 1972 and my father took it back and sold it off.
On my dad’s side, they always had just a single GM vehicle, but my granddad rode the bus to work every day instead of driving. In my life I can remember a late-80s Oldsmobile followed by a Malibu Maxx as their final car. That Malibu was a mess of a car, just constantly had issues.
On my mom’s side, my grandparents were a Mopar family, and they had dozens of cars. At the peak, they had 17 simultaneously, and I don’t think that included the race cars. My grandpa had a couple of midget and sprint cars, one of which could have been raced, the others were vintage. They always had a Dodge conversion camper van then later a full-on RV. Also had a really nice Mark VII Jaguar in addition to all the Plymouth and Chrysler sedans. Oh yeah, three Saabs (95s and a 96, my parents have one of the 95s now), a Cosworth Vega, a bunch of other stuff. Essentially, whenever a family member was getting rid of a car, my grandpa would buy it from them and hang on to it forever, but sometimes he’d sell stuff, like the Studebaker truck that was around for a few years. A lot of his cars were special trims or weird editions like the Cosworth Vega. Some of my extended family still have most of the cars, but some were sold off after my grandparents died. I would like to get the 1973 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham that my cousin has at the moment. He’s got three or four of their old cars, so he wouldn’t notice if it went missing, right? 😀
My maternal grandparents were a testament to a good union job that allowed for getting new cars with a pretty decent regularity. As a WW2 veteran, my GF would not own a Japanese car after having been in the Pacific theater, so most things were Big 3, though he did buy a used BMW 2002 after my parents got one, although he was aghast by the price. From the 80’s until he died, he was a van guy, first with the full sized, then moving to the minivans (the Chrysler minivans were his jam, including a conversion van that had a VCR and TV in it, which was the coolest thing I’d seen ever). GM was a truck lady…F100, S-10, Ranger, F150 and last was a SportTrac- always liked having a truck to throw “treasures” in the bed of.
Paternal grandparents weren’t car people. Last car I remember my GF having was a K-car and my GM got a Civic that she drove like a bat out of hell until she got a ticket.