Whether we’re talking cars you’ve owned in series or multiple vehicles in your stable right now, I gotta believe they represent a pretty varied range of styles and use cases and capabilities, even if you’ve stuck to just a few brands. I suppose there’s a non-zero chance some of you have owned nothing but lightweight roadsters and currently have a pair of Miatas in the garage, but I’ll be very surprised if you pop up in the comments.
As for the rest of us, there’s probably a pretty good swing from first car to current car, if only because you can likely afford a lot more car now than you could when you were shopping for your first set of wheels. And tastes change, too; you don’t see too many car folks who are still 100% committed to the same machines that excited them back when they had a subscription to Import Tuner. But whatever the reason, I’m confident your car history includes vehicles at some distance from each other on the norm-core to extra-spicy spectrum.
… which brings us to today’s Ask. Speaking for myself, my normalest car is about as regular and basic as it gets, the humble Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon. The example below is positively exotic compared to the “America” version I owned, which was the cheapest of the cheap. It did have a digital clock and a radio (as I recall, the clock was in the radio, but I may be wrong), however, so not totally Spartan. Mine certainly did not have those wonderful wheel covers, or two-tone paint, or a pinstripe. I could only dream.
As for my “craziest” car, well, a Mustang GT isn’t that crazy. Mine wasn’t even a Premium; for the same X-Plan price, give or take a few hundo, I could get a loaded V6 (this was 2012, pre-boostang) or a base GT. This was the first year for the Coyote engine, so the V6 was never a consideration. Lots of fun, lots of tickets, lots of rear tires.
Your turn:
What’s The Most Normal Car You’ve Ever Owned And What’s The Craziest?
Top graphic images: Chrysler; Toyota
Most of the cars I’ve owned have been normal and boring. The craziest, maybe the most likely to make an enthusiast drool, was a 1973 Volvo 1800ES.
Most normal? 1998 Ford Ranger. 4-banger, 5-speed, single cab short bed. It was a fun little truck that felt like a toy.
Craziest? That’s a tough one… I’d rank the 1965 Corvair Convertible as the craziest, with my ’91 Corvette (teal with a 6-speed) a close second, and then maybe my 1994 Trans Am (also teal – not intentional) with a 6-speed and the loudest exhaust I have ever had. Or maybe the ’76 Celica GT liftback that was yellow with a billion brown pinstripes? Maybe the ’91 Camaro with the 3.1 and wheels where the red paint had faded to pink?
Nothing too exciting for me. Most of my cars have been very normal, with the most normal being a 2003 Camry. 4 cylinder with the 4 speed auto. Pretty much the default option for a family sedan of its era. It was in the family for 17 boring but exceedingly reliable years.
My oddest vehicle was a 1989 F350 reefer truck. It had belonged to a school district at one point and I bought it from a guy who used it to haul materials for a house he was building. It had the 7.3 IDI diesel, non-turbo. You couldn’t hear yourself think while accelerating and the whole cab would shake like a wet dog when you turned it off. It was a slug and drove the same whether it was empty or had thousands of pounds of stuff in the box.
Most normal: 2001 Kia Rio. It was my first car and best described as “one of the cars of all time.”
Craziest: 2006 Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI.
Have 2018 Mazda3 manual and 2025 Taycan S wagon. Had had a 2011 Mazda RX8 R3 for 5 wonderful years since new. Sold for stupid reasons.
Edit: the amount of attention that the green Taycan gets is crazy!!!
Normal: 1988 Toyota Corolla. Don’t even remember the low end trim it was, but had crank windows, and the auto in it was prob the one upgrade.
Craziest: 1977 MB 240D 4spd. Had 400K miles. Yeah – I’m pretty lame that that is the craziest. But still the most unique thing we’ve owned.
Normal: 2006 Toyota Echo (Manual) – most fun daily I’ve ever had; Go-kart dynamics, and you can take it to the limit on your commute: perfect slow car driven fast.
Craziest: 2007 BMW Z4M Coupe – high strung motor, uncompromising suspension, terrible shifter (that 1-2 throw), obscene maintenance needs. Undrivable on most streets in my prairie city.
I’m thinking about getting back into a fun car again, and honestly, I’m looking for Echos, not Z4s.
I remember driving the Z4M at the Montmelo race track. I absolutely adored it. Perhaps the greatest car I have ever driven.
My Z4M was the best car I ever owned.
That engine is just epic.
That straight six was something else. Also that car was completely raw and mechanical.
In the same “trackday” we could also experience the brand new (at the time) E90 M3. The V8 car was far faster, but came nowhere near as close for excitement and thrills to the small two seater straight six-engined beast.
Yes – beautiful car if you have access to a track, which where I am, I do not.
I regret selling it, but it was to the point where it was just going to sit in my garage as an art piece, getting under 1000 miles a year, most of those going to the mechanic and back, and that’s no way for car like that to live. I sold it to a collector out west in a much nicer climate.
I can relate. I sold my Alpine for similar reasons.
I’ve driven a couple Echos, and their platform mates the Scion xB, fantastic car; I think I’d go with the newer Yaris though. For a little work, and not too much money you can pull 1G on a skid pad with them; and yeah these are the poster children for slow car fast, especially with a manual transmission.
I had a friend with one who exclaimed “They Echo is NOT a Race Car” when I drove hers. I disagreed then, and I still do today.
Yeah – for sure! I recall back in the day there was a Vitz (echo) race series in Japan, so its very much a race car.
Yaris – I hear you, and I like that its newer (the echo stock is pretty rusty now), but I just like the aesthetics of the echo a lot more.
Most normal: Cutlass Ciera or Toyota Tercel
Craziest: Exo X MR or F250 Tremor
For boring take your pick: 86 cavalier, 91 escort, 2004 accent, 2012 accent.
Not boring is my 81 Pinzgauer. I feel I have atoned for my car buying sins.
The most normal car I’ve ever owned was Volvo 240 DL with crank windows and plastic headliner. The craziest car I ever owned was Jeep CJ 5 with a 304 V8 that’d been stroked and bored and sported a radical cam, and an enormous Holley four barrel and headers. Supposedly it put out 300+ HP (as opposed to 150 stock). All of this – combined with a tiny wheelbase and high center of gravity – turned that Jeep into a rabid raccoon. Can’t even recall all the times it nearly killed me before I sold it. Don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it. Made my hemi Charger and Super Bee feel tame.
Most Normal: First-gen CR-V
Craziest: Citroen Traction Avant or Lancia Fulvia Coupe
Fulvia Coupé!
Most Normal: Jeep Grand Cherokee and not a “holy grail” version. They built like eleventy billion of them.
Craziest: My Viper is the obvious choice, but I also owned a manual trans first gen Honda Insight, which is certainly unique. I could also maybe put my lifted 1983 Dodge Rampage used for the gambler 500.
I actually forgot I owned a Jeep Grand Cherokee! ’02 base Laredo, in gray on gray cloth – yawn. I6, autotragic, but it did have the good full-time AWD with lo-range transfer case as about the only option on the thing. Completely forgettable and almost certainly the most normal thing I have ever owned. My first SUV, bought to tow a boat around and be a sacrificial anode for my BMW in the winter. I replaced it with a P38a Range Rover after a couple years.
Yep mine was a Laredo, auto, full time AWD, white with gray plastic cladding. Bought to tow my boat and do general driving. Had some street oriented all terrains on it and it was great in the winter. My wife ran it into a mailbox and since they made a million of them I just went to the junkyard and had a new “used” fender the next day. It was a great useful appliance.
Yup, mine was “fine”. Not terrible, not great, just “vehicle”. The Range Rover was special and made me feel like royalty driving it. It also gave me nervous twitches thinking about all the things that COULD go wrong, but mostly never did while I owned it. The Land Rover Disco I that replaced THAT is the happy medium. Much nicer than the Jeep, much less complicated than the Rangie. Time to sell it though, I have no use for it anymore.
Craziest: Honda Odyssey FL350 (the dune buggy, not the minivan).
Boring: Honda Odyssey (the minivan, not the dune buggy).
My brother had an Odyssey buggy briefly, and I always regretted not trying it out.
One of my biggest “I shouldn’t have sold it” regrets is my Odyssey 350.
Or the Raider snowmobile.
Normal? Probably the ’88 Nova, though by the time I owned it, they weren’t common so it wasn’t too normal. Craziest is probably my FR-S, but that’s not that crazy. I suppose my Sentra SE-R would also be about as crazy, if not crazier as by the time I donated it I could see through the trunk floor to the ground. The rust was that bad when I got rid of it.
Craziest: thinking I needed a pickup truck.
Sure, I used it. I transported bulk dirt, broken concrete, lumber, bags of cement, motorcycles, etc…
But as soon as I got rid of my pickup truck, I noticed I no longer needed a pickup truck.
And it wasn’t because all the work on the house was complete, or I no longer had motorcycles but that I genuinely seemed to find excuses that I needed a truck to do things.
My first car was an ’86 Chevy Celebrity with the 90 HP Iron Duke. That was definitely the most whelming car I’ve owned.
The craziest car I’ve owned is absolutely no contest.
That is 10000% pure unadulterated awesome. Though I must admit, as a multiple serial BMW owner I liked the porcupine theme the best.
Too many on the list qualify for the “normal”…84 Camry, 92 Sentra, 99 Elantra, and more.
Two for the craziest…76 AMC Gremlin X and 88 Mazda 323 GTX.
Normalest, current one: a 2026 Renault Clio Techno E-Tech hybrid. It’s the mid trim version with I believe no extras (not even the colour, green was standard). 16” wheels (with 60-profile tyres) single zone climate control, cloth manual seats. A simple commuter car with no pretensions.
Craziest: 2019 BMW M140i. Looks can be deceiving. Couple the relatively lightweight 3 door body, rear wheel drive and that straight six atomic bomb and that car was savage. Capable of covering a lot of ground in little time it could also make the traction control light come up… in fourth.
(A110 GT was more exotic, but less wild)
Most normal was a 2005 (I think? I don’t even remember it was so boring) Daihatsu Move (base model, non-turbo). Craziest was a 1987 Trans Am GTA. I don’t think there are very many people who have owned both of those cars.
most normal : Mitsubishi Space Star mk2
Craziest : Osi 20 MTS
Not really crazy opposites, but from “truck” to “TRUCK”- from ’92 Ranger to ’95 F-350 manual powerstroke dually crew cab long bed in fire engine red.
Man, I thought my going from a RCSB ’98 Chevy C1500 to a ECLB 4×4 ’95 F150 was a jump!
2002 Chevy Cavalier vs 2026 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing for me.
Quite the jump!
Most normal would be that 1990 maroon Honda accord, and they craziest was a 1970 Jeepster Commando I daily drove for the second half of the 1990s in MN winters.
I still love a penalty box. My craziest was a 1974 VW Beetle. I didn’t know shit about things, so once they got rid of leaded gas in the 90s, I probably tortured poor Howie. Most normal? Probably a bog standard Mazda 323. I currently rock a Mirage. I love a tiny hatchback.
I haven’t owned any really crazy vehicles, so I’ll go with a 1972 VW Karmann Ghia with an autostick. The most normal would be a 2008 Galaxy Grey Honda Civic automatic sedan.