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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: What kind of cars have you had?
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Sean Weitzel
Jedi Master Film Handler
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Posts: 619
From: Vacaville, CA (1790 miles west of Rockwall)
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 09-03-2014 02:23 PM
Here's my list in order starting when I earned my driver license in 1992. All have been used cars. I've never bought a brand new vehicle in my life.:
1963 4 door Chrysler Newport, white, 361 v8 pushbutton auto. Inherited from my great aunt when she passed away. Sold to roomate who eventually abandoned it somewhere.
1973 VW standard bug, Orange, 1600cc and automatic stickshift. Got me though high school. Sold (for a profit!) when I needed something more reliable for a 100 mile a day PC repair service route.
1991 Saturn SL2, white, 1.9L twin cam 5 speed manual. Closest thing to a new car. Bought used at a dealership. Eventually gave to a friend's step daughter for her first car.
1988 Plymouth voyager, blue, 3.0L V6, automatic. (my parents old van. bought from them when they were going to trade it in. Eventually sold on ebay.
1969 VW standard bug convertible, blue, 1500CC, 4 speed. This was a project I took to bare metal and rebuilt from the ground up. Sold to help pay for my wedding.
1979 VW high roof bus, white, 2000cc, 4 speed. A project that never got off the ground. parted out. Never driven.
1981 DeLorean DMC-12. Bought from original owner. owned for 10 years, put 13,000 miles on it. Recently sold on ebay due to financial situation changing and also lack of interest in it anymore.
1993 Ford F250, white, 5.8L gas, automatic. Eventually sold to help pay for wedding.
1993 Ford Explorer XL, green, 4.0L v6, 4 door, 5 speed. Donated to charity after no longer passing emissions testing and a bad 5th gear in the transmission.
1968 Dodge D100 pickup, blue and rust, 225 slant 6, 3 speed column shift. This was a housewarming gift for our property. It doesn't leave the property. Just a ranch truck.
1996 Ford Explorer XLT, green, 4.0L v6, 4 door, 5 speed. I love used explorers because they are cheap, 4wd for snow, and plentiful. This one sold at the beginning of this year because we needed something bigger:
1999 Ford Expedition, black, 4.6L v8, 4 door, automatic. We drive this pig currently.
1999 Subaru Legacy Outback, green, 2.5L, 4 door, 5 speed. We drive this currently as well.
2001 Honda Insight hybrid, blue, 1.0L hybrid, 2 door, CVT. This was our long distance commuter but 230k on the high voltage battery pack took its toll. We are currently rebuilding the pack with reconditioned cells and hope to put this back on the road by fall.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
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Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 09-03-2014 03:43 PM
I've always been a Ford guy. Partly because we have a Ford dealership in town here and they have always been good customers of ours, but I've just always liked Ford products.
My first car was a 1973 Mustang, but since then I have always bought new cars. When I first started owning cars I was living at home with very low expenses, so the payments were easy. Plus I don't really go in for a lot of fancy "stuff" in my life (I've always only had one car, and I have no boat, RV, snowmobile, motorcycle or jet ski, and I don't hunt, fish, smoke, drink or gamble) but my vehicle is my one "indulgence."
I have had:
1973 Ford Mustang, 351C (man that thing was a mover). I got it in 1975. When I traded it in, the guy who bought it had the motor blow up on him after about two months so I guess I got out of it at the right time.
"1977 1/2" white/green Ford Mustang Cobra II with a 302, T-roof and all. It was called a "'77 and a half" because they changed the paint style mid-year. It was the first Cobra II in the state, I was told. Very cool car. It had a stick shift, which was an adjustment from the '73 which had an automatic. I had learned to drive a manual tranny in my dad's 1947 Willys Jeep, so I was amazed how easy the '77 was to shift!
1980 Mustang with a 2.3L 4-cylinder. White with a rust-colored vinyl top. For some reason at that time I had started thinking, "man I need to settle down." So I got the 4-banger to save on gas, basically. Big mistake....it was an OK car but it was totally gutless. I hated it after a while, so I went to....
1981 Mercury Zephyr, 3.3L 6cyl and an automatic tranny. It was yellow and gold. A little more fancy than the Mustangs. After I had it for 3 weeks, I got into a head-on collision with a drunk driver who had no insurance. Lucky, nobody was badly hurt (it happened in town) but I got 3 stitches in my chin from it. A girl I was hoping to "woo" was in the car with me, and the accident pretty much ended THAT adventure! I wanted to get it totaled and replaced, but the insurance company and dealership were $900 apart on the price. Eventually they met in the middle and I got a new identical second version of that car.
1982 white Thunderbird with a 4.2. My first car with a built-in cassette deck (everything else up to now had been 8-tracks). It was the year they redesigned the T-bird from a very long-nosed car into a smaller, more sporty car. It was really aerodynamic and fun to drive compared to the Zephyr.
In '83 they came out with the zero-percent loans for the first time, so just on a whim I priced out what it would cost to trade the '82 in on an '83. I found out that by just extending my payment for a couple of months, and dropping the interest to zero, I could get an '83 T-bird, so I did. It was basically the same as the '82 but it was maroon colored. I beat the crap out of that car -- I must have been going through a rebellious period or something, I neglected it a lot. I paid the price; by the time I traded it off, in 1992, it was using a lot of oil.
1992 Ranger with a 4.0 - my first pickup. I decided it made more sense to have a pickup, considering I was always hauling stuff around for the theater. In 1999 I started dating my now-wife, so I put a LOT of miles on the truck going back and forth to Billings to see her.
2000 Ranger with 4.0 - the Ranger had been redesigned and looked a lot more like a mini-F-150. A very nice truck for the price, about 10 grand less than the F-150 and it was perfect for what I needed. I drove this until 2003, and at that point, my dad was looking for a new "in-town" pickup -- he had been driving a 1989 Ranger that was pretty much shot. So I sold him my 2000 and got a 2003 Ranger, which was pretty much the exact same truck except for the color. My mom still drives the 2000 around.
2011 black Ranger -- my current pickup and another 4.0. It's almost identical to the 2003 except for the color. It's quite the throwback -- it has no fancy electronics outside of the satellite radio and a USB port. Ford has now discontinued the Ranger and doesn't really offer anything that would replace it (for my needs at least) so, not sure what I will shoot for next. I probably won't need to worry about it for about 8 years at least!
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
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Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 09-03-2014 05:48 PM
We were a Nash/Rambler family while I was growing up.
Father had a 1952 Nash Custom, then in 1955 traded it off for a Nash Ambassador Pina Farina Edition with the Continental Kit. He had that car for years until the unibody welds started to break and cancer was spreading all of the due to these welds. Then, he went with Chrysler products and has a 1984 Imperial to this day.
I inherited the 1963 Rambler American 440H when I graduated from high school (vehicle with the twin stick, three speed/w OD) and two barrel carb to give that 196ci straight OHV 6 almost 160 hp.
I then traded that Rambler off for a 1972 Gremlin X with the 304ci V8 under the hood. Thing had a 3.91 for the rear end making it quick off the line, but with a 3speed, was a bit limited, but still had fun with it.
Yet, in this time, gas was between 26 to 29 cents a gallon making filling the 23 gallon tank in that Gremlin like a little over 7 bucks.
Then, the 1973 embargo hit and so did driving habits since the price of fuel, two years later hop from 29 cents to 60 cents a gallon. Thus, it was time to rid of the V-8 and think economy. Got sold with imports and went with a 1976 Toyota Corolla with that little Hemi 1600cc 4cylinder motor.
Been with imports since, outside of a 1989 Dodge Caravan with the Mitz 6G72 (3L) V6 that had issues with valve guides dropping and had to get that all fixed.
In 2005, bought my first GM vehicle, being a 2001 Saturn L100 and loved that car until, with only 58k on the odo, it was showing me that this thing is going to live in the shop for most of its life. Thus, it went to a Kia dealership as a trade in for a new Rondo in 2008 which we still have presently and no issues with it.
As for my DD vehicle, I drive a 1990 Ply Laser Turbo that I bought for a song (less than a grand) back in 2008. Had to do some electrical repairs that were just simply needed, but as for the moment, runs like a dream. Even though the body was built in Illinois (Normal), the drive train is from Mitsubishi.
I had too many other import vehicles in between then and now to where I list track of them, or just too many to list-should have just stuck with one and drove it til the wheels fell off.
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Sam Graham
AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues.
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Posts: 1431
From: Waukee, IA
Registered: Dec 2004
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posted 09-04-2014 12:06 AM
My dad, being a VW service manager, naturally raised me as a VW guy. I'm not really mechanically inclined, but knew enough about them to understand what to expect and how to keep them hobbled together. So that's what I drove until everything moved away from mechanical and more into electrical. All of the VW's noted had manual transmissions.
My first was a black '74 Super Beetle ($150) with red vinyl interior. The floor pans were rusted out so bad we permanently bolted the seats in place to where they never could be adjusted again and welded sheet metal below them. It also had a fumy gas tank that made those few brave enough to ride in it ill.
My second was a red '74 Super Beetle ($650) with white vinyl interior. It had no reverse gear, so I always had to take care to park uphill.
Then a yellow '75 VW Dasher wagon ($500) with fake wood paneling and a factory 8-track stereo (left channel in the center of the dash, right channel in the right rear hatch panel). Moved to North Dakota in a snowy November (1986) in that thing and had random electrical issues that I eventually figured out was due to a piece of metal from an old fuse making contact with other fuses in the engine-mounted fuse box while digging through it in a howling wind at a Husky truck stop somewhere in Montana. That trip was also the only time I've ever been to Forsyth. Had a hot dog and a Coke for dinner at their 7-Eleven. The transmission went out on that car a year later, and a biker guy I knew who worked at a junk yard managed to make an old Subaru transmission work in it for $600.
Then I made the mistake of picking up a horrible brown '79 Rabbit ($1100) which quickly developed serious fuel issues I couldn't resolve. I actually owned it AND the Dasher simultaneously because the Rabbit was unreliable.
Then a black '84 1/2 Scirocco ($5900), one of my favorite cars ever, and the first I ever financed.
Then a dark blue '89 Fox ($2000) base model with a four-speed manual, no A/C, and a paint color that was different than the original factory color (which was metallic blue), but which looked way better. It was small and basic but super easy to work on and generally reliable. I think the only time it ever gave me a scare was when it warned I was overheating when I wasn't due to a faulty thermostat.
Then a red '90 Corrado G60 ($7900). Worst car ever. Electrical and engine issues that probably cost me as much as the original purchase price. An engine mount failed and the accelerator cable connector broke from the gas pedal, leaving me stranded in rural Idaho. A mechanic in Paul, Idaho helped me jury rig it so I could continue on.
The Corrado issues resulted in the purchase of a high mileage '86 Jetta ($650) to serve as cheap backup transportation. Also, I really loved the look of the second generation Jettas. I actually ended up putting a couple of grand into it and ran it around for about five years. Wife #1 used it as her daily driver for awhile too. Actually, she sold it to a friend of hers.
Then I got a dark blue '00 New Beetle GLX ($11,900), with the 20-valve turbo four. Favorite car ever. It had its quirks, but they were worth it.
That was my last VW. I moved on to the Nissan Rogue, the most reliable car I've ever had, and the first new car I've ever purchased.
Which, when you consider I was driving VW's all those years, isn't saying much.
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Richard Hamilton
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1341
From: Evansville, Indiana
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 09-04-2014 06:49 AM
Steve, when I look at the rear end of your 2014 car and compare it to mine, all I see are two American Supercars.
![-](http://www.film-tech.com/uploads/uploads0503/2014-corvette-stingray-rear-redft.JPG)
If I only had about 60-80k laying around
The first few cars that I drove in High school:
Unsure what year Pontiac J2000 sedan (parents car). When fully loaded with 4 teenagers, top speed 40mph. It was a 4 cylinder beast
Early eighties Delta 88 Royale.
77 Monte Carlo. Bought that boat from my best friends brother. Lost my virginity in that big back seat
2nd generation Buick Regal Turbo. I got at a car auction. Looked good, ran like shit. Turbo had been removed.
Hand me down from my brother: (yes thats me in the mid 80's) ![-](http://www.film-tech.com/uploads/uploads0503/firebird2ft.JPG)
Straight 6 OHC 3 speed. Quick and fun to drive. That car got handed down to my sister when she turned 16. I objected, saying theres no power steering, she can't drive it AND it's a stick. GET HER A DAMN J2000!!! The next day it had girly stickers all over the dash and door panels. Had I known then how much that car is worth...
Looking back, I think I got the Buick after high school. Theres also a 73 Cutlass in that high school mix somewhere. 2 door coupe 350 rocket, bucket seats, Crager mags! Also a hand down from my brother. It was like rotating stock for a while.
Those are all the cars I had but didn't buy myself (high school days).
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