Your Fathers Car., earliest memory. Options

[wonkipop]

i had a big afternoon of meetings getting a headache listening to net ball australia's special requirements for a girls netball facility.

got home at 7.00pm with a headache.
opened the fridge.
no beer.
ah - sh#t. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

wander out the door, down the lane to the cellar shop to pick up a 6 pack of J beer.
and whats propped on the curb at the end of the lane.

holden fc. 1956-58.
my father's first car (not the actual one but similar - same two tone color, same interior).
my first childhood memory of a car is this one.
would have been 1964/5. sitting in the back seat of one of these little aussie numbers.
sometimes in the front seat. i specifically remember going to the bakery with him to get the bread.

he did have a car before that. a whippet. but i have no memory of that.

anyway this one was there.
completely original. no restoration.
on full plates too. not historic plates.
i have not seen an unrestored one of these for at least 3 decades.
this one was completely intact.
over 65 years old.
the aussie car.
actually a GM product and a kind of shrunken poor cousin north antarctica chevrolet!
but a great car.
these things could survive even a nuclear attack let alone australian roads back then.
ford falcons fell to pieces from the front end back under assault from australian pseudo tarmac. but not these babies.




it blew me away to run into something older than me, and with no plastic surgery. memories came back.

who else has run into their first family car they can remember?
and confronted them again in the street.

post them up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[campbellcj]

My first family car memory was a white VW Bug, not sure of the year but mid/late 60s. Subsequently we got a big '68 Plymouth Satellite station wagon with a 318 V8 in a light green color, which we still had when I started learning to drive. A green 72 Chevy Vega and a maroon 77 Buick LeSabre sedan followed later. (Both piles of junk.) They also had one of the earlier Honda Accords for a while which also was kind of a junky car, surprisingly, and they dumped that pretty quickly. Since the mid-80s my parents have been die-hard Toyota people.

[930cabman]

I remember my Dad out running a tornado driving across country. I remember looking over the back seat, the speedo needle was pegged in the 54' caddy and my Mom was yelling "DRIVE FASTER BOB, DRIVE FASTER BOB..!"

Go Bob

[technicalninja]

My first memories are all 914s...
My Dad has been a Porsche nut his entire life and when I was born he was SCCA racing a Porsche convertible D.
I don't remember the D at all, but after his stint in the Airforce he got out too late for a pilot's job with the airlines and ended up selling Porsches at Green Oaks Porsche Audi up in Ft Worth.
The Dealership owners, The Quins, are still close family friends.
Back then all of the salesmen took demonstrators home for the weekends.
Very occasionally it was a "real" Porsche 911 but most of the time it was a 914.

We called them P-Wagons as a play on their pedigree...

Dad would take me with him, in a nice brand new 914, and we'd go around Lake Benbrook at speed early Sunday morning, just after sunup.

He'd been racing for about 10 years then and "at speed" was serious.

So, I have street racing memories in many, many 914s as my first automotive memories.

These relationships are so old that when Dad found our current 914 he had Louis Quin (dealer owner son who raced 914s for the dealership) check it out.

Louis said "You just HAVE to buy it, if you don't I will".

So, the 914 saga has another chapter left to write...

[slowrodent]

Late '50s big-assed Mercury... I was a wee tyke... Car was bought used, as were all my dad's cars back then.... until a 1968 Pontiac Catalina was our first brand-spankin' new vehicle...He was way proud of that one.

[SKL1]

I vaguely remember my mom's '51 Cadillac 4 door sedan, and my dad's '54 Chevy convertible. Biggest kid memory was my dad borrowing a friend's '55 T-bird to take me on rides on my 5th birthday. Think there were strong car genes in our family?? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


(and my dad got his own 914 6 months after I got mine...)

[Pursang]

Man, I'm getting old. The first car I remember was a 1951 (?) Packard Clipper. I would have been about six years old at the time. The thing I remember most about it were the rope pulls that were mounted horizontally on the back of the front seats to aid exit of rear seat (adult) passengers.

[KELTY360]

Man, I'm getting old. The first car I remember was a 1951 (?) Packard Clipper. I would have been about six years old at the time. The thing I remember most about it were the rope pulls that were mounted horizontally on the back of the front seats to aid exit of rear seat (adult) passengers.

I think those were called robe cords and were designed to hold a blanket that could keep back seat passengers warm.

[Pursang]

Man, I'm getting old. The first car I remember was a 1951 (?) Packard Clipper. I would have been about six years old at the time. The thing I remember most about it were the rope pulls that were mounted horizontally on the back of the front seats to aid exit of rear seat (adult) passengers.

I think those were called robe cords and were designed to hold a blanket that could keep back seat passengers warm.

Yeah. That sounds right. Talked to my brother about this and he said Dad's car was a 1950 model and the cord was a single item from one side of the seat to the other.

[NotLance]

A little bit closer to the present tense than some here but having this in the garage definitely started my fascination with cars. (And inspired the choice of 914 for my own first car). While I don't think it was his first car, the story of him buying it when he was young and building it his way over the decades always stuck with me. Now I've started doing the same with my 914!

When the once-in-a-blue moon my dad had off of work would roll around he would drop me off for school in it - we would always stop for donuts. Fast forward the years a bit and he's got me in the driver's seat learning how to drive a standard - All so I can drive my 914 when the motor went back in.

[East coaster]

My fathers restored 1910 Overland brings fond memories. I’d love to know where it is now.

[dr914@autoatlanta.com]

On may 28th 1964 my Dad was cleaning out our 60 Buick Lesabre in our basement garage in Glastonbury connecticut. I asked him "Dad why are you cleaning out the car?" He replied, "Just cleaning it as I usually do!" to which I replied: "No Dad, you are taking things out of it not cleaning it!" " Ok George, Jump in and I will show you!"
We took a ride over to the Buick Dealer in West Hartford Connecticut only to behold a lineup of the best looking cars I had ever seen and my Dad's heartthrob for the rest of his life, a 1964 Buick Riviera. "Dad we are buying one of these?" "Yes George, one of these!" I could not believe it, four bucket seats and POWER WINDOWS!!!!

My Mom was not thrilled, how to fit four children (another was to come a few years later) in a car with four bucket seats???

[bossboy302]

1964 Ford Galaxie 500 hardtop. 390 4bbl carb dual exhaust:
After a family dinner (dad, mom, 3 kids) pops would slow and then do several 20-100 full floor sprints on the open road. Mom would raise her voice is displeasure while dad convinced her he was "just blowing out the carbon". My brother and I would squeal in delight at the 2 black 'contrails' left in our wake...

sorry, not his first car by far, but the one I still remember most vividly

[bdstone914]

First car I remember my dad had was a 41 Olds. When my mom drove my sisters to school they hid so no one would see them in the old car. It was a beast. He saved the front seat for a garage seat for many years.

[pt_700]

from the days of the one and only "family" car, 1970 volkswagen bus. i almost died twice in that thing!

1st time & one of my earliest memories, musta been 2 or 3, mom put me out and i reached back in the sliding door to grab a piece of styrofoam from a bean bag, she didn't see this and slammed the door on my head!

2nd time, mom rear ended someone and i was seated in the front, in the days before kid seats. i wound up on the floor with the front crumpled around me. i'm told i was extracted without a scratch.

what kinda guilt poor mom musta felt...

[Geezer914]

1950 Chevy 2dr coupe. Sold it in 1956 and bought a 55 Chevy Belaire 2dr 6cyl. Two tone white/light blue. I was 8 at the time. My dad built this go-kart when I was 11.

[flipb]

I'm younger than all you geezers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/stirthepot.gif) so mine's not as exotic. My Dad had a 912 and then a 911 but got rid of the latter around the time I was born.

I have clear memories of riding around in his Volvo wagon. It was sort of dijon mustard colored.

But the one that made an impression on me was in 1985, he ordered a new Saab 9000 Turbo, sight-unseen, before any had made it to the US. It was a month or two before it was delivered. When he brought it home, seven-year-old-me was astounded. It was like a fighter jet had landed in our driveway. It had digital screens! The cockpit wrapped around the driver! My mind was blown. I sat in it for hours. At one point, I accidentally pushed in the cigarette lighter and then ran into the house crying - I told my mom that the car was going to catch on fire the next time dad started it.

(Fortunately, it did not. But it did spend several weeks at the dealership when the computer-controlled fuel injection died a few weeks into our ownership. The techs had no idea how to service it and were on the phone with Sweden every day.)

It was pretty much identical to this one:(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/peacetek.net-10752-1678308513.1.jpg)

[seanpaulmc]

It was something like this...





but without the cool shirt.

[mrholland2]

Dad had a 1968 Plymouth Roadrunner (bright blue, 383 automatic), mom had a 1964 Pontiac Tempest Lemans 4 speed, no power anything.

I recall riding in the Roadrunner with the speedo pegged on north hiway 63 in mid Missouri going to Camp Thunderbird when some Corvette decided to race my dad.

Mostly I recall sitting in the bucket passenger seat of mom's LeMans and shifting for her.

No wonder I'm into older cars!

[CCE]

My dad liked nice cars but down here in Mexico there was not much to choose from. Reading the topic I can really recall my dad with his black Mustang 81, a hardtop fox body 8cil automatic. I remember it was the car he owned and liked the most, in his mind the best car ever was the 50s t-bird, he said it was the Frank Sinatra’s car.

(By the way. The mustang ended up upside down in the hands of my sister while my dad was on vacations)

[StarBear]

I LOVE these stories!! Very touching. Keep ‘em coming!