Wednesday, October 12, 2011

My first car

ASM826 tags me:
1. What was your first car? Model, year, color, condition?
2. What adventures did you have in it, good or bad?
3. What happened to it, what's the end of the story?
Well, you know that this will be weird.  I can't remember.

I thought it was a Renault 19, but looking for a picture on Wikipedia brought me to the page where it says that wasn't manufactured until 1988.  I bought mine well used in 1984, when I graduated from College.  It might have been a Renault 18:



It was a piece of junk, and I got rid of it a year later and replaced it with a Chevy Cavalier.  I was living in Maryland, and it didn't have air conditioning.I replaced that a couple years later with a Ford Taurus, which was a lemon (the dashboard lights kept burning out.  It took a while before I found a car that saw eye-to-eye with me.

As to the Renault (which some of my friends in a fit of madness named "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"), I traded it in on the Chevy.  I expect it found its way to Mexico, where it may still be running today.

I guess I shouldn't complain about it, since it was cheap and it ran.  But it had a plastic interior that said la elegance francais the same way as that dude at the end of the bar in Lyon - you know, the one who hasn't seen a bar of soap since the American Army moved to make its assault over the Rhine.

But meme time is good time, so let me tag three:

1. New Jovian Thunderbolt, because I want to know what his first Zombiemobile was.

2. Uncle Jay, because I'll bet cash money his first car was a Zamboni.

3.  Paul, Dammit!, because I expect his first set of wheels displaced 20,000 tons.

7 comments:

kx59 said...

The first car I bought myself was, coincidentally, a 1983 Renault Alliance. New, silver, sewing machine motor and 5 speed manual. It had a bad habit of shredding it's clutch cable, took a full runway to get up to freeway speeds and passing anyone on a two lane highway was out of the question. Other than that, it was not a bad car.

Paul, Dammit! said...

Nope- my first vehicle was a 31' lobsterboat. I had to ride my bike to get from my mother's house to the dock. To this day, I can sneak a 650-foot ship in a 700-foot berth, but ask me to parallel park my truck and I have to use the Braille method.

NotClauswitz said...

Me too! A 1960 bondo-bandit rustbucket Egg...God only knows why...

Anonymous said...

Mine was a '66 VW Beetle, last year of 6 volt battery. Yup, headlights were just brighter than birthday candles, lol. Dad handed it down to my brother and I after he got a '76 VW Rabbit (which could haul a$$!).

Power nothing. Two dials on the entire dashboard, speedometer and gas gauge. Speedometer had a red brake pressure light and green battery light (or maybe the other way around?).

Two pull switches, one for emergency flash, the other for lights. And that was it - not even a Telefunken radio.

Heater was two lever besides the emergency brake lever between the seats. Gas tank was accessed after opening trunk (in front!). Engine was in the rear, 1600 cc. You could plant your ass on a stool and lean forward to work on it - everything was in reach.

What a car!

Anonymous said...

Fergot one more switch on VW dashboard - wipers. Two positions, on and off.

Stelle Courney said...

I just realized that teens nowadays enjoy the satisfaction of having a modern car as their first car. LOL. They sure are lucky. :D Teens before get theirs but the hand-me-over. HAHAHA. :D Anyway, I’ve been interested in vintage cars lately. Any suggestions?

Brittanie Holderness said...

I prefer cars that perform well and need less maintenance, regardless of what type and model it is. And if I’m about to sell it, I’ll make sure that it can still serve its true purpose for the buyer, but a satisfying price for him/her and a profitable one for me. =)