so all these degen stories have made me think about my cars.

I didn't get a car when i turned 16. i drove my parents '87 Ford Escort (when i could borrow it) through high school and then didn't have a car my first couple years at college.

but then i finally decided i needed a car. i went to my buddy who fixed up cars for a living and he hooked me up with this great '89 Toyota Corolla hatchback salvage for $1300. i was stoked because i needed the car and it was reliable and he had recently restored it after a front end accident that totaled it. no big deal, it drove great.

as a side note, i remember one trip coming home from a weekend away with 4 of us in the car. my buddy was driving ahead and he had some kind of shitty Saturn also with 4 people. we decided to see how fast we could make the 200 mile journey. i had my foot on the floor for, no joke, an hour straight and the thing wouldn't get over 103 MPH. luckily, he couldn't get over 103 MPH either, so we both cruised together never having to slow down because it was Sunday afternoon and nobody was on the road.

so back to the cars, I lost my wallet with my driver's license one weekend, so on Monday, I took one of my friends to the DMV. she needed to get a new license too for some reason or another, so we both went. well, we got there and it turned out it was some kind of bank holiday and the DMV was closed. that blows.

well, I was trying to figure out how to get back on the free way and though i found it, but it turned out it was an underpass with no entrance. so i prepared to turn left and make a U-turn and go back the other way. the guy in front of me turns left, so i follow suit. BAM! T-boned by a minivan. turns out the light was green to yield and i thought it was a green arrow and just followed the guy in front.

so we get out and she's alright and everyone is alright. we wait for the cops to come and of course the cop asks me for my DL. i'm like, i was just at the DMV trying to get a new one because i lost it and it was closed. he was pretty cool about it, thankfully, and just told me to have her drive back and let us go.

well, the car is totaled, but it's my fault and i have no collision coverage, so i'm on the hook. but thankfully it's just the passenger door that's messed up and it still opens and i can drive the car, so i keep driving it.

fast forward several months and I pull up to a red light. i look in my rearview mirror and see this huge old Chevy sedan (like the cops used to drive) barreling down on me. i'm like oh shit, he's gonna hit me. i brace for impact and sure enough he plows right into me and pushes me into the RAV-4 in front of me denting her up pretty bad. he had to be going at least 30 when he plowed into me.

all 3 of us pull over and we're all youngish. he says his brakes failed (although i heard tires screeching before impact, so they were definitely doing something). nobody's really injured, so we exchange info and go on our ways. the next day i'm feeling pretty sore, so i call my insurance company and let them know and tell them i'm feeling sore. i go get checked out at the doctor who says it's whiplash and some other stuff. so i go to the chiropractor and start to get treatment.

i wasn't really that hurt, but i figured i'd use this opportunity to get treatment for the next few weeks for free to the grand total of about 2k. so the chiro bills my insurance company directly for all this, which is great.

in the meantime, the other guy's insurance company sends someone out to look at my car and assess the damage. he gets there and i show him the car. he's like, what's all this passenger side damage. i'm like, that was there before. the truth is the only damage the guy did was a minor rear fender damage (those 87 Corollas were built like tanks) and the front hood was all jammed up, but my buddy managed to bend that back so it was minor.

he looks at it and is like, this car is totaled. score!

so a couple weeks after that, the other guy's insurance company is ready to settle with me. they're like the car is totaled so we're gonna give you $1800 for it. and your $2k in chiro bills. and we'll throw another $2k in pain and suffering. i'm like, ok, done.

so they paid me $1800 for my car that was already totaled that i only paid $1300 for because it had already been totaled once before. then they paid me $2k for chiro bills that my insurance company already paid for, so i pocketed that money. then they threw in another $2k for the hell of it.

for a college student, this $5800 score was awesome.

not only that, the car wasn't really any more damaged than it had been before this guy hit me.

so i kept driving the damn car for another year! the funny part is there was some kind of electrical problem after all this (go figure) so i had to jam my old baseball glove under the parking brake every time i parked it or some light would stay on and the battery would die after about 12 hours.

that was my first car!

 

so my second car.

i went back to my buddy who i got the first car from and told him i needed another car after that one finally crapped out.

he found me a nice '92 Acura hatchback that was also salvaged. i think i paid maybe $1500 for this one? hard to remember.

anyway it was a lot nicer than the Toyota and i drove it for a couple years without issue.

later after i got married, he tells me he has a '98 Honda Civic and i decide it would be nice to have a bigger car with the family.

so i decide to sell the Toyota.

i list it in the paper for $1400 and i get a call early the next morning. this guy wants to look at it and maybe buy it.

the guy comes over and drives it and says he likes it, so we're good. well he only produces $1200 in cash.

he gives me some story about only having that much on him or whatever and can he give me a check for the other $200.

being the naïve kid i was, i'm like sure no problem.

so he leaves and the next day i deposit the check. 3 days later, bam, check bounces.

then i start to think to myself ... hmmm... the guy brought cash but didn't have enough, but somehow his check is good? wtf was i thinking?

but i wasn't ready to give up yet on that $200.

so i call the guy. he's gives me the usual bullshit stories about his mom, his brother, his daughter, his cousin, whatever, whatever.

I'm like fuck that. i go down to his bank in the morning and talk to the branch manager. i tell him what happened and show him the check. he looks up the guys account and says, sorry, there's no money in the account right now so i can't do anything. i tell him, keep the check and call me when some money hits the account.

so a couple weeks later, the guy deposits his paycheck and the manager calls me and says, there's money in the account, i cashed the check and i have the $200 for you.

awesome!

so then the funniest part is the next day the guy who bought the car calls me and says, dude, wtf i had a bunch of checks that bounced because you took that money!

I'm like, you shouldn't have given me a bad check in the first place douche.

 

so fast forward to my current car.

it's a long way from that old salvaged Corolla! but i still remember that car fondly.

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$5,800 score as a college student?

Imagine being the passenger when a uc Berkeley police officer rams into the passenger side of the car you were in at 50 mph in a 30 mph street after she runs a red light!

 

My first car was a Nissan micra.

Nothing I can say will make it worse than it was. For scale, think smart car.

It got t boned by a Volvo. Mine was written off and the Volvo drove off.

Since then it's been a mundane collection of hatchbacks for a few years and then whatever company car I was given. Usually a 3 series, c class, Audi A4 sort of thing.

The wife wrote off a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee the first time she drove as she turned a corner and "the wheel didn't come back" and she drove straight into a house. Things haven't got that much better since.

 

My first car was an 85 Cadillac with 60k miles I paid $1800 for about 10 years ago. My mom told me I didn't need a car so she wasn't going to get me one. Sacked groceries for a year and saved to buy this beauty lol.

In typical douche fashion I put 2 12s in the trunk and the lights flickered when the bass hit. A girl from my high school hit it (while I was parked and in an almost empty parking lot), and the part for the passenger tailgate was almost $2k so her rents cut me a check for more than I paid so I came out pretty nice.

To this day I'm still glad my mom didn't buy me a car bc I learned the value of a dollar. Definitely makes me appreciate where I'm at today much more.

 

Sorry i can't imagine going to Cal.....change your name?

 

I turned 16 right at the height of the Fast & the Furious' popularity. My first car was a 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse Convertible in red. For a brief while I was the coolest guy around. Then it went back to being a girl's car.

 

When I first got my license I used to drive my mom's ford tempo.. The speedo only went up to 85! (And man did it feel unsafe at that) a friend also had one and quite a few times we had the slowest races ever both burying the speedo needle off the edge of the speedo.


First car I bought was a rebuilt 1990 vw Jetta for $2000. Drove it for 2 months and one of the clutch springs broke and shot through the tranny case leaving a huge hole. $1200 for a used tranny later I was back on the road.. After a couple it failed emissions, failed the retest and I only had days before I would have to pull it off the road as I wasn't about to dump $$ into the car at that time to fix any issues since it had over 200k miles and leaked like the Exxon Valdez.

Because of the oil leaks my parents wouldn't let me park it in the driveway so I us to park in the street out front of my parents house.

One night around 11 I was already sleeping and I heard a loud bang out front. Look out the window and my car is gone. In my just waking up haze I'm like wtf, who would want to steal that car? Then I look up the street and see it sitting in my neighbors front yard.

Somebody that livened up the street was driving home drunk and rear ended it at full speed in her bmw. Pushed the car uphill about 40 feet up the road and 8 feet onto the grass.

Called the cops and before they got there I started clearing debris from the street and found a big chunk of her front bumper with her front license plate still attached. With the the cops had no problem finding her. They said the trail of coolant lead right into her garage about 2 miles away. It's amazing her bmc was able to drive away from the impact like that and make it home.. My Jetta was totaled (trunk in the backseat) and I got way more from the insurance claim that I would have had from the scrap yard where it was headed due to the emission issue. So I was really happy.

Since the key made it home and her husband covered for her she didn't get a dui (since they couldn't prove she didn't start drinking when she got home) but she did get hit for evading responsibility for the hit and run

 

70's Hollywood, Florida where I grew up after my parents moved from New York to the land of sunshine and pre-explosive population growth and of course just before the Miami Vice Days!

I bought a Datsun (before NISSAN!) little white half-ton pickup truck, I forget the year but it was a mid 60's thing. I bought it from the Datsun dealer at State Road 7 and Pembroke Road. It was the cheapest thing they had and it was in the back row, way in the back row out back! My dad wanted to help me find a car but I refused. I had to do it by myself. If I recall it started out as the Datsun Dealer and then became a huge Nissan Dealership. I believe my way of thinking was, car dealers were honest and only sold good products. I was in high school and most of the kids had cool muscle cars at my high school on Sterling Road there. Seminole Hard Rock Casino, which didn't exist at the time, it was only Seminole Indian Reservation, a metal bingo hut, a cigarette stand and an arts and crafts teepee, was about 1 mile away at most. If you didn't have a muscle car, Firebird, Trans Am, Mustang, 442, GTO, Cuda, etc., you parked outside on the streets somewhere around the back side of the school. The students parking lot was all muscle and all cool and everyone knew it! I paid $400.00 for the truck and the head gasket was leaking coolant into he engine slightly. I would have to change the oil every single week. I got a job at my best friend's grandparents wrecker service in Dania, which is the city that actually contains the Fort Lauderdale International Airport at the time. His grandfather towed for the Dania Police Dept., Broward Sheriffs Office and of course on I-95 for the Florida Highway Patrol. I was 15 years old at the time and had a restricted license. Back then the equivalent of todays CDL's was a chauffer's license and you could not get those until you were 18 years old. A chauffer's license is what was needed to drive and operate a wrecker at the time. His grandfather knew everyone in all the police departments so his grand son and I was allowed to drive and respond to the PD calls. This was around 1973. My little Datsun finally gave out and I gave it to my friend's grandfather to junk and he loaned me $500.00 to buy my other friends mom's car which was a cool, 1965 Mustang. 289 engine and great condition. It was 1974 and I was in the 11th grade. The weeks my friends grandfather was on police rotation for towing, I would sleep over their house which was next door to their shop. I was making good money at the time and it was all going into my Mustang of course. ET spoke aluminum mag wheels, over size tires, dual exhaust with cherry bombs, high rise Edelbrock manifold with twin 4 barrel carbs, all that cool stuff. Interior re done, stereo with numerous speakers and boosters, etc. Eventually, I was on the way to school one morning and just proceeded straight from a red light, and some lady T-Bones me and runs my car up a telephone pole and totals it. The insurance paid me exactly what I paid for it, $500.00. Since I had the Datsun truck for only a month or so, I consider the mustang my real first car.