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 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.

 

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

 

In 1975 my Dad moved us from Akron, Ohio to Pleasanton, CA. I was 16 and pretty upset about leaving my friends, though who in the world wouldn't trade a declining Akron for the vibrant Bay Area? He bought me a a 1958 Triumph TR-3 for $1,000. It was in need of much "cosmetic" restoration, but the power-train was all very solid. It had the long hood, low-slung doors of the European sports cars with the mirrors out on the fenders... I hated that car, but he was in love with it, so I was polite and respectful. Remember, this is mid-70's California with van-conversions and jacked-up muscle cars with chrome wheels everywhere!

We (mostly he) worked on it almost every evening and on weekends. It turned out really nice, but I wanted to "fit-in" and sold it less than a year later and got me one of those muscle cars... 1970 Mustang with a 350 Cleveland, 2 Holly 660 center-squirters on top of a big old chrome tunnel-ram sticking out of the hood that would suck the gas-line dry if you forgot to turn on the electric fuel pump before you jumped on it and a whole lotta other cool stuff I can't recall. I made lots of friends in my new home and have fond memories in that car, BUT...

...now 40 years later and Dad gone 3 years now, I mostly just remember the nights and weekends working on the Triumph and how excited he'd get when some of the items we ordered from the Whitney catalog would arrive and how we hated the negative-ground electrical system in the stupid car that caused problems with the stereo I wanted to install. I treasure the time I spent with him now so much, but then had the usual eye-rolls, etc. as many teens do. I still look up a TR3 on the internet just to see the picture and think of him!

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Ha, good thread as this brings back a lot of memories.

As a young kid, I had a newspaper route, lawn mowing service, and really did anything I could to make a buck. Had saved up a couple thousand dollars by the time I was ready to turn 16. Stood in line at the DMV the day I turned 16 to get my license. Soon after, I saw a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback with the 390 engine for sale at the local corner where everyone parked their cars on the weekend that they were trying to sell. $700 = SOLD!

Soon got a job as a box boy at the local supermarket. Poured every cent I made into that car. That car had stock 335hp (iirc), and I soon had it up to 375hp by adding headers, Edelbrock high rise manifolds, cams, dual point distributor, Holley 780 dual pump / dual feed carb, sway bars, traction bars, etc. Used to race my friend all the time who had the Mustang with the 428CJ engine. My beefed up engine could only stay even with his stock 428CJ engine. I had another friend who had the Mustang Boss 302, and he had that engine massaged, and we never could beat his car. We used to go to the Friday night races all the time and race our cars. Then college came and I commuted my first semester as I changed college choices at literally the last second and could not get any on campus housing, and this car was just getting about 7-8 mpg, so was not an effective commuting car. The California smog laws had also recently passed, and I had yanked off all the smog equipment and plugged up the intake holes on the engine, so when I went to sell this car for something more commute worthy, I got nothing for the car. Would have cost me more to replace all the smog equipment and try to get this car to pass the smog test than I got for the car. Wish I could have afforded to keep it as would be worth a small fortune now as all these old muscle cars are commanding high prices now at the auctions.

So, I was now a starving college student, and I went out and got a Toyota Corona (remember those). This was the old box shaped car. I think it was a 75 or 76 model. can't really remember. Think I paid like $800 for it. It wasn't in the best shape. then, I had the bright idea that I was going to do a little body work to the car, so I started putting bondo on the rough spots, sanding it down, etc. Well the problem was that this car had like 6 coats of paint on it, in all different colors, so as I started sanding down the bondo, all these other colors came out. I had puke Blue, red, yellow, forest green, and then finally down to bare metal. I was so broke that I could not afford to paint the car, so I drove around with a car that was like 6 different colors. I eventually bought a couple cans of primer spray paint, and did the do-it-yourself primer gray paint job to cover up the mess. (Lol, I know, I know). Then my ignition switch went out, and I could not afford the $60 or $80 for a new ignition switch, so I rigged up my own hot-wire tool, where I had to hot wire my car every time I needed to go somewhere. I carried around the hot wire rig in my pocket like it was the car key, lol. Oh, the good ole starving student days (Not!)

Back then during my first semester, I was working at a Taco Bell part time while in school because you could eat for free. I think I was making like $60 / week, and that had to go towards food, gas, play time, everything. I used to live on taco bell, rice, Top ramen, and Kraft macaroni and cheese. However, that is another story, for another time!

 

This reminded me of stories from my boss in college. I dealt poker, and he had been running games for years. He would accept checks and take them to the bank in the morning. People would write a few checks in the night, and then ask to write one check when they were done for the total and take back the rest. A few times if the account was just short of the amount of the check, they would deposit enough money in the account to make the check clear and then cash it.

One time a guy asked to get his check back to change it, and when he got it he tore it up many pieces and threw it in the trash. The dealer at that time was pissed and grabbed all of the pieces out of the trash, taped it together, and the bank cashed it the next day.