Question: What Was the First Car You Remember Riding In?
Mother’s Day last weekend got me to thinking about the first car ride I ever took: a cruise home from the hospital in my parents’ 1956 Olds 88. Thing is, that car got destroyed by a combination of Minnesota rust and Minnesota deer a few months later and I don’t remember it. My first identifiable car memory involves crawling around on the slippery blue vinyl back seat (without benefit of baby seat or even seat belts) of my dad’s late-60s company car: a 1967 Ford Custom 500 sedan with three-on-the-floor and overdrive. What’s yours?
I recall the intoxicating deep vroom of the big Ford’s 289 and the vast space for squabbling with my sisters in the back seat and Vietnam War news on the AM radio, but most of all I remember being fascinated by the action of that tall Rat Fink-style floor shift. It made me want to drive! Some of the credit or blame for my current career path certainly belongs with this Dearborn product. Your turn now, and I’m really hoping we have some readers who grew up in the ex-USSR and have GAZ-21 Volga memories!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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VW Bug; probably about as old as I, i.e, mid-sixties.
1957 Pontiac Chieftain, 4 door sedan, green and white with a green vinyl interior. Built like a tank.