My first drive in a sports car was in a MGA. Brand new as a gift from my girlfriends father when she graduated from high school in 1957. It was great fun tooling around with the top down. Have some really great memories. Not fast but we did not care.

When she moved on I had to have a fun car and found a 1957 XK140 MC in 1959 being sold by a guy who had just been drafted. $1,500 at the time. It would qualify for one of the poor handling, braking awards but it was, at that time, my joy. I never did put the top up, just drove faster when it rained and wore a hat.

From there I went to a Porsche 356B super which I owned until I got married. I was going through a set of tires in less than six months so that is an indication of how much fun I had driving it.

And then bought a Volvo station wagon. Oh well.

alas, my parents met over the more reliable beetle (‘69 version). as for me, my first car was an ‘88 CRX with no real issues besides needing to replace the CV boots every 15K miles. But seriously, these kinds of stories would make wonderful marketing tools for our more unreliable domestic brands. i can see it now: “get close to your kids again, but them a ____ (insert your favorite 2.8-produced lemon here).”

That first photo of the day car is gorgeous, and I’m sure the key to its identity is the shape of the missing grill.

I loved this car and would not have traded the experience for anything. I learned to repair cars, do body work, etc from owning this car. The 2 Midgets brought me and my Dad closer together as we shared the experiences we had. He passed away this summer, I still have the picture of both of us sitting in our cars, waving at the camera.

I bought a 96 Miata new and still own it. It is the closest handling car I have found to the Midget. The only drawback is that it is too reliable. Half the fun of the Midgets was not knowing if you were going to make it to your destination.

About ten years ago I was driving through a rural part of the Ontario, quite lost, having taken to the backroads on the way to a friends country place. I came to a crossroads and behind some bushes I could see an abandoned garage. In one of the bays, half covered by plywood and swallow dung, was the front end of a white Healey 3000. It had clearly been sitting there for many years. Late for dinner, I made a mental note of its location and hurried on.

I never could find it again which from a financial perspective is probably just as well. Or maybe it was never really there.

By design, the first Miata had to be a “good Corolla”.

http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?p=769333

I bought mine almost exactly 13 years ago and it has been getting me where I need to go ever since, with no major repairs. The only mistake they made with the first gen Miata is overbuilding it. Absent a major accident, I can’t imagine replacing it with a new one. The new ones are truly impressive, but my base ‘94 has both character and accumulated sentimental value that the new car just can’t match.

I’m an atypical buyer, obviously, so would that the Detroit 2.8 had such problems.

Ironically that MG TD vanished into storage the year I turned 16. Go figure.

Reminds me of a mechanic I was talking to. I saw a Corvette Stingray sitting in his garage and started talking to him about it. I asked him when he thought he would be done restoring it, and he replied, “When my son leaves home.”

My first new car was a british-style roadster … a 1997 Miata! It was also pretty slow, but handled and looked great. I remember driving around, just cruising through new jersey as i often did when gas was cheap and the sun was out. I pulled up next to a guy in an old MGA, or it might have been a triumph of some sort. I was amazed at how small it was, even compared to my car! We waved and he shouted over “It must be great to own one of those things that never breaks down”. Mazda really got that one right …

My father has been a life-long “car guy”, a genetic deficiency I inherited as the sole male heir. He has always had interesting machines, and a near unbroken string of open-topped English ones scattered through life. A little black chrome bumpered B is the one I remember from my early childhood, purchased after the first-year Mustang literally crumbled in a pile of rust in our driveway in the winter on 1966. My dad sold it to “some kid” (like Paul’s brother) for $150, and on a fine spring day drove home in an MG B. I can not recall the fate of the B but when I was 9 years old in 1972 we went to Wisconsin and came home in a 1950 MG TD. Man was that car fun… until the engine blew. My father then undertook a complete restoration, with parts scattered all over our garage and basement, and every table in our house covered in catalogs from Moss Motors and MG Mitten.

My father is an all-thumbs mechanic and was really out of his element. The job took over two years to complete and put a huge strain on my parent’s marriage. I learned all my bad words while “helping” him reassemble that car.

Ironically that MG TD vanished into storage the year I turned 16. Go figure.

Whilst I was working overseas in the UK a decade or so ago, my father called me all excited… he had found a clapped out, but mostly rust-free E-type Jaguar that he was going to restore as his retirement project. Having saved up quite a bit of money over his lifetime, sanity prevailed and it became a “checkbook restoration” as I’m sure he would still be reassembling it today, while also being divorced! The car became a huge bonding experience for the two of us as we ran countless vintage rallies, including the 1999 Cannonball Classic in the Jaguar. What a ton of fun.

Tragedy stuck in 2001 when a hurricane flooded the car in a parking garage. Agreed-value insurance paid for a second restoration, but the shop that did the first job completely botched it the second time and went way over budget as well. This time my mom laid down the law, “me or the Jag”… my father called me to deliver the bad news, and in a momentary lapse of reason, my wife suggested I buy the car to save their marriage.

I bought it, sunk way too much money into addressing all the monumental bodges the “famous restorer**” inflicted upon it, and have been driving the wheels off it ever since… with my father, and just as importantly, with my sons.

Funny how it all goes in circles.

–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org

(** If you ever need to know who NOT to send your vintage Jaguar to for work, contact me via my website.)