I learned to the drive on the road around 1984 (14th birthday) in a 1935 Ford Fordor sedan. Think big flat-head v-8 gangster car. With mechanical brakes. WHY Henry Ford stuck with those mechanical brakes for as long as he did I’ll never know. Maybe it adjusted just right they were better than the ones in our 1935 Fordor. Dunno. Anyhow I could steer it, could shift it, and could start it but I couldn’t stop it. I just wasn’t strong enough though my legs were long enough.

Went from that to a mid-60s 327 powered Impala (or Caprice?). Put that one in the woods (no damage) b/c of bald tires, WAY over-boosted brakes, and WAY WAY over-boosted steering. The times I have driven cars like that since feel very, very unsafe b/c the controls are so numb. This was a former country preachers car and carried about 400 lbs of mud under the chassis. We pulled the engine for a hot rod Dad built and the rest of the car (in good condition but needed paint) went to the crusher.

Go down to learning to drive in an 1983 Celica 5 speed. Nice little car. Not much power but it did it’s work well and last far beyond our expectations. Sunroof, gold/brown paint, a/c, RWD, five speed. Was a good little car.

Got my first of three Mustangs when I was 15 or so. First one was a 1966. Had to restore it to make it presentable. Learned to do brakes, paint, interiors, engine rebuilds, etc. What a piece of junk. It was eagerly anticipating it’s return to Mother Earth so it rusted as quickly as it could no matter what we did to slow that. It was a piece of junk b/c of the abuse the previous owners had given it. Prob 5 or 6 teens had owned that car before me. Suspension creaked. Rearend howled. Transmission was wornout. Driveshaft splines were worn. Leaked all of it’s fluids constantly. Three speed tranny. Drum brakes. Leaned like a ship in a wind-storm on the curves.

Brakes went out TWICE going down the mountain where we lived. Darned signle circuit brakes so if one wheel cylinder failed they all failed. No wreck – somehow. Was in rush hour. Three speed tranny was awful. Driven other three speeds that were better I think. Not really enough power to go from 1st to 2nd. Ratios were too wide. Then the same problem from 2nd to 3rd. COuldn’t stay in 3rd once you got there b/c the engine didn’t have enough power. 3rd was still geared too low for highway use so 60 mph made the old six scream. All 120 HP of it. Or so the spec sheet promised. Later got a ‘64.5 convertible. Never restored it. After that got an ‘81 with that same six cylinder from the retired lady next door. This time with all the smog equipment it promised 90 whole HP from a 3.3L six. How smoke it was a lazy engine – and not in any kind of good way. Power everything and a slushbox. Slushbox went out 6 months later. Apparently it preferred to be left in drive all the time. No shifting for it. Worn clutches.

Like so many above have said – these cars all taught me something about driving. I loved them all for different reasons – sometimes the same reasons. The antiques taught me how easy modern cars were relative to the 1980s. The two 60s Mustangs showed me what owner neglect would do to a car and what a partial restoration would yield (problems forever). The ‘81 Mustang taught me how to travel b/c it went to college and the US Navy with me.

It was my trips overseas that Dad claims ruined me b/c I haven’t owned another domestic vehicle since. An ‘84 Rabbit ‘ver I had over there taught me how to drive 100mph+ without getting killed. It was all about rules of the road. Folks around here don’t have enough road discipline to drive like that all the time.

I’d like to have all of them back with a shop big enough to store and work on them, money to properly care for them, and time to drive them.

My mom took me on a country road and made me practice getting the car to move without applying any throttle.

Took my drivers test in the same vehicle on my 16th birthday which was a day we recieved enough snow to cancel school yet the DMV was still open.

Great Car

First own car: 1989 Nissan Sunny 1.6 hatch. Enormous fun, no a/c, power nothing.

First time driving an automatic: A few days later… ‘95 Mercedes 300 turbodiesel wagon (I never want an auto)

At least the 2.8L V6 was relatively smooth and was surprisingly fuel efficient.

After that, I ran through a succession of Motor City iron — and then I bought a LS400, which pretty much killed any future desire to own another car made by the Big 3.

Later on, a 1972 Buick Riviera “Boattail” with a 455 cu in V8.

The Buick is the car I took my road test in.

Learned stick on a ‘60 Chevy Biscayne. Learned to relax and have fun behind the wheel of this “smaller” car. Handled much better despite no power steering since it only had a 6 up front.

I was almost 16 when my dad bought a slightly used 1990 Nissan 4×4 pickup with a 5-speed. He would take me out in it and try to teach me how to drive it, but the constant yelling and screaming from him every time I stalled it out caused me to throw him out and teach myself! And yes, I did quite well, thank you very much :)

My driver’s ed car was a real turd… 1996 Chev Cavalier, 2.2L OHV with a 3-speed slush-o-matic. You floored it get on the highway and… it just made more noise but didn’t go any faster, at least uphill. Oh, and it had 180,000 miles on it. A Cavalier with 180,000 driver’s ed miles on it and the small engine and a 3 speed automatic.

First car was a Volvo 850 sedan. Perfect first car.

What a fun car. It was brand new, and I abused the living bejeezus out of it. Blown clutch, two accidents, blown engine. (Sorry Mom and Dad.) But considering the way I treated it when they weren’t looking, and the fact that it did last 100,000 miles, I can’t really complain.

Hauled everything around in it including friends, and once my Honda CB 160 motorcycle in the back seat.

3.8l V-6 engine
Suspension and brakes from an oil tanker

Eek!

The Taunus 17M P5 model had a 1.7 L V4 engine from 1964 on. I referred to the previous P3 model which had a 1.7 L I4 engine. The Taunus engine was a V4, but the Taunus model had a variety of engines.

My dad’s next car was a Ford Corsair with a V4 engine. It wasn’t a bad engine as I recall, but there was no real benefit over an I4 and it was more expensive to make, so they dropped it.

A V6 or V8 is quite a bit shorter than the inline version, but not so much with a V4.

If you rev a 39 hp 997cc Anglia engine (the basis of Cosworth’s Formula Junior engine and their first money maker) to about 4 or 5 grand and dump the clutch, it will dig up a lot of gravel for, ooh, say, 20 or 30 feet, due to the overall 17 to one low gear ratio and miniscule 13 inch tires. What fun!

A year or so later, just before my 16th birthday, my Mum let me drive that Anglia for about 30 miles illegally on a cross Nova Scotia paved highway with zero traffic, with her as tutor. Discovered that driving is really about steering properly. Wasn’t expecting that. To this day, I find only about half of people can really steer well. They just don’t get it.

Just last month, as I passed six cars at one go on a rural two lane, The Leggy GT maxed out to 6900rpm in third, my 88 year old Mom had a big grin on her face over in the passenger seat. “That was fun!” she said. Best female driver I was ever driven by, made my Dad look like a piker back in those old days, and well-known in our parts in the early sixties for driving everywhere at 70 to 80 mph, SMOOTHLY. Inspired me to be a skilled driver if I really tried. Unusual tale but true.

I learned to drive in a ‘76 Plymouth Volare station wagon, and learned to drive a manual in a ‘61 International Scout. It had 3 fwd gears (6 if you count lo-range) and 90 hp and could get to 55 mph only on a downhill.

Away from school I practiced on a POS 1980 Ford Mustang (mom’s) with a stupendous 88 bhp from its 3.3-liter straight-six. Engine just wouldn’t rev. Post-dated memo to Ford: one-barrel carburetors just don’t cut it.

It was an ‘85 300ZX 2-seater with T-Tops and had the oh-so-80’s digital dashboard. The color scheme was also very 80-s- the exterior was white (a little plain, but looked okay) but the interior was burgandy velour (about the same shade as a bloodclot). Nissan was also into using silver metallic trim all over the console and parts of the lower dash.

At the time, I thought it was the coolest car in the world. It felt quicker than it actually was- especially with t-tops out, windows down and listening to the growl of the 3.0L V6. The electronic instrument panel added the illusion of speed with it’s massive bar-graph display of engine rpm- wind it up to 5,000rpm in 1st and the green bars would sweep both across and upward, though a digital numberic display above it showed the revs as well. It felt like a BEAST!

I can only imagine what I’d think of its performance today. My Mazda3 5-door has the same amount of horsepower, accelerates faster and handles a thousand times better than the Z. But the early/mid-80’s were the very dark times for performance.