Two things we all remember, no matter what… our first love and our first car. While my first love shall remain anonymous in this space, my first car was a 1956 Volkswagen Beetle, as mentioned in an earlier post.
It was dark green and came out of Wolfsburg that way. It had no gas gauge, but a reserve tank handle under the dash. If you ran out of gas, you turned the handle and could go another 40 miles or so. If you ran out of gas after that, you had no one to blame but yourself. There were semaphore turn signals that actually worked. If you were making a left turn, you turned a knob and the signal flew up from the left window post. Same for the right, and I cannot for the life of me remember how they were returned to their original position. It had no radio, no heater and a non syncronized transmission, meaning you had to come to a complete stop before returning to first gear. Someone before me had not done so and chipped a tooth off the gear. Hence, taking off in first gear sounded like taking off in a P-40 Warhawk.
Other first cars in my family and neigborhood included my father with his 1947 Mercury Coupe (pictured) which he bought new after he got out of the Navy; my cousin Herb’s T-Bucket rail hot rod he and my uncle built; cousin Dennis’ 1963 Falcon, Danny’s 1958 Bel Air, and Judy’s 1966 Mustang.
Neighborhood cars included Ronnie Shook’s 1963 Triumph Spitfire, Mark Durham’s Austin Mini (imagine 5 or 6 longhairs riding around in that thing; you get the picture), Jan Stowe’s Sunbeam Alpine, Jackie Stokes’ 1958 Bug, Dennis Ennis’ 1967 Karmann Ghia, David Whitehurst’s ’69 Porsche 912 (a beautiful vehicle which David still owns today) and Gail Bryant’s 1962 Chrysler Imperial with a push button transmission. There are so many more that space does not allow me to mention, although I would be remiss if I left out David Cason’s 3 wheel Cushman Mail Cart.
First loves and first cars… you never forget either, and in many ways, they are both one and the same. Keep Cruisin’! –J.
We tore up the bug to build the yellow dune buggy. In all honesty, I would have been perfectly happy to keep the bug… I miss it more today than the dune buggy. I even asked if we could keep it but was told no, we wanted a dune buggy. So, in that sense, we f…d it up too, trying to make it something it wasn’t.
Believe it or not. My first car was a 1970 Camaro. Blue with a black vinyl top. 307 V8. One owner before me. Mint condition until I completely f…d it up, trying to make it the super muscle car, it wasn’t.