I would guess that most of us remember buying our first car. It is usually one of those occasions that we have waited, dreamed and worked hard to make it happen. As I remember, it was a major rite of passage when I learned how to drive and got my first driver’s license. You had to be 16 to take the test in order to get your license. I took that test on my 16th birthday. When I first had my license, I only occasionally drove my Mother's car but I loved the independence. The summer after I graduated from high school, I got my first full time job as a waitress in a restaurant. I wasn't crazy about the job but I saved every penny I earned so I could buy my own car.
When I had saved what I hoped was enough money my Dad and I went to a used car dealer. I found a 1964 Pontiac Tempest convertible and I was in love! This was in 1970 so the car was six years old and in excellent shape except it needed new tires. I paid $500 cash for the car and I still had enough left to buy new tires.
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| 1964 Pontiac Tempest |
I owned that car for eight years and it served me well. When I left home it took me from central Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee. What an adventure it was being a small-town girl in a big city. I rented my first apartment and found a job doing office work. A year later I drove my car to California where I got married and lived for three years. I still had the same car when I moved to Colorado for a year and eventually to Kansas City, Missouri where I currently live in a nearby small town. When I was just out of high school the $500 I paid for my car seemed like an awful lot of money but it was a good car and I think I got my money's worth out of it.
What was your first car? Do you have special memories about how you got it or how you felt when you got it? Did you have any adventures with that first car that you still remember?
Dear Bonnie, what a lovely post! So nice to learn more about your life, and how things were for you when you were a girl and then a young woman.
ReplyDeleteHaving worked so hard for it certainly added to the special "bond" you felt with your first car.
I have never been interested in getting a driving license, let alone my own car. All my life, I have been living close enough to walk to most of the places I want or need to go - school, shops, my work at the local library - or it was reachable by public transport. The necessity for my own car was simply never there. Nonetheless, I can relate to how you appreciated the independence driving brought you as a teenager, and what your first own car must have meant to you.
It would be wonderful if it was possible to walk most places here like it is for you. That is a rarity in our country especially with so many suburban towns outside the cities.
DeleteI'm over here in the UK..
ReplyDeleteI passed my driving test three weeks
after my 17th birthday..first time..
I'd been saving up for a car l fell
in love with in a garage at the bottom
of my road..! A Zephyr4 Mk3..Panama
Yellow..I loved that car to bits..!
Highly polished and a lovely runner..!
AH! The 60's bring them back..PLEASE..! :).
Hi Willie, welcome to my blog! Your first car sounds very nice! I bet you did have fun driving it. Thanks for commenting on my blog!
DeleteThank you for the post that was more than about the car Bonnie. Like Librarian, I enjoying learning about some of your earlier life. My first car came from my brother, a hand-me-down, when he had finished with it. I was 17, the age at we can drive on the public highway here. A Triumph Herald estate and I paid him £30. He had it for three years before me and bought it for £40. It was over 10 years old. I kept it for another two years and it was well loved, and it took me to pop festivals and dances with my friends. I have many fond memories of the car and the places we went to.
ReplyDeleteThat is wonderful that you could get a good price on your first car from your brother! It is so nice to have that first car and be able to drive to pop festivals and other fun occasions. For some of us it is something of a coming of age experience. The first few years after I left home was a bit of a crazy, fun and all over the place existence. However after I had my first child I settled down pretty quickly!
DeleteThat's a great car! My first car was a 1971 (or 72, can't remember) Cutlass Supreme - a V8 with a Rocket 350 engine. I think it got about 8 miles to the gallon, LOL. It was a rust colored car, and we used to call it the bronze bomber. I loved that car. It was my great Aunt's car that my mom bought and used until I started to drive.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great first car! I remember the Cutlass being a popular car in those days. My car was a V8 too and you know I think in those days we took it for granted that so many cars had the powerful engines. I don't think I have had a V8 since then, not that I've needed one!
DeleteMine was also a Pontiac Tempest. I did not get my license till my mid twenties. I had three children and needed to get places and not rely on my husband who traveled a lot. A neighbor was selling their five year old car. There was something wrong with the paint on the car so they had spray painted it grey. However it drove well. Best of all, they gave it to me for $50.00. I drove it for another four years and sold it for $100 to my aunt and she had it professionally painted. It lasted another four years.
ReplyDeleteWow, not only did you get it for a good price you made a profit off it when you sold it! Very good! I think you are the only person I have talked to that had a Pontiac Tempest. It seems like back in the 60's Pontiac made quite a few different models.
DeleteMy first car was a model A ford. I think my brother and I paid $45.00 for it. It was in good shape for being 26 years old but we sold it after having it for year.
ReplyDeleteNow that is a classic car Red! Wow, a Model A Ford! It would probably be worth a fortune today as a collector's car if it was in good shape.
DeleteMy parents didn't care if my sister and I learned to drive--only my brother. I didn't learn until I was 30 years old. My first car was an old used burgundy colored Pacer. My Dad called it an aquarium on wheels--LOL! I loved that car and cried when the front axle broke and she had to be sold for junk/parts. We went through a lot together.
ReplyDeleteI remember the Pacers - there was a lot of glass on that car! It is sad when you lose the first one you started out with. I think my Mother wanted me to start driving early so I could help her out!
DeleteI bought a car to have driving lessons in. It was red but I don't remember what make or model it was or how much I paid for it! My husband took it off my hands as I never passed my driving test and have never driven since! I like the look of your old car Bonnie. You must have felt very grown up in it. :)
ReplyDeleteYou probably lived in an area where you could get by without a car. There are not many places here where you can walk everywhere and we don't have as much public transportation either. Everything is built too spread out here. I wish it was possible for me to walk to more places. I did enjoy my first car plus I had to have one in order to keep a job.
DeleteI wish I could drive Bonnie. It would have given me the independence I crave.
DeleteYou could still learn to drive. The cars these days are much easier to drive then they were many years ago. xxx
DeleteThroughout my teen years I never had my own car. My mother and grandmother never had a car...so during my childhood cars were not part of my life.
ReplyDeleteThe first car that became part of my life was when I married my first husband when I was 21 years of age....in 1966. It was his car...a VW Beetle. I never really classed it as "mine".
It wasn't until 10 years, in 1976 later, that I actually had "my" car...a Holden EH Wagon. By that point Randall, my second husband were married. We'd bought a VW-Passat shortly after he arrived back to Australia from New York...in late 1974. And, then we bought the Holden as a second car, and I grabbed it!
:)
I enjoyed driving "Tonto" as I named the vehicle. The previous owner had painted it red, with a white top...and it had fake wood panelling along the sides, which made it look like the old US ranch wagons! I was the "Lone Ranger" ! :) A while back I wrote a post about "Tonto".
I hope all is well up your way, Bonnie. :)
Tonto sounds like a cool car that I imagine was quite helpful to you as The Lone Ranger! We are doing okay, I hope you are as well.
DeleteI never owned a car until I was married and then Harvey decided it made sense for me to start having a credit rating. So my first real car in my name was in 1999.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
Hi Jackie! That sounds like a wise decision and I imagine it has been helpful too.
DeleteMy first car was a used Ford, late fifties, standard. I was married, and first I had to learn to drive it. A girlfriend taught me.
ReplyDeleteGood for you for learning a standard early in life! I didn't drive a stick shift until I was much older and I had fits learning to drive it!
DeleteHey Bonnie. I love the story of your first car. I really thought I would be the only one commenting that didn't learn to drive until after being married. I was 22 when my husband taught me to drive. My older sister got a driver's license when she turned 16. I went everywhere with her. No need for me to learn. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Henny! There are plenty of women that didn't learn to drive early or even at all if it wasn't necessary. You were lucky to have a sister that could take you with her! My two brothers were quite a bit older than me and no longer lived at home when I was a teenager plus I've always lived where I had to have a car to get to and from work unfortunately.
DeleteI was 24, a new immigrant, and ar first we lived in Madison Wisconsin where the bus transportation bwas complete. We never needed a car until bwe moved away band discovered that madison was unusual! We got a green Rambler American, early 60s, second hand, which we drove across country to NJ to a job. Eventually I had to have my own car, impossible to work without it. Mine was a Dodge Dart, a slant 6. I loved it, abd was attached, very sad when she had to be scrapped.
ReplyDeleteI have been to Madison and you are right, they have an excellent transportation system. I wish more of our cities had something like that! I actually learned to drive in a Rambler American which was my Mother's car. My situation has always been the same as yours, I had to have a car to get to work.
DeleteMany typos, tiny screen, big fingers!
ReplyDeleteI had a '64 white Dodge Dart, slant six, which cost me $400.00. It was a good price from the man who had a body shop next to my Dad's dentist office. I drove it from about '67 until 1972 when I married and my husband and I moved to Germany. I gave it to his sister then. His family was Hungarian and he took a job with the University in Stuttgart so we could travel and he could show me the village where he grew up until the age of 11. I loved that car!
ReplyDeleteHi, how nice to see you here! I remember the Dodge Darts and they were great cars. It was nice of you to give it to your sister-in-law when you moved. I think most of us will always remember our first car. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteWhat a gorgeous car. I might do a post on this same topic, great idea. My first car was when my husband and I bought a used 1958 Jaguar Mark 8 coupe. It had a walnut dashboard and a walnut desk that folded down from the back of the front seat.
ReplyDeleteWow, a Jaguar is a cool car! How lucky you were to have that as a first car. You could write a great post on that. It can be fun to reminisce about our youth.
DeleteIt sounds like that car was part of many stages of your life. Many memories are tied up in it! I get emotionally attached to my vehicles, so I usually keep them for a long time. My first car was a root beer brown 1974 Toyota Celica--manual transmission (which I had to learn how to drive) and mag wheels. I shed many tears of frustration during my shift/clutch lessons.
ReplyDeleteEvery car I've had I've kept for quite a long time. They almost become part of the family. Oh how I can relate to your story of learning to drive a manual transmission! I only had one car that was not automatic and I too had a terrible time learning to drive it!
DeleteI had an orange mini, but I didn't drive it as I hadn't passed my test, my partner did. I didn't learn to drive until I was in my early 30's and we were about to adopt our first daughter.
ReplyDeleteEven if your partner drove it I imagine you still got to enjoy it. There is something special about that first car but not nearly so special as when you got your first daughter!
DeleteThat sounds like you got your money's worth with that car. The first vehicle I bought myself was a Ford f100 truck, 3 on the tree....then when I met Roger, he had just got a new Ford 4x4...this was back in the day when that was unusual. I sold my truck to his dad...I had not had it that long. So no real adventures in it.
ReplyDeleteYou did great to start out driving on a truck! I have never had any kind of a truck, usually only small cars. I did get my money's worth out of every car I've had as I could not afford to not get the most out of them.
DeleteMine was a strange British car called a Morris 1000 Traveller. I nearly died in it. I wrote a blogpost about that back in 2013. If interested, go here:- https://beefgravy.blogspot.com/2013/07/dicing.html
ReplyDeleteI read your post about the car. That was certainly a frightening experience and not the kind of good memories you would hope for from a first car!
DeleteYou had a pretty sweet first car, Bonnie. I had a 1984 Toyota Corolla for my first ride and it definitely doesn't look like the Corollas that are running around these days. Have a good one.
ReplyDeleteToyotas are great cars! We've had two and in fact we have a Corolla now. All the cars have sure changed a lot since I started driving in the 60's! You take care!
DeleteNice ride! Yes it served you well!
ReplyDeleteThere was something special about the cars from the 50's and 60's as you know with your husband's new old car!
ReplyDeleteMy first car was a 1969 Volkswagon Kharmann Ghia! I loved my little car.
ReplyDelete