Was the first time special for you?

[disasterbus]

NO, not that first time.......... ;D

I mean the first time you bought a car yourself, so what was the first car you bought for yourself and what are you driving now?

Have you risen through the ranks from Banger to Bentley or (like me) are you still driving much the same thing?

My first car, bought when I was 17 with money from 2 part time jobs while I ws at college, 850cc of performance motoring


(would love to buy it back if it still exists)


25 years later I've got this.........


Not a huge leap forward in 25 years of driving

[kent]

Baxk in 1988 I was given a basket case or a cavalier 1600 gl that had a gear box fault.
It would only engage 3rd and 4th gear and i drove it like this for a week (killing the clutch) I called the vauxhall dealer for prices on parts and he sujjested checking a pinch bolt on the gear selector.
tightened said bolt and all gears sorted!!!
I ran it for another 6 months until i aquired my girlfriends manta.

I now run a mazda 6 and mx5

[pompeypaul]

my first car was a 1500dl hillman avenger mk1, many many cars later its a 1955 p4 rover

[akku]

I set the tone for the life to come by buying several hopeless non functional cars before my parents gave me (on the basis I gave them the money when I eventually sold it) my mum's Opel Kadett.

I bought a Hillman Avenger Estate, co-owned a Honda N600 and eventually this Morris Minor (for a whopping £35 off a lecturer at college)



The Kadett



Another Minor which was a worse lost cause than the first one followed and then I inherited my grandfather's Capri Mk2 when he died, sold the Kadett then.



Sadly I think the first car I "chose" myself and actually managed to drive on the road was a Rover 213S.



Not this one. I was sure I had photos of mine though. What a POS it was. I sold it and bought a Mk3 Cortina instead.

[MrSpeedy]

My first time was special.
Aged 16, i bought myself a bent and rotten '72 Beetle.
Spent the next 12 months bodging it back together. Then promptly wrote it off 6 months later !
Kept the salvage and rebuilt it again.
Gave up on it the when it got wrote of by a double decker bus !!
Several other shitters and crashes later, now have a Vitesse needing restoration and alternating between a '96 Maverick and '90 Merc 190e as a daily

[Sammo]

I kinda had 5 first cars

When I was 15 my Dad gave me his Fiat Uno ie to do up for my first car. Got it running and then sold it ;D

When I was 16 I bought an Escort XR3i for £100. I got my Dad to take me out in it a couple of times and then I stripped it and made £400 off the spares

Then while still 16 I bought a Fiesta XR2 which some mates and I drove around a bit (on private land of course) and then stripped it for spares and made a profit again

Still at the age of 16 I was offered a Mini City 1275 for £70 However I could never get the bloody thing to run so I ended up eBaying it about 6 months later

Then when I was 17 and taking driving lessons I was looking on Loot for potential first cars and came across an 88' Vauxhall Nova 1.3 SR for £150. Unfortunatly it was in Southampton which made it impossible to collect due to not having a license. However I e-mailed the guy saying I was interested and would he consider driving it to me. He replied with a yes, as long as I paid for his train ticket home So that weekend my extremely clean and tidy, Tax'd and MOT'd £150 SR Nova turned up I was so chuffed with it. Me and my mates fitted a full Ashley exhaust system to it and once I had passed my test we were always out in it

I went through a few Vauxhalls and VW's after that. I now work for Ford so have a Fiesta company car. So I have kind of moved up the ranks I suppose.

[surprisingskoda]

Ah, the first time. My first car I bought before I had a licence. I couldn't find a non-rotten Estelle in Northern Ireland (and I was determined to have one) so I found a top of the range '87 130LSE in my favourite orange on ebay of all places.
Of course this was all back in 2004 when ebay was still usable and not full of plebs. So I somehow convinced my dad that this was a good idea, to fly over, meet Steve the F3 racer in his Nova or some other brown square car and go get my Estelle. No tax but a long MOT, I had no licence so that's why I had to get my dad to drive and I had to pay for it all.
Won the auction by 13p over another aggressive bidder - my winning bid going in 6 seconds before the end. Sniping was manual back then!


Got it home and immediately stripped the vinyl roof off and started to pull the interior apart.

Spend 5k making it very max-power then just in time realised what I was doing and sold all the naff audio and neons and curse word.

Been through a few wheels too...

refurbed those myself - total learning curve car, learned a lot on it and never let anyone else touch it except my dad.

Still have it - still waiting for the 'big plan' to be bump-started. Now has wide wellers and pink KN jupiters waiting for it

[tonycocacola]

not my first ever car, i'd had a mk2 essy and chevette before, this was the first one i bought and insured with my own hard earned money.



here's where i am now, 20 years later.

[SparksECM]

First car bought with my own money was my mk2 cortina estate, still restoring that and hoping to have her on the road soon. First car owned by my was a sunny 1.6sr pulsar rep that I drove to the mot station where it failed......appaulingly. Next up is my current sunny sr which I love to bits

[PistonBroker]

I drove my old dear's cars from 17-22 until I finally graduated and saved enough cash to buy my first car, a 205 Roland Garros. Bit of a culture shock from the succession of brand new Corsas that my old dear had on the never-never!

Bit of a wasted period really - if I'd known then what I know now I could've easily afforded a car.

We're a one-car family right now whilst SWMBO isn't working - a sensible, ISOFIXd, Mazda 6 estate.

I've had some interesting stuff and good times over the last decade though!

[mrj]

first car was an ex-police Passat Variant from 1974. I gave the seller a second hand TV and it was mine. LOTS of welding later it was registered in my name on my 18th birthday and i kept it for a year, then sold it and bought the Audi 100 from my dad. I still have that today sitting in the barn waiting for better times Since then i had a lot of VWs, mainly Passats and Santanas, also had 2 BMWs (2002 and E28) , a Ford Taunus, a couple of Alfas and the first and only new car; a 2008 Renault Megane CC .... i gave that back to my old company when they sacked me (they went bust 3 months later ;D) and now i am driving in a Passat .... so nothing really changed...

[10mpg]

hmm first car I bought with my own hard earned money was a Renault 25 GTS 2.0 in gold with black steelies, I think it was £120 and the guy delivered it for free! speedo never worked but it had a great stereo electric everything and looked pimptastic, biggest comfiest car of all my mates at the time, and fastest to, I'd actually love another..

great car went all over in it got arrested in it a couple of time too, failed the MOT then rotted away in a mates garden..

Now I have a Range Rover 4.6 and a Camaro as my dailys plus a heap of 'interesting' projects so moved up but I still miss the old gold peril..


Arrrggghhh theres a V6 Turbo 25 on ebay right now, 205bhp of french barge can I resist...?

cgi.ebay.co.uk/Renault-25-V6-Turbo-Countach-GT40-Replica-Donor-Car-/280583967659?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item41541b93ab

[bmcnut]

my first car was a Mini Clubman Estate in '97, which turned out to be a bodged basket case with rear sill made out of filler and fag packets, and dreaded cover sills on both sides. Spent lots of time making it into a 1275GT rocket ship, only for it to get smashed to bits a year later by the local pond scum when parked outside my dads lock up. Currently driving the Austin Maxi that my dad gave me a lift in all those years ago to pick the Mini up, and then tow it home when the coil packed up.

[purplevanman]

Before I passed my test I had bought a herald vert and a mk1 tina, unfortunatly neither were on the road with me at the wheel as I spent years on bikes before I went to cars.
Once a car was needed I went out and got a Viva HC 4 door, EDG395L, passed my test in 88, sold the Viva soon after and bought a sliding door Sherpa Van from my local bike shop, that was px'd with a m8 for a MK4/5 tina estate then the story continued to this day and I don't think I have ever owned a car less than 10yrs old and nowt newer than N reg
never had a car loan, until I bought Katys Nova, had to go to parents for that one as it was the car, fixing said car then insuring it etc so that was a tad beyond my "normal" budget :/ but it was worth it when Brian drove it to RRG10 and we gave it to her on the sunday

[Seth]

I bought my first car aged 18 in 1993. It was old and English. I lowered it and did some custom paint.



I bought my second car in 1995. It was old and English. I lowered it and did some custom paint. I still own it.



I am now older and it is 2010. I bought an old English car a couple of years ago. I lowered it, did some custom paint and fitted some different wheels.

[robinmasters]

I had a 1L Austin Metro. Blew the head gasket within a few months (possibly not helped by the way I drove it ).

First mechanical repair I did on a car-changing the headgasket on an A-series. I learnt a little bit about spannering, and a lot about skinned knuckles

[speedy88]

Not the first car I drove by a long shot but first car I owned was this horrible mk3 fiesta 1.8 diesel:



It was an awful car with knackered suspension. I left the road in it several times and I've never driven anything that handled quite so terrible. Saying that it did 55mpg all day long...

I'm now only on car number 2 but it's deffinatly the best car I've ever driven. Customising it has just made it better, I'm mucho happy.

I did have a number 3 but I sold that, Volvo 240 GLT slushbox.

[hoopsontoast]

I remember driving back from collecting my dolly sprint, was like a kid at xmas! Stalled it about 4 times on the way home i was so excited! Was less than a week later i got the back end out on a roundabout towards the fuckem meet and got a puncture

[tofufi]

My first car...



Bought it, spent ages welding it, got it an MOT. Drove it around for about 3 years before it needed major work. I still have it, but it looks more like this...



And at the moment, this is my daily...



Special, but in a different way.

[Brian Damaged]

I had a '66 Mk1 Cortina 1200 to ar5e about with when I was 14, and a '65 Mini Countryman (£100 with 12m MOT ) when I turned 17 (which I started learning to drive in) but the first car I actually bought and insured once I'd passed my test in 1983 was a 1967 Triumph 2000, like this one:

KOB 524E came with a year's MOT, just 55,000m under its belt in the hands of two owners, and was in a fairly dull shade of Olive Green with green leather seats. It had been fitted with Armstrong 'Selectaride' dampers and four Lucas 576 spotlamps (which I've still got somewhere...) across the front.

I'd love to say that I lavished it with loving care, but the truth was it was 1983, and it was just another old car back then.....so I felt no guilt whatsover in thrashing the living bejesus out of it. At the time most of my peers had relatives who worked for what was then Austin Rover, so the majority of them had brand new Minis and Metros. I felt a perverse sense of pride in turning up at the local meeting place (known imaginatively as 'the car park') where we'd routinely gather of an evening and sullying the ranks of their highly polished Longbridge products with my filthy dirty, drab olive monster.

Every other Friday night we'd hoof it over the back fence of my local tyre dealers and nick whatever part-worn 165x13's they had lying about as my party trick was to pull up at the lights opposite 'the car park', have a couple of mates jump out and pour a bottle of Harpic over the back tyres, then do a 5k launch and wreathe the place in choking smoke....

In six months I managed to annihilate three engines and two gearboxes, but (amazingly, given the way I drove the thing) managed to avoid hitting anything or anyone.

Fast forward 27 years (and over 60 cars), and once again it looks I could be just about to buy an example of unloved Brit tin*

*Sort of British. Watch This Space. ;D