My first new car in 1966 was a baby-butt beige Fiat 600 & I've had more than a dozen cars, since!
Another favorite car, many years ago, was a blue Honda Accord 4-door Sedan. I drove that car nearly 100,000 miles & only had one flat tire! And it was my first automatic, car. Still, I loved the ease of handling, the luxury interior & the fact that it fit me rather comfortably, since I'm taller than most & that's the first thing I have to consider whenever I buy a new or used car. Does it fit me & will it accommodate my ET > Extra-Tall body?!
Although, my favorite color used to be yellow & I still like it now, fairly enough, but not so much as my first choice of color for any car. Yet, I did own a new yellow Ford Pinto, back in the day, when they were first introduced to the unsuspecting public, in the early 1970s.
Why?!
Well, at the time it caught my attention on the showroom floor, since yellow was a favorite color & the big back window was a space-age option I had never seen before, like an overly-large window on a sensational spacecraft, with a spectacular view of outer space. Although, the overly-wide window was on the wrong end, in my opinion back then, in the rear of the car & not in the front where I would have liked to have seen a bigger view through a wider windshield. Again, because I'm so tall.
But still I bought it, probably because of its affordability. I'm sure a Mustang or other muscle car was completely out of my price range. Still, I'm not that kind of guy, or gifted gear-head & usually always lean toward the sedan-side of the showroom.
The primary reason I wanted a new car & not a previously owned car > because I had spent the previous year laying on my back in the snow & slush through a long, cold winter, working on my green 1952 convertible MGTD that I just had to have for some surprisingly unknown & personal, or maybe psychotic reason & luckily found one listed in the newspaper for about $1,500 (1971 dollars), when fully-restored models were priced at amounts closer to $5,000.
So, I was able to negotiate a personal loan for that OMG vintage English sports car & bought it sight-unseen from a small ad in a Seattle, Washington newspaper (on the opposite side of the state) & flew there immediately thereafter to buy it, with my Dad dragged along as my accomplice & for any necessary moral support.
Long story short > I had planned to refurbish the entire car, so I could drive to California in some quixotic style, since I had just been accepted at USC in Los Angeles. Well, I fixed it up to the best of my ability & I'm still very proud of my mechanically motivated yet amateur effort, to this day, nearly 50 years later!
Yet, I opted to sell it to a friendly car dealer who was one of the few people who answered my small auto ad in the local newspaper. He said he just wanted to fix-it-up for his wife to drive around town, as a second family car. Something I couldn't do by myself, ostensibly!
And it was a very sad day when I waved goodbye to that special car. But I learned a great deal about repairing cars that I didn't think I could ever do on my own, or even had such a talent hidden away somewhere & was very surprised to discover that I could do almost anything, apparently, if I just put my mind to it & wildly wanted it bad enough!
In the end, or somewhere in the middle of that cold winter, as I was shivering underneath a dripping oil pan in so much frozen slush that I decided to be a bit more practical & drive myself in comfort to California, in a brand-new yellow Ford Pinto. Although, I virtually killed my little car on the drive south by driving faster than the posted speed limit, like maybe more than 80 miles-per-hour & so my very weary yellow Pinto would never ever go over 55 mph, as soon as I drove into Los Angeles.
I told my new friend then about my sad situation & he helped me buy a used but sweet, black & beige Volkswagen convertible, which became my favorite car during those next 4 college years.
My current favorite vehicle-of-choice is a snow-white Toyota Tacoma 4-speed pickup & it's still going strong after almost 200,000 miles I've accumulated in 15 years!
But enough about me!
Click on the picture below to view a 16-page newsletter I put together from a subjective collection of photos of vintage cars & motorcycles owned by guys who share a commonality & also have books written about some portion of their lives, in my diligent effort to support wanna-be or mechanically inclined (or not), kids at-risk or puzzled young adults, perhaps find a potential role model.
I hope you also find something of interest, either in the collection of vintage photos, or something altogether academic in one of the books, perhaps to read & possibly find a new friend, you didn't know you needed to meet! Enjoy! And drive safe!
