Thursday, October 13, 2011

Your First Car

Found this meme over at Robb Allens, and what the heck:
1. What was your first car? Model, year, color, condition?
2. What adventures did you have in it, good or bad?
3. What happened to it, what's the end of the story?

My first car was a 57 Renault Dauphene.
Like this one only black. I got it for $50 because it needed a head gasket, and by forging my mothers signature on the papers. Mom was, shall we say, less than amused. The repair work was easy for me, I believe it took about half a day to fix. What I should have done was sell it and move on to something bigger and more profitable. But no.

Since I couldn't put it on the street legally, I decided it might make a nice autocrosser, but why run H production when with a bit of work you can run H Modified? So I did a bit of work on it:
Minor stuff like flipping the tranny upside down and mounting the motor midships. This leaves about 3 inches ground clearance, but that's a plus. It worked, but not as well as I'd hoped and it wound up getting passed on to a friend who planned to put the drive train onto a go-kart. I understand he had less success than I did.

The dapper fellow sitting on the coachwork is my younger brother.

3 comments:

Brad K. said...

A green 1970 Torino 500, in good condition, bought as a used car in 1971.

The car was built, according to the salesman, while the factory was retooling from the Fairlane 500 to the (then new) Torino. It had some '500' and some 'Torina' model markings. 22 MPG.

Anonymous said...

"A green 1970 Torino 500"

Green Torino was one of Clint Eastwood's best movies ever.

Unknown said...

“...forging my mothers signature on the papers.” - I could imagine how badly you wanted this car. Anyway, this may be almost 2 years late, but when I read “What was your first car?”, I suddenly give it a thought. I don't remember the exact model but it's color is yellow and a small pick up truck type. It's really fun reminiscing it now, particularly all the adventures I'd had while driving it. → Ava Harness @ EliteToyota.com