Best and worst (and first) rides

Byron Whitney says:

My worst was a 1972 Chevrolet Vega hatchback. I bought it after rolling over a 1972 VW superbeetle in an ice storm on the Maine Turnpike. The Vega also had a 4 cylinder engine and was supposed to save on gas, but despite numerous return trips to the dealer it never got better than 10 miles to the gallon. You never had to change the oil because you were always adding more. We had to replace the transmission,the alternator, the water pump and have a half block replacement all under warranty.

Radio Bob Sauter says:

I've tried counting sheep, but the best way for me to fall asleep is by counting cars that I've owned....the number is currently around 85-90. Since this is the sort of number a guy likes to boast about, I'll confess that my total includes several vehicles that have not actually been "on the road", but served as parts cars, or were cars that I never actually got in full road trim. But I rationalize that (in theory!) I could have got them licensable.

My first car was a 1954 Renault 4CV. I was a whopping 14 when I paid $15 for it... and used it to drive around my parents 1/2 acre downstate. I suppose it was a great learners car, although I didn't learn that I had two of the four spark-plug wires in the wrong holes in the distributor until after I sold the car a few months later (also for $15!). I'd wondered why it seemed so underpowered. This (and any other 4CV) might also easily have qualified as the "worst" ride... (I owned 4 of them... the photo shows #4) Sure, they were underpowered (750 cc's, as opposed to a big Cadillac's engine displacement of 10 times that!) but they had a few other generic problems: Head gaskets would blow like Hubba-Bubble bubble gum! The suicide doors were very dangerous! Braking was minimal (don't forget these things were designed in the early 40's by some French engineering prisoners of the Third Reich!) And to make it more fun, the gas tank inlet was INSIDE the engine compartment, whilst the radiator cap was located OUTSIDE. If you were't very careful, a gas station attendant (remember those?) would often fill up the cooling system with gasoline. (maybe this was why the head gaskets used to blow?)

My best ride was possibly my 1957 Jaguar XK-140. I paid a whopping (at the time) $270 for it... they're now selling (fully restored, of course) on ebay for $100-$150K! THAT's why it was my best ride. I wish I still had it so I could have turned a 55,000% profit! As it actually worked out, I "threw a rod" in the engine, and sold it for a paltry $100. But it was a great car... it had two 6 volt batteries, one inside each front fender, to balance the ride. And these really sexy blue lights to illuminate the knurled walnut dash. AND the tachometer which indicated more rpm's in the counter-clockwise direction.

My other best ride was my 1960 Humber Super Snipe. It cost $50, but was worth every penny of it, especially for the name! It was missing the back seat, and needed a water pump. I "made" a water pump from the parts from another Rootes Group Car (Rootes had Humber, Singer, Hillman and Sunbeam, and was eventually purchased by that luckless mark... Chrysler) and drove it for thousands of miles. See that little hole in the front bumper, just above the plate? The car came with a crank... and it was fairly easy to start the beautiful hemi-head 6 with it! (I know because I found another Super Snipe down in Key West which needed a starter, but had nice set of seats!) It was a very smooth ride! And was a cool two-tone deep blue with a grey wasitband. I did have a small problem with it when I tried to replace the driveshaft "universal joint", and discovered that the front of the U-joint was Humber stock, but the rear fitted the 50's Ford differential that some prior owner had installed.

My worst ride? Well, its all relative... I've liked every car I've owned at least a little, so I'll use the term "worst" to refer to mechanical condition. The one I picked for this category would by the 1957 Austin Healy 100-6 I owned for a few months in 1969. I bought it for $20 (a real bargain!) ... but it had its issues too. For example, there was no top... and since it was late winter, and I was living in Potsdam, this was a definite drawback. Also the "front end" was shot... it would shimmy alarmingly at certain speeds... over almost any bump. And the prior owner (who was a bit of a maverick!) replaced the broken windshield glass with plexiglass... then decided to drill a series of 1/4" holes in the plexiglass to ventilate the interior! Other than that it really was a pretty good car. I eventually sold it to some guys in Jersey who wanted to make a "race car" out of it, by dropping a big V-8 into it. Never heard from them again.


Ellen Rocco says:

My friend Walter agreed to teach me how to drive on his old something (I'm a gal who never learned makes of cars). Unfortunately, my first time out at the age of 23 (I grew up in Manhattan, we took subways), I was a bit overenthusiastic about using the column shift stick, hit it really hard... except it wasn't the stick shift it was the signal light stick, which snapped neatly off the column...

Favorite, hands down: 1985 VW Vanagon, which we named Loretta for our 2003 cross country trip-- "we"being my best buddy Laurie, her 120 lb dog, me and my 15 lb pug. Everywhere we went we made friends--partly because we were such a funny looking group everyone enjoyed chatting us up, and partly because people were drawn to the Vanagon which either made people wistful about the trip they'd always wanted to take or nostalgic about some youthful adventure they had undertaken, albeit in the original air-cooled model--we had the "improved" water-cooled engine. Okay, not everyone thought we were cute...I forgot about the cars behind us when we were ascending the Rockies on two-lane roads.

Dale Hobson replies:

Another favorite of mine--my father bought the '76 Vanagon new and Terry and I busted the new off it on our honeymoon (my '65 Chevy van being unfit for human habitation). It did double duty as his summer camp, parked at Coles Creek Marina with the top up, the sliding door open, with a tarp shading the lawn chairs and hibachi as he tried to cajole at least one of the two 40-horse Johnsons on his wooden Lyman runabout into life. Like all the air-cooled VWs, in later life the heat exchanger rotted out, and my father solved his winter commuting problems by lashing down a Coleman catalytic camp heater to the floor with bungee cords and driving with the windows cracked. The fumes were no more noxious and life-threatening than his Cherry Blend pipe tobacco. It spent its declining years in his driveway, getting most use as our daughter's playhouse. She and her friends would put up the pop-top, climb up and giggle insanely over whatever it is that 5-year-old girls talk about when no one else is around.

Mark says:

My first was a 1963 MG B. I bought it in December 1971 from a family friend for $100... and it was a $100 car. I sold it in late spring of 1972 - why did I sell it at the BEGINNING of summer after having just driven it through the winter?... dumb! But it was one of the most fun cars I ever owned... until I bought recently a car I have now, a 1967 MG B. Reliving my youth I guess.

Roger says:

My vote goes to the '63 Chevy Impala Super Sport. It was the first and only car I ever ordered direct from the factory and remains the one "I wish I still had."


Michael Malley says:

A '65 Chevy Van, 90" wheelbase, 13'' wheels, it was like driving a go-cart. A flat glass windshield and a metal dash were all that protected you things that go bump. You sat on top of the front wheels, turned a near vertical steering column, and the radiator was right beside you. When it was overheating, we would drive it with the engine cover open and dribble water into the radiator from the beer cooler. Very handy for tweaking the distributor cap and carburetor on the fly too. It didn't ever have seat belts when I bought it for $200.

Dale Hobson replies:

My first wheels, too. I learned standard by driving it home from the lot. I used it for my first two jobs--delivering pizza, and hauling a 9-piece fusion-funk band to every prom and watering hole in the North Country.


Susan Gaffney says:

My 1965 powder blue Mustang convertible. After I got married, my husband made us sell it because the transmission needed replacing -- what a mistake. The husband is still here -- not a mistake...



And my 2009 dark blue Prius. Those are the cars I have loved...



My husband, in his graduate school days, used to receive Aunt Catherine's cast-off Plymouth Valliants. They were all called The Shark.


David says:

I nominate my first car - the '68 Ford Mustang - wish I still had it...



Anonymous says:

The best was my first, what had been my Dad's car. He gave it to me when I graduated from college, a 2Dr 1964 Chrysler 300. It had a huge V8 with a 4 barrel carburetor and when you had the gas to the floor at 80 that carburetor would kick in and you would be thrust back into the seat until you attained free fall around 120-130.


Nancy Currier says:

My husband bought it for me 4 years ago as a $500 birthday gift. My 1985 VW Cabriolet is rusty and the paint is dull, but it zips through all 5 gears like it was born yesterday and goes through the turns like it's bolted to rails. Now, put the top down and driving any where through the Adk's is like driving through heaven, especially Rt 74 from the Northway to Lake Placid. It is an all sensory assault that you just can't get enough of. Top down, 5 gears, ecstasy.



The Dude says:


Wow Dale, the mention of the Borgward was like a floodgate for my automotive memories. My dad and I even made a half assed attempt at building an Armstrong Sidley Safire. Polishing the radiator, stripping off the fenders in preparation for new welding, only to loose altitude when the electric transmission couldn't be made to go into reverse. Odd to think that I could fix it now but wouldn't. Then I couldn't but would. You're right--the symbolic world is more valuable than the real one.


Dale Hobson replies:

Our family Borgward died from 200 miles of straddling the hump made by wider American cars in a snowstorm. Shot wheel bearings stranded us overnight at the Hotel Woodruff in Watertown. I snuck downstairs to get my first gander at go-go dancers in the hotel lounge.

Phyllis Brown says:

My worst car EVER was an absolutely adorable candy-apple-red Renault Alliance. From the day I bought it spiffy and shiny-new, till the day it limped into a dealer lot (less than 2 years later) to be traded, there was barely a moment without an aggravation.

For starters - it was a stick shift – and I’d grab the lever to shift gears, and the knob would come off in my hand (oh-oh, what do I do now?). They’d glue it on, and inevitably, it would happen again. Or I’d close the door as I got in to drive, and the side-moldings would fall off. And again. Or I’d be driving down the highway at 70+ mph and I’d attempt to redirect the heater vents, and the whole vent system thingy would fall out and a cold blast of air would barrel through the car. And of course, after it was fixed, it happened again. Then there was the spider-web cracking of paint all over the hood and roof, which was repainted THREE TIMES in my two years of ownership.

But maybe the most painful experience was the total lack of heat less than a day after I purchased the car, on a dark cold (30-below-0 degrees) Plattsburgh morning as I drove the 17 miles to my job in Peru. It didn’t matter how long the engine “warmed up”; there was NO HEAT. And, like everything else, fixing it once did not fix it permanently. Everything that went wrong with this car happened repeatedly.

Of course, even with various parts regularly falling off, the hideously cracked paint, and the problems with the heat, the car was still ridiculously CUTE.

Editor's note: The first car I ever bought new. Had all the same problems. It went from 1983 Car of the Year to total turkey in 5.9 seconds. I could retire on what I put into repairs. DH