What's the First Car(s) You Remember Your Family Having?

I'm 50, and the earliest I can remember is when I was around three. Back then, my mother had a 1950 Studebaker:


And my father drove a Nash Rambler convertible:


What about YOUR family????

My mom had a 2 door Toyota Celica.

I came along in 1968 - dad was driving a 1966 Chevy Impala SuperSport.
Said Impala was damaged being shipped from Greece to Germany.
So, for a time in 1970, dad drove a Fiat 500. (Mom didn't drive until 1972).
From there: 1972 Mercury Marquis; 1980 Datsun 210 (later to become my first car); 1981 Subaru; 1984 Subaru (to become my second car); 1988 Honda Accord; 1990 Mazda truck (to become my 5th vehicle); 1994 Infiniti G-20 (to become my 6th and current vehicle); 1999 Ford F-150 (dad's current); 2001 Infiniti I-30 (mom's current).

What was that, 1968? But then in 1973 she traded it in on an AMC Hornet hatchback that had a V6 in it. Ugly but rather powerful car. It ended up junked by the mid 80's due to neglect. I was going to fix it up with a friend and use it but never got the chance. Too bad since it only had about 80,000 miles on it.

My father was very ill by 1972 and died in 1975. I remember he had some big boat (I'm thinking a Chrysler something...) until he got an AMC Pacer. My mom sold that after he died.

That my dad bought from the Air Force after it had been crashed into a telephone pole on base :). He rebuilt it into a mobile home and we lived in it for a while :).

Then there was our blue VW Bug :)

Mom: White Jaguar Xj-120 (we lived in the UK). Then a Triumph GT6. My dad drove a Mercedes sedan, but I don't remember the model, only that it always smelled like cigars.

It was my grandpa's.
He was a Cadillac/Buick salesman and got a new Buick "demonstrator" every year.
Once a year we took a long road trip to see my uncle (his son) and I'd throw up all over the back seat.
:puke:
Happily, I outgrew that.

with side car. Then around 37 (1937 that is) a Modal A ford with rumble seat.

180

He had a 1906 model that had pedals to help on hills. He saw the same model in the Smithsonian in the '50s and felt sad that he sold his. All I have remaining is a cool photograph of him standing with it, his goggles, and his American Motorcycle Association log book (boy, those old models used a lot of oil!).

of my Dad sitting astride his bike wearing a leather skull cap with tie down ear flaps.

He looks so sad, as if he has lost everything. I keep it by my TV set.

The young parents during the great depression carried a terrible burden.

It was the depression which separated Mom and Dad.

I think he could see it coming. And that is why he looks so sad.

180

it was a '53 Oldsmobile 88.

Huge car! Got downgraded to a second car in '57 and later sold to a collector in town that liked it cause it was a two-door and was considered rare. That '48 Packard was HUGE but it had a really cool swan hood ornament.

Funny you mentioned Studebaker cause I own two today and one is the 1950 suicide door rocket ship 'Land Cruiser'. How did Japan acquire the right to call some of their cars Land Cruisers?

On edit: Bad, bad speiling day.

would pinch your tummy if you weren't careful. We also had a 70 Impala, but that was our marryin and buryin car.

Must have been a 1960 model. I remember staring at the red head of chief Pontiac on a sticker on the door.

My favorite family car was a VW bus my parents bought during one lean year. They hated it for all the mechanical problems it had. I loved it because it felt like a bus.

My least favorite: a Ford Pinto hatchback. Although, now that I think of it, it was a standard, and it was the car I learned to drive in.

It was, as I remember a teal green no longer shiny by the time I was 10. Back then they made cars to last 10-20 years. I was the same age as the car! In 1959 we purchased a brand spanking new white Ford Galaxy 500. Talk about proud!!! But alas no 'Conditioned Air'...though we knew all the most expensive cars all had 'Conditioned Air'...Once we took the Galaxy in for repairs and got a loaner car that had electric windows and all....and my sister and I decided we wanted to 'pretend' the car had 'Conditioned Air'...so we made my mother drive to the store in the heat of summer in VA with the windows rolled up. I am sure the sweat pouring from our faces and our wet hair fooled no one! My mother was SO easy!!!

On a funny note. I was at a red light with my grandkids in the car and the song "Who let the dogs out" was on their station and they made me turn up the volumn so everyone could hear how 'cool' we were, and as soon as the song was over a commercial for hemmoriod medicine came on!!! I think that cancelled out the 'cool'. I am as EASY as my mom!

A 1947 Studebaker that my parents bought in 1953 when I was 9. Later on, a 1955 red Nash Rambler. I have never owned a car myself, and my parents were too poor to buy one until they were about 35.

Don't recall the type. It was old and in bad shape. We had another, must have been a Chey, but I don't remember it - I just remember Dad's car. The Buick was in pretty sorry shape. Dad repainted it using a powder puff. It was black and didn't look half bad.

posted in the wrong place! :shrug:

But it think the first car we had was 1970 Ford Falcon Station Wagon. We called her Betsy. When she died, we got a 1976 Dodge Aspen, then my dad gave me a scratch-off, and I won $500. He took my scratch-off, and bought a 1973 VW Bug (the junkmobile) which was our first "second family car." Thus began the "Cars Totaled While Parked On The Street Out In Front Of Our House At Four In The Morning" era. (My father would have to juggle the cars in our driveway before leaving for work at four in the morning, and we lost four cars this way)

i went with my dad to the showroom to pick it up. i was maybe 3 or 4 and i don't remember the car we had before we got that one.

was a dark blue studebaker...not sure what year..it was brand new at the time and i am 49 ....another one i remember was a chunky rambler wagon..that was a used car and pretty beat up

BTW, I absolutely love the Nash. Really cool looking car.



Then we had a tan 60 Thunderbird.



Then a 65 Olds 442, red of course.



Then my dad started getting into luxury cars. A 67 Imperial, exactly like this one.



And a 71 Riv. It was green.



I could talk about and look at old cars all day.

We called her black beauty...she went away in 1970...very sad !!!

I know they were crappy cars, but for some reason,ours lasted nearly 15 years!

http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/AMS/WebCt_Mall/submitted%20papers/Mike%20Conlin.htm




Ours was 2 tone green.

...my folks had a '56 Plymouth Belvedere sedan. But the first car I actually remember was our '58 Ford station wagon. It had a 6-cylinder engine and 3-on-the-tree. It was a complete POS and it overheated everytime we'd load up the family and go for a ride. My dad traded it for a '61 Chevy wagon and wisely chose a much more powerful V8 engine & auto transmission this time around. The old Chevy was a great car and we traveled all over the country in it. Some kids dumped sugar into its gas tank one night and that toasted the engine. Dad traded it for a '64 Ford Galaxie convertible with a stick shift--which my mom positively hated because she didn't like driving manual transmissions...anyway, I guess that answers your question...

Love the old ads, by the way. I've driven a bunch of AMC products over the years. My first was a '65 Ambassador sedan. I also had a '64 Studebaker Commander sedan for a short time back in 1974 (259 V8 & 3-speed stick with overdrive!).

Drew

at lest i think it was '87. I called to the brown Bomber, because it looked just like an old turd.

That was the car my parents had when i was born. They only had one car because we lived in an apartment about a block and half from the dairy where my dad worked.

They had it as their main car until about 1960 when they bought a Buick Wildcat. By then we had moved to a house about 5 miles from the dairy.

My dad kept the Merc as his work car, so my mom would have the new one. So, those are the two cars i remember earliest. My mom probably has pictures of both. I don't.
The Professor

The guy selling this one wants $27K. Wow.

My first car memory is my parents old Studebaker too, although a slightly newer one I think. (this would have been the early 60's, I'm 46). Their next car was a Rambler - a '64 I think.

My first car was a used '64 Dodge Dart with a push button transmission. I loved that old car. :-)

I know we had a blude VW beetle the year I was born. But the car I remember (which I later drove as a teen) is "Martha", the banana-yellow 1971 VW Squareback.

They traded in "Heidi," the 1959 Beetle I was almost born in. Heidi stalled on the railroad tracks when my parents were bound for the hospital when Mom was having contractions. Dad pushed Heidi off the tracks and they made it in time.

Followed by a 1959 Plymouth and an 1967 Plymouth, also called "Betsy".

Mom seemed to like that name, but not enough to name either of my sisters Betsy.......

:-)

My younger sister is Paula Elizabeth, aka "Betsy."
I always thought she was dubbed "Betsy" because of her middle name, to differentiate her from mom. But sis says dad told her that, when he was a kid, they had a cow on their farm named Betsy, and dad bestowed the name of her because her big brown eyes reminded him of said cow (this is not only a horrible thing to tell a child but also, according to the grandparents H, utter hooey. There was never any so-named cow).
Anyhow, she's still called Betsy. Funny thing -- none of the other four of us ever landed a nickname.
John
And now back to the cars...

What a POS. My parents were VW fans. Two Beetles, two buses and a black squareback through the years. The first squareback was a total lemon. It would break down repeatedly on the way home from the dealer. Did this the first day we had it. I don't know if that junker ever even made it all the way to our driveway. I don't think that thing ran for a solid 24 hours ever. Finally the dealer gave my father a new car, and this was before lemon laws. That one worked fine, if you want to call it that.

We used to go on trips in the buses. With the family plus luggage the first one would overheat going up hills in New England. The second one was so powerful that it could carry a family of five plus a couple of suitcases whereever we wanted to go, as long as it was paved.

The very first car was some kind of dinky Fiat that wasn't a sports car. Used to break fanbelts regularly. Would never start in the cold weather. My father burned it up one morning before work with a heating pad he used to put over the engine so it would start. The car was white and I can still picture the black char marks from the flames that shot out the air intake slats in the back of the car. (Engine was in the rear in those days.)

followed by a downturn in the family's prosperity and various junky used cars. The next car that I remember was a green '59 Ford stationwagon.
(special note for CO Liberal)
One of the highlights of the summer was when the Hudson/Nash dealer got a new load of cars. The neighborhood kids all sat on the bank in our yard and watched as they were being unloaded. That was about the most exciting thing that happened in our sleepy little town.

And a '66 Chrysler Newport.

I'm 34.

On edit: Ours was two-tone green. My father bought it immediately after graduating from medical school. He was the first young doctor in his class to have a Cadillac, albeit an old one.

It had the biggest back seat I have ever ridden in:

http://www.ephemeranow.com/cars/cars075.htm

Ours was gray.

Family:
1941 Ford
1949 Oldsmobile
1954 Hudson Hornet
1958 Ford (roof folded into trunk, at the push of a button)
1959 Buick
1964 Pontiac GTO

On my own after that:
Me;
1954 MG-TF-1500 twin cam
1959 FIAT (4-spd column shift)
1955 Chevy
1956 Buick
1958-1959-1960 T-Birds
1961 Lincoln
1947 VW split window
1947 Jaguar Sedan
FIAT 600
1967 Cadillac
1967 FIAT Spyder
1958 Austin Healey 3000 triple carb
1963 Plymouth 413 Ramcharger (scared me)
1963 Olds F-85 turbo*
1963 Pontiac LeMans*
1960-1963 Buick Special Station wagons* (several)
*all with 215 CID aluminum v-8
1981 Ford Pinto (bad mistake to buy any first year Ford!)
1970 Dodge Challenger RT (440- 6 pack like in movie Vanishing Point)
1962 MGA
1965 Ford Galaxie
1967 Mustang 2+2 Fastback
1965 Dodge van/pickup like "little red wagon" (mine was a 6cyl 225)
1965 Chevy Impala
1968 Mustang
1976 Dodge van
1961 Ford PU
1962-1963 Ford custom cab PU's (several)
FIAT 124 Sport Spyder
1967 Mercedes diesel
1980-1983 Monza B-2000-2200/Ford Courier (1 and 3 respectively)
1976-1980 Monza Spyders (as my LT-1 350 wore them out quickly)
1986 Subaru
1972 Mercury Comet
1979 Ford van
1990's and beyond not listed as they are not real cars, just disposable temps.

You could zip the headliner back and enjoy the view through the deep-green glass roof.
The first car I can remember any particulars about was Dad's '61 Caddy Fleetwood 4-door hardtop. Navy Blue...

The AMC was a little black car that I loved when I was little. My Dad's pick up had a gun rack in the back.

It had disc brakes you could hear squealing a mile off.

Green. Wood-faced dashboard. Had the old Plymouth sailing ship logo on the steering wheel.
John
The coolest car we had when I was a kid was a 1955 Buick Special, though. Our family didn't buy a new car until 1964, when mom got a shiny new, baby-blue '64 Buick Special for her job as a travelling hearings reporter for the Michigan Employment Security Commission.
ON EDIT: I was born in 1956.

Like this, but ours was pale green with a dark green roof:


No seat belts back then; but there was a rope on the back of the front seat that we could hang onto if the ride got wild. My Mom says that when we were moving east from Colorado, the rear window would fog up a lot, so my big bro and I would turn around and clean it off so Dad could see.

I cried when she broke down for the last time.

It got us from San Diego, CA to Chattanooga, TN in the spring of 1969, just before I turned 2. It was a gold color.



Our next car was a bit more of a traditional sedan, can't remember the model.

Wonder what ever happened to those cars.

8 cylinders, automatic transmission, 2 door, no polution control devices. Dad bought it used in 1964, and in 1974 he was beating Porshe 911's through Topanga Canyon.

apparently we had a big old blue buick before that but I don't remember it

from "Prince Crysler/Plymouth".
So, our car was named 'Prince Valiant'.

That was back in the day when kids didn't need seat belts, so you could take a nap in the bed, go grab a snack from the fridge after washing your hands in the sink, and take a stroll across the living room to see what mom and dad were up to in the front.