The First Car

What was the first car you ever had?

I got the idea for this after reading a spate of stories over at Jalopnik about teenagers and the automobiles their parents bought for them. For example, the image to the right is of what's left of a BMW M3 that parents bought for a 19-year-old.

Potential idiot parents take note — the 2008 BMW M3 is a finely crafted, high-performance, German-engineered rocket sled. It is not a present to buy for your LA-area 19-year-old. When parents like you buy cars like M3s for your kids, things like this happen — they pile a couple of guys in the car, then take it out for high-speed foolishness. At the peak of teenage testosterone, they will hit the "M button," rocket up a hill, lose control, jump a curb and bash into a house.

So was anyone else lucky enough to have parents that shelled out $50,000 for Bavarian ///M Power, or were you making due with a piece of shit beater?

I would not want to have been the kid who took a $500,000 Porsche Carrera GT to the Prom, and had to explain to his parents & the insurance company why it had been shredded to pieces. Below is how the car is supposed to look, and how it ended up.

         

The first car I remember my parents having as a kid was a sunbust yellow Chevrolet Chevette.

                 

The first car I ever had as a teenager was a Suzuki Sidekick that would come close to tipping over if you attacked a turn just a bit too fast. It did have a tendency to leak oil like an Exxon Supertanker, but other than that I can't really complain about it (given the punishment I put it through), in fact I wish I still had the bloody thing. Thank God I never had an accident, or a speeding ticket for that matter, otherwise I would never have heard the end of it from my mother (since I was on her insurance).