My first car was a 1958 Chevy Delray. I bought it in the spring of 1965. I was 18 years old. I needed a car to drive to my first real job working for the Phone Company.
The car was huge and it smelled bad, a sort of vinyl seats, horsehair stuffing and too much sun smell. The main body of it was blue and then a light blue on the side panels. Or it was green with light green side panels, or blue with light green side panels. Whatever it was, it was badly faded. Besides being huge, smelling bad, being an odd color and a gas guzzler, it was ugly. I told people my 1958 Chevy1 was General Motors gearing up for an impending war and this was the car they made before they transitioned into tanks.
The first car I looked at was a 1953 Chevy Convertible. It was white with gold highlights and very cool looking. Rick Sharp, my best friend and I saw it at a used car dealer's. It was only $500 which seemed reasonable. I’m not a mechanic and I just thought I wouldn’t be able to keep it running. It was a pipe dream more than anything else. I didn’t know how to buy a car by myself and I didn't even talk to the salesman.
My mother found the 1958 Chevy and we went to see it in Hollywood. The owner was a youngish gay man who was selling it to buy something new. She decided it was the car for me and we bought it on the spot for $800.
My mother made the decision and she was an irresistible force when she decided. My mother made all of my father’s decisions for him and she was doing the same for me before I learned to get out from under her. My mother would get these ideas into her head and that was it. At the time she decided Volkswagens and small cars were dangerous. It wasn’t good enough that I should get something bigger than a Volkswagen, I needed a behemoth just to be sure. There wasn’t much on the road bigger or boxier than a 1958 Chevy.
Five days a week I drove the Chevy to my job in Reseda about 20 miles away. I think it got 12 miles to the gallon but gas in those days was about 25¢ a gallon. It was a big roomy car and great for making out with somebody. My first girlfriend after the seminary asked me how I felt about French kissing. I said I thought it was a sin. That was stupid, we never French kissed. With my second girlfriend I kept my ideas of sin to myself. We French kissed and even after awhile made it into the backseat of the Chevy which was very roomy.
A side note here, being Irish, Catholic and an ex-seminarian it was a long time before I ever got laid and even longer time before I ever made it in the back seat of a car. 10 years later my wife and I decided to try it and we made it in the backseat of our car, a Volkswagen Van.
I drove the Chevy to work until September, 1965 and then I left it at home while I went to college in Westchester, near the airport. I think it was about then I bought a Suzuki 50cc motorcycle, a zippy little thing that maxed out at about 35 miles per hour, 40 with the wind at my back. It was a two stroke engine which was always smoky and fouled. I lived with my sister in an apartment in Mar Vista and used the Suzuki to get to school. I drove it across town to Burbank when I went home. I rode it in all kinds of weather including torrential rain when I got soaked to the bone. I also slipped and went down a couple of times while riding it on slick streets. In those days helmets weren’t required and no one wore them. I certainly didn’t have one, it never occurred to me.
I think when I went back to work at the phone company in the summer of 1966 I drove my Chevy again. It was the summer after that, 1967, when my father decided that since he had driven it all winter and made some repairs to it that it was now his car and I had no claims on it at all. Even I was a little surprised at how arbitrary and unfair that decision was. My father was adamant and at 20 it didn’t do any good to argue with either of my parents.
That summer I went in the service and and in the spring got married to Cathy Bruemmer. She joined me in Bedford, England and I worked 12 miles away at Chicksands. We used a bus to get to the base when we needed to and by myself I hitchhiked to work. Public transportation in England was good and we didn’t get a car until our second winter there. I bought a 1956 Ford Popular2. It was cool. It was a pre-War design and looked like a miniature gangster car. I drove it a few times and then it stopped running. A friend on Dog Flight said he would help me get it running again. We got it torn apart in the base auto shop and that was it. We never got any further.
That spring I bought a 1963 Volkswagen from a sergeant who was going back home. The Volkswagen was wonderful. It ran and ran and ran. I found a mechanic, a Pole in Bedford to work on it and on cold days I learned to jump start it by running beside it and jumping in.
We drove the Volkswagen to Italy and all over the Midlands and southern England. It was a wonderful car and our first son, Sean, loved it more than we did. Volkswagen was among the first words he learned.
When we got back to Los Angeles we needed a car. One can live in England without a car, but no one can live in LA without a car. I found a Volkswagen advertised in the newspaper, went to see it and I bought it for $500. Our Volkswagen in England had been a deep shiny blue, the new one was Volkswagen pale green. The English VW had been a 19633 and the car I bought in LA was a 1968, but they were just about the same car.
I drove my Volkswagen from North Hollywood to UCLA in Westwood every day. I looked for cheap gas and found a place where it was about 22¢ a gallon. I put gas in it and I drove it. Sean, 3 years old and Ted 1 year old bounced around in the back seat. There were seat belts in the car but in those days we didn’t use them. If you came to a stop suddenly there was this reflex arm movement with the right arm to the passenger if they were a little person to keep them from flying forward.
I remember driving down Venice Boulevard and coming to a sudden stop and both boys in the back seat tumbling forward into the foot well. A very clear voice, every word distinct, said, “Don’t do that.” Ted was talking.
Something finally went wrong with the car. It was overheating and someone told me it needed a regulator or some part. I called around to see how much it would cost and reached a Volkswagen garage in Glendale where the owner quoted me the lowest price to repair it. The day I was supposed to pick it up I got a phone call from Julius, the mechanic. He told me that he had mispriced the item and in fact it was more expensive than he had quoted. I made some sort of sighing comment and he said, “Oh no, he wasn’t going to charge me more. He just wanted me to know.” I went to Julius and then his son Rich for the next 20 years.
When I got a job, I could afford to service the Volkswagen regularly and repair things as they wore out. I even bought new tires for it. I could tell I needed them; I was getting flats and seeing white ribbing in the tires. Julius kept my Volkswagen running until 1981 when I finally gave up on the Volkswagen after two rear end collisions. The second one did it in and it didn’t seem worth it to put a new engine in a 13 year old car. I sold to it to Sean who was 12. He wanted to work on it and get it to running again one day.
In 1976 we bought a used Volkswagen Van as our second car. It was great for family vacations. The engine was a little more touchy than the Volkswagen Beetle and the van took more servicing and mechanical work, but it ran well. It was a great car, blue and white. It even looked cool. I drove the van most of the time and Cathy drove the Beetle.
When the Beetle died in 1981 we bought a brand new Honda Civic. Hondas were the new Volkswagens. It had a small engine, was very well designed and zippy like a sports car. I liked it.
In the beginning of 1983 the transmission on the Volkswagen Van gave out and we decided it was time to get another car. I think Cathy was already planning our separation and she wanted to get a new car before I left. We bought a Toyota Tercel station wagon for her. It was an odd little thing, four wheel drive and a boxy look. When we did separate later that year she kept it. I made payments on it until it was paid off. I think she drove it well into the 90s.
By 1989 with a 135,000 miles on it, the Honda was beginning to show its age. Ted, my second son, was driving it one day and we started out on a green light across Riverside Drive and a Ford Bronco went right through the red light and plowed into us. Thank god, Hondas are sturdy little cars. We weren’t injured. Ted was a little bruised. The car still ran but it was mashed. I gave the Bronco driver’s insurance company a chance to pay me off and they took the car.
I was ready for a pickup truck and I bought a 1989 maxi cab Toyota with a camper shell on the back. Toyotas run forever. I never liked the look of it, but it was practical for camping and carrying bicycles.
I took it north when I moved to the Bay Area. I left Rich in Glendale and got it serviced elsewhere. In getting the service done somewhere new, it wasn’t checked for preventive things and on a drive back from LA, the timing chain gave out. Now on my list of things to do with a car, is to change the timing chain around 175,000 miles. The engine froze up and I had it repaired for $1200 but it never ran the same again. Also Susan, my wife at the time, had one of these who goes first collisions on the front left fender that left it looking sickly. I replaced it, but never painted it.
With Susan’s input we bought a 1998 Honda CRV, much bigger than I would have wanted and with leather seats. At least we didn’t buy the Mercedes Benz she proposed to get at first. In 2004 we bought a Honda Civic Hybrid. I loved that little car, as fun as my first Civic and you could watch the readout on gas consumption and try for more than 50 miles to the gallon on a trip.
When Susan and I divorced she got the Civic. I still drive the CRV. Hondas today last much longer than they used to last. The CRV has 203,000 miles on it. I changed the timing chain at 175,000 miles. The car runs great. It will be another year or two before I buy another car.
In 2008 I bought a Honda Rebel Motorcycle4. I like small cars. I like small motorcycles. The Honda is a 250cc. It tops out at 75 or 80 mph and keeps up with traffic on the freeways. It has a four stroke engine and runs like a top. I appreciate my CRV. It has done well by me for 14 years and over 200,000 miles. I love my Rebel. And I wear a helmet.
4. My own photo
So what was your first car and how did you feel about it?
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