My Fiesta ST 2.0. I went to the local Ford garage to look at sensible replacements for an old Fiesta I had for years, and bought this on impulse. It’s modified a little, with remapped ECU, filters and exhaust but it’s not outrageously fast. Very nice to drive on country roads and locally, but not great for longer journeys (1hr+) and on motorways you have to be careful not to speed.
One of my best cars was an Audi Coupe GT (someone else’s here), 1988 plate. This got me round the country when I was clubbing every weekend in the 90s. Lovely handling, great for country roads and motorway driving. It ran great for years, but eventually became too uneconomic to fix when I was hardly driving due to living near a Tube station.
My favorite of all my past cars was my 1996 Ford F150. Black and silver with the extended cab and the short bed. Was such an awesome ride, it almost killed me when I lost my job and had to get rid of it.
Since then I’ve mostly been driving Dodge mini vans, we’ve had three to date. Now that we’re a two income house again, my wife just upgraded to a 2011 Honda C-RV which is really nice. Once her bonus comes in, we’ll finally be trading away the last two vans and I’ll be upgrading to a Honda Ridgeline. I didn’t really like them at first look, but after driving one and spending more time around them as we shopped for my wife’s car, I really fell in love with them.
Nah, it was a 95 plate and long past that tech… I had manual chokes on my first few cars though, a Renault 5, VW Polo and the worst car in the history of motoring, an Austin Metro.
Yeah, mine was on an E-plate Ford Fiesta. My first car ever. It would shake violently at 70mph, but then settle down if you dared take it past 75. I lost its muffler on the M40 between junctions 3 and 4.
I’ve always been a truck guy. When it was time to get my first car, I wanted to buy a small pickup. Instead my dad took my savings and bought a Pontiac T-1000 (ie Chevy Chevette) from a friend of his at church. Hated that fucking car.
For a long time I swore up and down that I’d never own a truck. I’d look at them and think “Nah, not for me.” Then one day it was time to get a new vehicle, and I started thinking “Hmmmm, maybe I should get a truck. I’ve never had one.” So I bought one, a Ford Ranger. That thing was great! You can do so much more stuff! Fill it up with heavy things and move them around! Awesome. I had a little car after that and loved it for the gas mileage, but that’s about it. I’m back to owning a truck and loving it for moving heavy things around. Doing work on my fixer-upper house requires a bunch of trips to Home Depot, and the recycling yard, and a host of other places. I wouldn’t be able to manage without it, and I’m planning to keep this truck until it dies. I guess I’m no longer a car person.
Oh, I’m not knocking trucks for utility reasons. I grew up in the country and knew people on farms, so I get their use - and If I bought a house/yard that needed work a truck would be a consideration.
My house is small, so we made do with renting a trailer. Of course my new car doesn’t even have a tow hitch…
I bought my dad’s old pickup off him a few years back when I bought my first house. An 03 Toyota Tacoma. And I love it for its utilitarian uses. I also tend to drive it more because it gets slightly better gas mileage compared to my ‘fun’ car, a 05 Subaru Legacy 2.5GT.
I lived in upstate NY and went to college on Long Island. The trip from one to the other ran down a lovely stretch of road called the Taconic Parkway. A little highway with these huge steep hill sections. I had to gun the engine and go as fast as I could (around 70) on the downhill sections just so I could be going about 40mph by the time I hit the top. The car had no balls whatsoever.
Despite a horrific list of problems and charitably described as sounding like a “rattling death trap” by my loved ones, I will always have the deepest love for my '03 Focus ZX3. It’s my first car, and somehow, so far my only car. Also, the moon roof.
I love my 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis. I have a 60 mile commute each way, and it’s the perfect vehicle for that. Smooth, powerful, safe, reasonably efficient (~25mpg), and very inexpensive to maintain. I previously owned a 1998 model and took it up to 250,000 miles without doing much of anything besides tires and brakes on it. It still looked great when I sold it, too.
I bought this one a few months back with only 64k on the clock for $4,800. I was going to buy a used Prius for $10k more, but there’s no way I’d recoup the money on gas.
I remember seeing an AMC Rambler that my father had in a barn at his mother’s house, and how one day he was going to get it fixed up and it would become mine. Though this was something like 25 years ago, we’ve never been back out to that place, or talk to that side of the family much, and it was in terrible condition even back then. I remember it now more for the hazy mystique of it in my memories, than any kind of actual practical value.
