My Best Cheap Car
I think we’ve all had a car in our lifetime, those of us who have some decades under our belt, that we love and miss. There’s also the one’s that we’re glad we could roll themselves into a junk yard.
I remember my first cheap car was a 1965 Chevy Bel Air station wagon. I paid $100 for it.
It was 1976 and I was the very first one of my friends to have both a car and a driver’s license!
The best thing about my old station wagon was that I could pack all my friends (and acquaintenaces) into it and we could head for the beach on the weekends. After all, it was sunny Southern California and what’s a California kid to do back in the 70′s? We didn’t have the video games, computers, cable tv and whatever electronic gizmo that’s come to fruition in the time it took me to write this sentence.
Bless our little hearts. Our parents hardly let any of us in the house – “Find something to do outside”, so we weren’t sitting in front of a tv being bombarded with safety advisory board messages. Besides when you’ve got 10 people sitting somewhere behind you (the driver), whoever yelled “shotgun” first, and their (or maybe my) flavor of the week; the 8 track blaring Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, in a hot car, sun blazing and a joint being passed around a seat belt was a comfort distraction, not a safety concern.
The windows in my wagon were made for butt impressions. I didn’t care, I wasn’t riding back there and if it bothered someone, well, they were welcome to wash the entire car.
No worries about the California Highway Patrol (CHiPs), we were way too cool for Ponch to pull us over. Then there were people I’d never seen before that were more bad than we ever could be – 1-Adam-12 had a handle on them.
Having both the best and the only car in my crowd had it’s benefits.
- The luxury of ALWAYS sitting in the front seat.
- The monopoly on the local teen transportation – if you were a teen who wanted to get out of town, you had to hang out with me. Popularity!
- There’s a characature somewhere of me with a mickey mouse body arm out, open palmed with a bubble over my head “Give Me Gas Money Sucker!” I didn’t have to pay for gas.
- As the teen cab driver, I got to go places that I couldn’t afford to go on my own.
- Even though I didn’t have a hot body, I was hot to hang out with because I got the hot people to the beach.
- I can now, proudly, say that I owned a 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air Station Wagon.
Ahhh, the memories - though mine was blue...
I did a real quick search, for old times sake, to see what my old Bel Air would look like now and what it would be worth now.
My dream was to turn my wagon into a hot rod!
Could my bel air now be somebody's low rider dream machine?
I wonder, could one of these be the same car that I owned 30 years ago? I’m going to have to call upon some of my friends from back in the day and see if any of them have a photo of our old ride.
I have fond memories of the car, which is now a classic. I would have loved it even more if I could have had it all cherried out like the one’s above.
My friends, and I, would talk about driving down to Tijuana and have the seats reupholstered, along with the fantasy of having it painted black with “Weed Wagon” in fancy gold lettering on the rear panel.
Leave a comment! I’d love to hear about your first car – was it the best cheap car?
Tags:Best cheap car
I truly don’t understand why anyone would disagree with that. I think that sounds like it is something to look more closely at. I feel occasionally alot of individuals could be fairly narrow minded when it comes that. Nicely thats all for now, appear forward to a lot more post and information.. Talk to you men later. “As in life, Chill for best results”