Community Showcase: Your first car

- Member Since: Nov 19, 2011
Hey folks! Community manager Chris here again with another installment of the Community showcase!
This week I thought it would be fun to take another trip down memory lane and share pictures/stories of your first car. Everyone remembers their first car! It is a life changing moment when you realize that you are no longer tied down to one spot or have to rely on others to give you a ride. You have finished your Driver’s Ed classes, you registered your vehicle with the MVD, and you have got yourself an overpriced auto insurance plan. There is only one thing left to do, hit the road!
My first car was not the flashiest car on the lot but it was mine! After working and saving over multiple summers, I paid for it with my own hard earned money. I was 15 years old and scored a 1987 Suzuki Samurai from a friend of the family for $300. The engine was seized up and had to be completely replaced. I ordered a crate engine for $400 and my friend next door and I spent every day over the course of a summer fixing her up. It was no easy task that's for sure! I can't count how many times we went to the auto shop, Haynes auto manuals we studied, knuckles busted, and tools lost. This was the first car I had ever worked on and was before the days of YouTube so there were many mistakes. I'm pretty sure we attached the transmission wrong because the only gear it would go into for a while was reverse lol. We did have to call in an "expert" when it came to hooking up all the vacuum lines because there was no way we were going to remember where every single tube hooked up haha.
We finally got it up and running and man oh man did it feel good! Sure, the carburetor was warped and I had to carry 3 cans of carb cleaner with me at all times in case I stalled out at a traffic light. Sure, I didn't quite fit that well in the car being a 6'4 300 pound offensive lineman. I'm sure it also looked really funny when my other friend and I, also an offensive lineman (who was bigger than me) got out of the car. I will never forget that car or the memories I made with it.
I know that was a pretty long story but it's fun to recall all the old memories Take a moment and share your memories of your first car! | 1987 Suzuki Samurai |