On December 28, 1956, my father was 16, and he bought his first car. It was a ’53 Chevy, and he paid $800 cash for it. 800 bucks was a chunk of change back then.
At the end of the summer of 1987, I bought my first car. It was a ’75 Toyota Celica, and I paid $800 cash for it. At 17 years old, I thought $800 was a chunk of change. It was a five speed manual transmission, and although it would survive for many more years and over 200,000 miles, it had seen it’s better days. Dad made sure I learned to drive on a stick, because really, once you can drive a stick, you can drive anything. But I was always more comfortable with “four on the floor” than “three on the tree”.
Dad had been looking at a WWII surplus Willys Jeep, complete with a tattered canvas top. My grandmother, Mama Agnes, wasn’t going to let him buy that, so he bought the more practical car, with doors, seats, and a hard roof that was still intact.
Both of us have bought, sold, or traded many cars since then (Dad has the best record to date though; he once traded two briskets and a tow charge for a 4-door hatchback), but we’ll always remember the first car that we bought with the money that we earned.
