What was your very first car?

[NYC-SE]

Originally Posted by ern-diz

Nice! I love Mopar. Great story. Curious if you reported it stolen, or just let it move on?

Yeah I had to as I didn't have the plates to turn in. Of course in those days cars didn't have VIN numbers stamped all over them. I can't recall correctly if they actually had one at all other than an "assigned" VIN. Anyway NYPD said good luck finding it. In those days it was not uncommon to see abandoned or stripped cars on the streets in NY. This happened in the south Bronx. I did search the area for it but couldn't find it. There were a lot of junk yards in the area and I kind of suspect one of them just hitched up a tow truck and carted it away for scrap. That kind of thing was not uncommon at the time either, even with cars just parked on the street. NYC was crazy back then. Any way the police gave me a report so I could cancel my insurance and satisfy the DMV.

Funny story, several years prior to that this same car was stolen from in front of our house. Reported it to police who said the same thing. "Yeah...good luck finding it." Six months later my dad gets a call from NYPD saying they found it. When we got it back it had a brand new radio and speakers in it and a full tank of gas!

[scratchpaddy]

Originally Posted by NYC-SE

Funny story, several years prior to that this same car was stolen from in front of our house. Reported it to police who said the same thing. "Yeah...good luck finding it." Six months later my dad gets a call from NYPD saying they found it. When we got it back it had a brand new radio and speakers in it and a full tank of gas!

That's hilarious!

My first car was a 2003 Cavalier. It was actually really nice, with all the goodies most Cavaliers didn't get: factory ground effects, shiny alloy wheels, sunroof, power everything. I loved it. I never got a picture of it intact, though. I was working part time at a body shop in rural Georgia while going through college. We bought it at auction with minor front end damage, which we fixed up. It had 74,000 miles, and I paid $2,500 for it.



Only 3 months later, a girl driving her dad's Mercedes made a left turn right in front of me on Highway 74. I hit her going 55mph. Neither car was fixable.



This was just after Cash 4 Clunkers, and the market for small cars was suddenly white-hot. Insurance bought the car for $5,700. I replaced it with a Cobalt, which lasted for three years before a drunk kid t-boned it in a parking lot while trying his hand at "drifting."



Insurance wrote me another check for, oddly enough, $5,700.