I was 17 and car was a Singer Chamois (variant of Hillman Imp). It cost £25.
Great car for learning how to handle a car as it switched between massive under steer to sudden spins.
Some truly fab cars here. And some shockers somewhat predictably. A mate has a Cavalier like the one up there when I was at Uni. We didn’t have any street cred but I’d still rather walk then get a lift. It was canary yellow.
I had a MKIII escort after my first car died and then an AlfaSud (I think). The escort was brilliant and boring. The Alfa was mad and rusted as I watched.
My Bro has a 2CV as well. His ace mechaning skills somehow increased the petrol consumption to that of a Chieftain tank. Which is why we had to push it home four miles one day 😉
There was something fab about early cars. Now knowing if it’d start or if it’d get you where you wanted to go. Every journey requires the spirit of adventure 🙂
17 when I bought my 1981 Austin Mini Metro in metallic black
bought: fiat 126, I was 20. Only vehicle I’ve ever spun on a public road. Truly diabolical heap in every way. Still loved it though.
Snap didn't manage to spin mine thou.
Got it at 17 an used to drive to school, looked at an original 500 first before buying the single lady owned baby porsche.
Hillman Imp @ 17. Bought off my brother for £150 by my aunt. He bought himself a Capri.
I smashed the Imp up checking out a girl on the way to work. Valuable lesson!
I was 17 and car was a Singer Chamois (variant of Hillman Imp). It cost £25.
wasnt the engine int that a pump engine or something not origianlly designed for a car
19 years old, 1992.
Jobby brown Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6L.
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Bought it from my Uncle for £400 and it cost me another £1200 insurance third party. 😳
It came from the Isle of Lewis and as such was a rusty piece of crappiness with none of the door locks working...becuase they had never been used!
Sold if 4 months later for £500 with only 3 cylinders working!
Loved it too much...
My first car, when I was 18 was a Mk2 Escort, 1600 Ghia X, 4 door with a black vinyl roof with square headlights.. It cost a whole £100 and managed to get it sideways on the drive home from picking it up.. I also got banned from driving, tbh it probably saved my life and others! On the motorway you could watch the fuel gauge move, not as bad as a 2.8 Capri, but definitely still noticeable.
The floor was rust, I found this when trying to jack it up and the jack went up, the car did not. The heater matrix leaked, the windscreen leaked and the radiator leaked. The brake master cylinder had a leak, so you HAD to pump the brakes for them to work. Anything under 35mph and it would start to overheat. If you went round a corner at normal speed it would lean on to its bump stops, anything faster and it would zigzag out of a corner, hitting the left bump stops, then the right, then the left... I fitted a stereo, but it only worked if you shoved a 3.5" floppy between the fascia and stereo.. Funny thing is I mentioned this to a friend and he had the same stereo, we worked out it was his stereo, 10 years before we knew each other.
But... It was my first car and I loved it, it was red, actually it was near white when I got it. With a lot of sweat and T-Cut it was bright red by the time I scrapped it!
Like this:
I had a magnificent Rover 216 Vanden Plas EFi at 21, like this one (in tasteful Oyster Beige as well). Amazingly all the electronics worked, and the engine was pretty gutsy compared to the 900cc Renault 9 that I learnt to drive in. The steering was unassisted and heavy. Not a bad car but succumbed to the demon rust and was scrapped.
wasnt the engine int that a pump engine or something not origianlly designed for a car
Don't think so.
http://www.imps4ever.info/tech/engine.html
Had the engine out a few times though to fix clutch and gearbox issues. Support engine underneath, take off rear bar, undo some bolts and push car away from engine. Very easy engine removal.
Tundra green mini 998. PCG231P. Bought for £200 at 18 from a friend in a garage (was a trade-in). I ran it through university. Happy days chugging up and down the M4/5 Devon to London and back with my sister# and our all belongings.
#Officially wife for the purposes of RAC membership - which was used rather often, usually by her. It did break down once in London when I had the comment "didn't I see this car last week?" - which was a new one on me!
17, a talbot samba rallye like this one, cost £700 I think
What seems to have changed is the car that 17 year olds seem to expect these days.
First car £25 Singer Chamois
Second car £75 Marina Coupe
Third car £400 Rover P6
All went way more expensive after that point but was happy with the cars at the time
20
Mini Mayfair 998cc in silver, with Sprite alloy wheels and a leaky sunroof with much gaffa tape applied. The car would have been 14 when I acquired it.
1995 I was 19. V reg, 1979 fiesta two tone Brown/cream. Cost me £125 and £450 for insurance 3rd party fire and theft!
Bag of shite it was.
I was 23 and bought a 1971 MG Midget 1275cc for £500 - off a work colleague like the one in the photo, it was a basket case and it took me about 6 months to get it running / MOT as it needed a fair bit of welding, new gearbox and clutch, new suspension bushes - it was semi-tuned with a highlift cam, bigger carbs and a straight-through big-bore exhaust. I resprayed it Ferrari Rosso Red but because it had a different tyre at each corner had an alarming ability to go sideways. The clutch bearing went one morning and it sat on my drive for 2 years before someone offered me £100 to take it away....
What seems to have changed is the car that 17 year olds seem to expect these days.
Oh I don't know about that, in 1995 when I was 18 I announced, very loudly to my Step-Dad that I was going to buy a BMW 6 series, not any one either, I was going to have a M635CSI as I'd just read in TopGear mag or something that as they were all about 10 years old at this point they were 'only' £10k (about £20k in today's money) oh and it had to be Dark Grey or Black and a later, dechromed one.
I was earning about £300 a month at the time stacking shelves in Tesco after school. How he didn't breaking down in tears laughing at me I don't know.
I thought about it for about 6 months, didn't do anything of course, but spent every penny I made in the pub thinking about it a lot and decided I'd probably over-estimated my affluence a bit and should think about something a bit more modest, at least to start.
The next 6 months were spent thinking about Porsche 944s, but only an S2 (but ideally a Turbo) they were about 6k a the time... I was still earning £300 a month.
Might be part of the reason why I didn't own a car until 23, by then my income had risen up to my falling ambition and I got the Golf.
wasnt the engine int that a pump engine or something not origianlly designed for a car
Not exactly but close. It was a Coventry Climax unit (brilliant engine when properly cooled - which it wasn't in the Imp). It was used powering a portable pump used by fire brigades.
At 21, just married, bought mrs_oab and I this car for getting to mountains and her to learn to drive in.
1986 1.1 Fiesta Popular
17 (but I bought it a couple of years earlier to do up), 1959 Morris Minor. I stress this was only in the late 90s, I'm not that old! Was a bit different as all my mates had novas and such.
Learned to drive late because of an average upbringing so first car was a 320i company car.
W**ker to wizard!
alanw2007
I had a magnificent Rover 216 Vanden Plas EFi
Funnily enough, I remember going to a motor show with my dad back in the day and sitting in one! We were impressed 😆
Rover 216 Vanden Plas EFi
There is one over the road from us, in daily use...
I passed my test at 17 and my first car was a Triumph Dolomite Sprint in Mimosa yellow.
What a great car from a fun perspective when it was running properly. Went like s**t off a shovel but needed 2 feet on the brake pedal to try and slow it down again.
The overdrive gearbox was a thing of beauty at the time.
Had 2 more of them over the years and wish I still had one....
B reg Fiesta XR2 - Red - loved that car. I was 20. Couldn't really afford it but I didn't care. Sold it when I went to be a student.
Nissan 100nx 😎
Oooh! Dolly Sprint! I had a white one, I loved it. It was curious in that one side of the car was bolted together with imperial stuff and the other side was metric! Loved the driving position, went quickly, except round corners and I rebuilt it many times and thanks to Triumph Tune, did lots of fun stuff with it.
it wasn't many first car though, about my third. My first, at 17, was the family hand down Hillman Super Minx, which was already on its second engine and gearbox with panels of differing colours 😃
18 in 2013.
A '96 Peugeot 106 1.0, 4 speed. Dog slow, built like a crisp packet, and I loved it.
I was 20 and at Uni. On the back of a summer job I bought a 9 year old 1.6L Capri in Beige for £600. Thankfully no photos exist. Sold it for £600 12 months later when I left uni and got a MK1 Golf GTI. Talk about chalk and cheese.
21: Vauxhall chevette (shuvit) £100 of my dad.
I hadn't a very silly MK11 escort. Yellow, rs2000 front end, pinto engine, a huge k&n filter,relatively massive rear wheels and zero mechanical simpathy (or knowledge for that matter). My Nan gave me £800 just before my 17th and I bought it off a mate.
Positives:
it taught me what to do when you've been "a bit silly" with the throttle.
it looked cool
negatives:
Mate hanging out the window on washway road coming home from Manchester manually operating the wipers as the connector had broken. Again.
i bump stared it for the last six months I owned it and put one side of the drivers seat through the rusted floor. Shoved a jack under one side so it was level so fixed that.
the rear tyres were so big and the suspension so shot that if you opened the boot you could see the wheels.
i ignored all the essential mechanical issues and spent all the cash is had getting it resprayed an even brighter yellow and tinting the windows. It died shortly afterwards.
God, I was a dick.
18. Bought a 1986 Mk3 escort 1.3 Laser which i think was just a special edition to get rid of the last 4 speed boxes. Ocean Blue, big spotlights .... and that's it. Saw it maybe 10 years ago running around Aberdeen with different coloured wings and the spots missing from it.
Datsun 100a f11 and I was 17, cost £200 and £450 to insure it!
17 Ford Anglia. A poached egg had more power. Reg 1377AT
Mine was a cut&shut MK3 Escort 1.3L that stank of curry every time you put the heater on, leaked when it rained so you had water sloshing about the footwells when you drove. Was an awesome car.. not because it was awesome, but because it gave me freedom. I went everywhere in it, usually full of mates, did alot of things for the first time in it. Awesome. Needed constant maintenance just to keep it running...and it never ran that well. Kids these day's don't know they're born.
Renault Dauphine, aged 17, 1966 cost £40. Went to Uni, drove all over the country on geology field trips. Drive to Scotland finally killed it.
I was a late starter with cars.
27 and it was a Burgundy 1.7 diesel Peugeot 305(the one with a hatch not a boot).
To date I have never owned an exciting/fast car and I drive like an old man!
Passed my bike test at 17 though and got my thrills on 2 wheels.
Passed at 24, having lived in Brum right on a main bus route never worried about it before that.
First car was a Mk1 Vauxhall Astra GTE in silver, absolutely stock including the vinyl bag in the boot for storing the sunroof glass if you wanted to pop it out! Cracking car that sadly succumbed to horrific corrosion ofvthe sills, inner arches, a and b pillars. Replaced with a Landrover Series 3,’lightweight’
1983 , 20 yrs old -f reg mini 850 traveller complete with moss in the sliding windows .a whole £50.00 .
17, VW Beetle.
Woolsley Hornet ..it was almost a classic then.. I was still 17 .£140 ...44 years ago..
The 890cc engine had been swapped out for a 1300cc ..too powerfull for a just passed his test 17 yr old and it lasted 3 week before ending up in a ditch after taking the back roads home from Newcastle after a night at the Mayfair ..
I wish I still had it now ..they are worth fortunes !
Sorry double post
Red Ford Fiesta. M Reg. In 2004 aged 21. I was at uni prior to that so didnt need a car of mine - just used my Dad's when I needed a car. Cost £800 Sold in 2006 for £800 so didnt lose any money on it.
Like a couple of others I was 11-12, I went on an outward bound course with school & when I came back my Dad had bought me a car! (this was 1969 ish) He paid the grand sum of £6 for an old Ford Popular, 3 speed with vacuum wipers etc, which I thrashed round the disused quarry next to where we lived, I soon progressed to a Moggie Minor that we paid £5 for & the trend continued......
Edit, in fact here's a photo from a slide that i remembered I had.
The grass needs killing, I know.
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28. Bmw 130i LE. So far buying a 3.0l engined, rear wheel drive car as my first hasn’t been the bad idea everyone told me it would be. Fuel consumption aside I absolutely love it. Practical and daft at the same time. Bike carriers on roof bars and a hatchback means it does everything I need. Makes me grin every time I start it even after 9 months. I even went to the trouble to retrofit it with an indicator stalk. Paid £5200 for it, which I think is extraordinarily good value; they seem to be increasing in cost too, which is nice!
I still like driving my dads B5.5 Passat though. It was the first car I drove, and the one I did most of my learning in.