After my last post and Steve’s comments about my VW, I started thinking about my bug and how much I loved it. I did some searching on the internet for pictures, and there is actually one for sale here in Charlotte: a 1974 baby blue Superbeetle for the low price of only $11,995. The main thing that distinguishes a Superbeetle from a regular one is the curved glass on the front windshield vs. a straight down windshield.
My bug was purchased new in 1974 when I was 5. It cost my parents about $1,500 new. It had an AM radio, a heater, a defroster, a back seat that would fold down (my sister and I loved that on trips), and was a 4 speed manual transmission. When they sold it, they got $3,000 in early 1987. Pretty good for a 13 year old car.
I leaned to drive on this car starting when I was about 14. Mom would let me practice on Sundays in the Airport High School parking lot. There was this great hill in the back that connected the old student parking lot (the underclassman dirt lot) to the front of the gym. That hill was the perfect place to stop mid way up the hill and learn to let off the brake and operate the clutch and gas to avoid rolling backwards.
I really did love that car. I drove it from the time I got my license (April 16, 1984) until I got my first Toyota. My second car was a 1984 SR5 Toyota Corolla. It was a 2 door liftback, had pop up headlights, was red, and had these cool black louvers on the back glass. I remember picking that car up after school on December 9, 1985. I’m pretty sure it was a Monday. My parents financed it for 30 months, and the payment was about $230 a month. I ended up helping out with the payments when I was at Carolina and paid $130 a month to my mom and paid for it to be in the garage as well as paid about half the insurance until it was paid for. After that, I took care of all the insurance, maintenance, etc. I was so glad when I paid it off in August of 1988. I even got my mom to sign the title over to me since I had helped pay for it and was responsible for it.
I drove that car until May of 1991. I had been out of school for a year and bought my first new car, a 1991 Toyota Celica. It was red, but was not a liftback. I really missed my liftback, but in that model, the trunk looked better than the liftback. However, it was not nearly as cool as my Corolla liftback even though it had a spoiler on the back. I never fell in love with that car like I did the bug and my SR5, and I ended up trading that Celica in right after I paid it off on my current Celica, the 1996 25th Anniversary edition you see in the post below. I decided to buy my current Celica while I was on a business trip in Texas. I made all the arrangements while home one weekend, and the car actually arrived in late April, but I did not take delivery until mid-May 1996. It was very expensive as the exchange rates were not that favorable at the time, and I bought it for about $21,600. It was still a deal though as I still had all of my connections at Toyota Center and knew the owner personally. So I got a great deal.
So here’s a bit of trivia, do any of my blogger friends know what all 4 cars that I have driven have in common? Good luck!
10 comments:
Was it that they were all named after various Federation Starships? If not, now that I've mentioned it, don't you wish that WAS it?
Survey says - XXX. I never did have names for my cars, try again!
All license plates NCC-1701?
No, try again. Actually, my license plate for the Corolla was LZL 509. Don't ask my why I remember that.
They were all manual (warp) drives?
Great job Steve! Yes, all of my cars have had a manual transmission. The bug was a 4 speed, and all the rest have been 5 speeds. That is funny you said warp drive - sometimes that's how Jim describes my driving!
Automatics just don't turn me on - I've got to have that element of fun in the driving with the straight drive.
Knowing how to shift made learning to ride a motorcycle easier too. Except that you have to go through each gear to gear down on a motorcycle as you can't go from 4th to 2nd on a bike.
Actually, I just realized that all of them are 2 door cars too, and they are all foreign made.
The manual transmission was the "real" answer to my question.
And they had four wheels. That was going to be my guess. Oh well.
So are you going to get the super Beetle? Maybe we can take your Beetle and my new 196X Ford pickup to an autoshow.
I'm thinking I would need to have another job to pay for another car or else Jim would flip out. Actually, I could get a '69 or '70 corvette with t-tops for about $30,000, and I'd rather have that!
Post a Comment