John Lloyd posted this picture of his first car, with this comment:
1950 Oldsmobile 88, in 1963. Five litre V-8 (303 cubic inches), four speed Hydramatic transmission, weighed 3500 pounds. Beautiful gray wool upholstery that had seat covers on it since new. Of course we took them off. It was pretty dependable even though we were kids and didn’t know much about what we were doing. Got a four barrel carb and manifold off a ’53 and looked great but I don’t think it made it noticeably faster. The whitewalls were the famous Port-A-Walls from the J C Whitney catalog.
Did you have a rusty first car?
My ’63 Corvair Monza, which was given to me by my older brother, had a body generally in great shape for a 10 year old car. But it had rust holes in the front fender caps, although mine were in the top of the fender, as I recall. There was obviously an issue with these, in terms of moisture getting trapped there. Otherwise there was no visible rust anywhere.
Although I knew then that the 4-speed Monza was something special already, and that ideally I’d find a barn to stash it in, at the time I was constantly on the move and in no position to deal with it. And in the end, I abandoned the Corvair, the circumstance of which still pain me.
There’s nothing like the intense memories of a first car. I’m sure you have some too.
In Pennsylvania you can’t drive a car that has rust through, but my first car had “discolored” panels and some holes developing in the floor.
My first car was unofficially mine, a 54 Plymouth Savoy with a Flathead 6 and PowerFlite.
I thought it was THE UGLIEST CAR out of Detroit.
In Pennsylvania you can’t drive a car that has rust through unless you have a friend who runs an inspection station.
!
That is impressively rusty!
Mine was not far off from that! 87 Buick Somerset 2.5 5 speed, the hood and passenger side door were perfect, every other body panel had rusted through by the time I got it in 96. Had to scrape the frost rests the inside and outside of the windshield on cold days.
I did not; in retrospect, it would have built character!
I had saved up about $1000 for my first car in 1975, which I thought would be enough for a 3-4 year old Olds Cutlass or equivalent. Unfortunately like rust, inflation never sleeps, and a grand would not be enough. I recall a 68 Valiant being advertised for $800 in the classifieds, and didn’t want something that old.
So I asked my mother if she could loan me another grand for my desired Cutlass. She emphatically didn’t want me to buy a used car (someone else’s problems and all that) and offered up enough to buy a new one! My choice was a VW Rabbit, which turned out to be a reliability disaster. No doubt that Cutlass would have been a better choice as it turned out.
1971 Vega notchback. I had to pull the front and rear glass, sand, repaint and reinstall the glass two or three times in the eight years I owned the car. Never rusted through because I caught it early enough each time. Never had rust issues anywhere else on the car.
I worked at an engineering firm to put myself through college, and noticed a ’72 Vega in the parking lot one day with rust holes “big enough to throw a baby through.’ Boggled my mind, as having been born and raised in the South, I’d never seen any car with that kind of rust. Turns out it belonged to a new hire who moved to Atlanta from New Jersey. She didn’t think it was that big a deal!
My first car, the Volvo 122S was pretty rust-free but my second car, the ‘73 Vega GT, started to develop more than superficial rust holes around the rear glass by about 1979 or so, and this in California. But nothing like my third car, the ‘75 Alfetta which already had bad enough underbody rust to rip out a sway bar mount – in 1978. Yes, California cars could rust quite a bit in those days.
Nope, as you know I didn’t have a rusty first car or ever have a “rusty” car as I really hate rust. Luckily I’m in California which is generally safe for the most part. Even ran my first car over the weekend just before rain was due.
Ah yes, a white ’61 Comet 4 door with plenty of fender and quarter panel rust. With the slowest drive train possible, 6cyl. auto.
It has been said that these engines had blow-by designed in on the drawing board.
But for $50 in 1971 it lasted me over a year before I junked it.
Virtually everyone in northern Indiana had a rusty first car. The better looking ones had gotten the bondo and paint treatment. Mine certainly had. A 10 year old 67 Ford Galaxie convertible. The front 2/3 was really nice, but the rear quarters had rusted through once and been bondo-ed, and the re-painted rear 1/3 of the car had lost all semblance of shine on the paint.
Anything over about 6 years old was expected to have at least a little rust on it, and by age 10 most of them were bad enough that you didn’t want them. You had to look for really well-cared-for examples with low miles to find older cars with nice, clean bodies.
My first car was a ’62 Ford Fairlane, bought for $200 in 1975. I was a high school junior. The rear wheel wells were quite rusted through, and so the trunk interior was always covered in dirt and water kicked up by the rear wheels. The front wheel wells were rusty too, but not as bad as the rear. But it was a good little car! Had the small 260 ci V-8 and moved out very well.
In the mid 1980s, the floor plan of my ’63 Beetle was coated in surface rust, but the little old lady who owned it before must have avoided winter driving or it would have been worse. I remember my dad patching around the rocker panel of our 1970 VW bus (using window screen and bondo) when it was less than 8 years old. And his ’72 MG convertible had holes in the floor Fred Flintstone could have used. Pennsylvania road salt seems to find foreign steel especially tasty.
FIAT 850, never figured out why the front indicators never dropped out as they were held by air !
Grew up in Los Angeles, so no. However, that first car, a VW Beetle, did start rusting when I moved it to Hawaii.
In Nova Scotia my first four all succumbed, and seven years was apparently the standard life expectancy.
The floor under the driver’s seat of a 1962 Vauxhall Victor suddenly gave way in the summer of 1969. A 1965 Volvo 544 started losing its floor in the spring of 1972. The jack point on the side of a 1969 VW window bus collapsed in 1976, and the trunk floor of a 1973 BMW 2002 had disappeared by 1981.
By then I was in Vancouver, and a new 1981 Scirocco still had no visible rust when it was stolen in 1998.
By good fortune and design I have not owned very many rusty cars. My first and earliest ones were quite rust free in fact.
I think the first rusty car I bought was a 1960s Honda S600 followed by a rusty Toyota truck and Mercedes 220D. Not much since that trio has been rusty either. Probably since I do not enjoy fixing/dealing with rust.
A 1982 Austin Metro. ‘Nuff said
From everything that I have read here, my first car should have been rusty, but it wasn’t!
She was a 1973 Ford LTD 2-Door Hardtop.
How it escaped the thin worm here in salt-happy Maryland is the stuff of legend (and maybe a little mystery). Maybe I just got a good one.
It was either that, or because I washed the car. A lot. Even in Winter. Especially after driving it in the snow.
First car that was mine to drive was my dad’s second car, a 1976 Pontiac Sunbird, which had acne-like surface rust all over the hood and roof. First car I bought was a 1956 Austin A90, purchased in 1994 in Victoria BC from a lady who had owned it since 1960. If you banged your hand on the fenders, bug chunks would fall out, and there were holes in the rear fender tops. Happily the steel was thick enough gauge she still held together.
My first car was a 77 Sunbird coupe that was my grandmothers. She didn’t drive it much in the winter (thankfully) but the rear wheel wells in particular seemed designed to catch snow, mud and ice. I did my best with rustproofing and keeping it clean in Michigan winters. It was a handful in the snow, being RWD and with the 3 speed auto (and the uneven firing 231 V6. It got to the point where it was too rusty and so my mother donated it (when I was at school so I didn’t have to see it hauled away.
I took over an 82 Honda CIvic sedan from my father. It was a great running car, but rust was taking it over too! The fuel filler started rusting badly, causing rust to enter the fuel system and overwhelm the filter. As a result it wouldn’t idle. I replaced the filler neck and flushed out the tank (a good design, with bolts/no straps and a drain plug). But it was a chronic problem until it was donated. Still ran strong though til the end.
My ’63 Ford, which was my first car and I still have it, had partial rust, but just enough to no longer hold the straps on the gas tank so the tank fell off one day. That has since been addressed.
Otherwise, rust is when I sell. I sold my ’87 Dodge pickup due to rust as well as my ’01 Crown Victoria and my ’07 F-150.
I grew up far enough south were rust really wasn’t a thing. Living further north as an adult, I have a very low threshold for it.
Yes.
(There’s more, but the rest is on information embargo—I’m firing up my COALs!)
Looking forward to it!
Absolutely. My first car was a 1982 Renault 5, which I bought in 1988.
My 1968 Ford Fairlane 500 had no trunk floor. There was no rear footwells.
My 1972 Toyota HiLux’s front seat was suspended by the seat frame and the rubber floor mats.
I grew up in Chicago’s South side. Cars dissolved in the air pollution, the road salt, and the acid rain. Pollution doesn’t scare me.
Yep. I had an 86 alfa gtv6. Overall, the body was pretty excellent, but it definitely had rust in the front quarters behind the wheel wells, and it was a one owner Tulsa car!
More alarming were the oil leaks that added together to something like a quart and a half a week. Thankfully alfa had the forethought to endow it with something like an 8 qt pan. It also taught me about trx tires, guibos in lieu of u joints, inboard disc brakes, and italian wiring.
I know a lot of people would like to own their first car again. Hard pass for me.
Even have a pic…with the plywood my dad insisted I put under it to soak up the drips. Wasn’t that effective…
First rusty car: 1962 Mercury Comet. Also has accident damage on the other side. Shown getting hauled away on the day I sold it. 125,000 miles. Was my mother’s 2nd car. I think I got $200. (1989).
The rocker panels on the Comet never rusted because they were made of galvanized metal.
I wonder if that holds for the ’64s; my first car was a ’64 Comet sedan, and it was a few years with me, then sold to my brother and his wife, and several years there (into the mid ’80s).
It was a trouper; hit a few times with big scrapes and shallow dents it only seemed to rust there.
Second rusty car: 1972 Mercedes 250 sedan. Was rust-free for a few years after I bought it, but then rust bubbles under the paint started forming all over the place. When I sold it, I think I also got $200.
(There was no Craigslist or eBay then–it was harder to find buyers in those days. Sold in 1998).
P.S.: AND, the expensive-to-replace exhaust system rotted out 2 or 3 times!
Not so much of a problem where I grew up (southern Australia). My first car didn’t have any obvious rust when I bought it (pic), but within a year I was initiated into basic bodywork, IIRC it was the rear of the sills and driver’s side rear fender, followed later by the bottom of the front fenders. In years to come the driver’s floor became detached from the sill, but I got that professionally repaired. Eventually the passenger’s side A-pillar rusted out; I called it quits at that point.
Indeed – fortunately the frame was perfectly clean so we saved it.
It’s much less rusty now, but some bubbles have formed on the rockers over the 25 years since it was restored.
My first car in 1988 was a 1982 Mustang GL with a perfect body.
My second was a new S10 EL without a bumper or radio. But new was new.
My third was a Corolla SR5 chronicled here. (rollover wreck)
My fourth was a 1979 Accord LX. Very very rusty, and one of my favorite cars ever.
I was living in Vermont at the time…1970.
First car was a 1960 Ford 2-door sedan. It didn’t run. I was 13. Rocker panels were missing and the rear quarters were about to join them.
The following year I inherited a first-year 1958 Chevy Fleetside that DID run with its ol’ No-Flame (and Blue Smoke) 235-6. Had to be a gallon of Bondo in each of the front fenders.
Me also (but 1976).
My very first car was such a rustbucket and when a gear came off in the gearbox they told me it might not go back together after the gearbox was changed…I owned it such a short time, I barely consider it my first car, but it was.
My next car was better, ’74 Datsun 710, I had it for 5 years, but it was pretty rusty by ’81, when I drove it into a guardrail outside Sharon (had moved to MA in 1980) had it fixed up but didn’t trust it as light RWD, so I bought a ’78 Scirocco. I sold the 10 myself which was eay in 1981 as anything that got decent fuel mileage sold pretty much without challeng. Had a terrible test drive where trim fell off my 710 due to rust but the guy still bought it.
The Scirocco had a little rust when I moved it to central Texas in ’83 but I had it fixedand kept it until I bough my 86 GTi. The bigger issue for me was no AC but rust was pretty much a non-concern after that. The big thinkg I’ve noticed here is how good exhaust systems are…now with stainless steel they seem to last the life of the car, when I had aluminized exhaust seemed like I had to put a repllacement in every 4-5 years. Don’t miss that; so cars seem to have gotten better in that respect at least.
I’m starting to realize I took for granted one of the advantages of having grown up in the Gulf South. Most rust we saw was spots from where paint chipped or failed, and rust through was rare.
1968 ford sedan bought from a friend of my mum’s in 1980. Hadn’t seen a winter. One Ontario winter and I found out why they had a reputation. Second time the frame cracked it went to the wreckers.
I know at that point you didn’t see a lot of Ford’s from those years. Most had rusted out years before. It was a good lesson that just because a car hasn’t been exposed to winter and salt doesn’t mean it’s going to last as long as when it was new.
My first car was a mid 70’s Ford Maverick that spent 30 years in Minnesota. So yes, it was rusty. This is what the driver’s floor looked like. The only thing stopping your feet from touching the ground was the carpet.
The dimmer-switch dangling from the brake pedal is a nice touch!
Happy Motoring, Mark
No, my 1979 Mazda 626 (Hardtop) Coupe did not have any rust when I got it in late 1985 in SoCal.
Those Japanese cars, they just don’t rust, it’s amazing. 🙂
Yea. A 64′ Humber Sceptre that had had a spray job but looked good enough to me. Bought in the dark on a rainy night in September! Driving back from Glasgow to London one weekend, my back driver side tyre suffered a puncture. The spare was a different size and that’s when I discovered the last owner had put larger rubber on the back to disguise the fact that the rear springs were sagging badly.
Rooting around the rear wheel arch to kill time before the tyre shop opened, I discovered the inner wheel arch was mostly old newspapers held together with underseal paint.
Laboured on with that car for a few more years; spending a fortune on it. Finally sold it for £100 and I’m pretty certain it was bought by banger racers.
This was my ’75 Valiant, as inherited, in 1981. The rust started popping out on the front fenders circa 1979, and as seen in the photograph, the rear quarters were well on their way a few years later. I ended up fiberglassing the quarters, and oiling the car, which got me to 1984. I then took the plunge and bought new rear quarters, fiberglass front fenders and brought it to a trade school specializing in body work. A donor car gave up the rear trunk pan, front cowl and rear trunk lid. They did a really good job, but the underneath was getting soft, resulting in welded torsion bars, rear spring shackles and a variety of other bits coming loose. It lasted until 1987, and I put about 100k on the 318, bringing it up to 168,000 miles. In hindsight, I should have taken the money and gone looking for a well maintained full frame car, but at least the mechanical bits were wearing out in the end.
I detailed my first rusty car (one of many) on this post: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1969-ford-torino-gt-the-intermediate-sports-intermediate/
Oddly, I still miss that car occasionally. Rust, 10 MPG, leaky cooling system and sketchy electrics and all.
My first car was not very rusty, but my 5th car was. That was a ’86 Golf diesel that I got on the cheap around 2001. It had rusty strut towers that eventually took it off the road. I had duct tape covering the holes in the trunk to keep the water out.
I really really like that old olds 88!
My first car didn’t have rust. But I’ve had a couple rust buckets. A VW beetle and a Chevy C20. Both of them had lost well over 20% of their body panels by the time I junked them.
1970 Galaxie 500. By 1985 when I got it had plenty of rust. It is easy to forget how good we have it now. Years ago here in the upper midwest, everything rusted in 5 to 7 years. Cars still succumb eventually, but it takes closer to 20 years for it to get serious.
In the mid eighties my friend had a ’75 Beetle with nearly no floors. We bolted the passenger seat to a piece of wood. Safety first.
First car had already had the body work done so it was a not-too-rusty-but don’t ask about Bondo ’81 Dodge Omni, second was most of a 1980 Toyota Corolla. Gas tank was so rusty it had approx. 90-100 mile range since more than 3 gallons of gas would just leak out. Wooden plank for the rear bumper was screwed to outer fenders since nothing else was left. There was at least a load-able trunk floor, but a worrying amount of “give” to the driver’s side floorboard. When inspection was due I didn’t even bother, just drove it to the junkyard. Engine probably ran someone’s maple sugaring operation another 20 years.
In 1968 I bought a 1965 Austin 1800. Initially there was no significant rust, but given that it was Ontario, it did not take long for it to appear. The paint was very thick, and it sometimes stayed in place even when all the metal was gone. The jack fitted into a socket in the rocker panel. A couple of years later I had it up on the jack to take off the winter tires, when I noticed the paint flaking off around the jacking point. I quickly lowered it and switched to using a floor jack. That was OK until it punched through the bottom of a box section. That was pretty much the end of it.
First road legal car 1961 Triumph Herald it was 13 years old and plenty of rust pretty hard in NZ in the 70s to find a car where I was that didnt haved some rust it didnt matter much who made it the all pervading salty air ate them coupled with rural roads that were limestone based and marinaded in cowshit rust got at every car, The Triumph stuck #3 conrod thru the side of the block which was the end of it.
My first car was a ’66 Mustang ( 8 years old )without any rust. Second car, a ’64 Caddy convertible (10 -11 years old ). On the bottom of the front fender behind the wheel opening there were some rust bubbles. It seems that there’s a brace/bracket back there that gets filled up with road dirt. It retains moisture and leads to the rust. I had the same problem with my ’70 Coupe de Ville ( 5-6 years old ). Common problem.
Yes. Started driving in a ’90 Civic Wagon shared with my mom. Central NY road salt and having been parked in a heated garage was bearing its fruit. Every spring I dutifully sanded back, filled in with Bondo, primed and painted as well as a highschooler knew how (all by hand). If only I had the basic tools and skills I have now (angle grinder and flap disk, welder) I’d have made short work of it and with a much better looking result. The 2007 Fit that replaced the Wagon, parked in that same heated garage, despite supposed advancements in corrosion protection, is looking no better (worse?) than the Wagon at about the same age. I’m planning a trip out there with all of my body work supplies in hand to fix it up, it’s a solid car besides the rear quarter panel rot.
My first ‘car’ was a 76 Courier, bought in 83. The floors were rusted through (for some reason I recall it was worse on the driver’s side), and the rocker panels were basically gone. I had no facilities for welding, (nor any knowledge) so I used what I knew. I fixed the floor with marine firberglass over a piece of ugly green Kydex I got from work (they had changed the color of the cases on the machines they built). For the rocker panels, I covered them with masking tape and then filled behind with spray foam. Of course it blistered through like tumors, which looked quite strange for months until I finally got around to trimming it and fiberglassing it over.
Yes, not by plan, but by ignorance.
In hindsight, in 1982, most early GM Colonnade cars were rustbuckets here in salt country. The revised ’76 and ’77 versions faired a bit better.
During that year of mid-term elections, I bought a 1973 Cutlass Supreme. From 20′ it was almost a looker.
When the mudflap (yes, it was a thing then) broke away from the rear quarter wheelhouse with a chunk of Bondo attached, it was pretty apparent I was on the steep automotive learning curve of a teenager.
My ‘first’ car was Dad’s ’67 Malibu Coupe. Light metallic green, black bench-seat interior, AM radio with a Sears Stereo-Expander reverb unit, 283 small-block with powerglide, power-steering and dual exhaust. As for rust, it was still very solid, with just a couple quarter-sized fender-holes behind the wheels.
It could’ve been a high school kid’s dream-car, and in the days before the first oil-crunch, regular gas was only 33-cents, but that Chevy was getting maybe 10 mpg, and eating me out of all my lawnmowing money. The fact that it was only running on 7 probably had a lot to do with that.
So a ’61 Mercedes Ponton 180 ‘fixer’ turned up for sale from a neighbor for $200.
Faded paint, some dings, but no visible body rot. Manual everything. No radio. No seatbelts, No power – but hey, at least it ran on all four and got 25+ mpg. Plus I learned to drive four on the tree and fix cars on that. I did find a narrow rust slot in the driver’s floor, but the ‘inner-floor’ looked solid so I did nothing – until I hit a big puddle at 50 mph and got a bucket of cold dirty water in my lap! Turned out that solid inner floor was just fiber-board under the floor-mat. So I learned about pop-rivets!
The first car I bought with my own money was a ’62 mustard-yellow Hillman Super-Minx with red bucket-seats. It needed a driveshaft, an exhaust pipe and an axle bearing. Fortunately, the seller provided the bearing, and I was able to find most of the rest at a local salvage yard, as parts for ancient Hillmans in the US were pretty much extinct by 1974. And the car had lots and lots of rust! Hood perforated and all the rocker panels gone. I probably lightened that car by several pounds – chipping and vacuuming out all the rust-holes. But hey – it was only $50 and a convertible! Plus it was quicker than the Mercedes and much more fun to drive.
So I learned about Bondo!
The seller also left his tags on the car, so I never bothered to register it. It sat in my parent’s driveway for awhile, providing oil-stains and an occasional joy-ride, until my Mom caught me. So the Hillman had to go. I sold it to a lawyer from Maryland for $275, and thought myself quite the entrepreneur.
Happy Motoring, Mark