It was 1992 and I was spending the weekend with a friend. While chatting with the friend’s grandfather, he suggested we visit a man named Otto if we were really wanted to talk cars.
So we went to Otto’s house.
Soon after we started talking, Otto stood up and announced he wanted to take his 1929 Ford Model A Tudor for a spin. The Model A fired immediately and we climbed in. About five minutes into it, Otto looked at me and said he was about to make my day. When I asked how, he pulled over and said he was tired of driving. Swapping places with Otto, I took the very long way back to his house, piloting the Model A on city streets and on a state highway.
Twenty-two years later, the memory is as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
This Model A is the oldest vehicle I have ever driven. What is the oldest vehicle you have driven?
’58 Chevy Bel Air, two-tone blue 4-door sedan. This was c. 1991 or so, car was for sale locally, took it for a test drive and almost bought it. Technically, I even owned it for a day, but then the deal was off due to some nonsense on the seller’s part. The car drove like a truck, very heavy, even compared to various 60s and 70s cars that I have grown up driving. But ever since then, I liked to brag that I once owned a ’58 Chevy.
1912 (chassis/drivetrain) Model T Speedster. Pretty easy to drive compared to the non-synchro crash boxes of similar vintage. I’m restoring a 1925 Dodge Brothers touring car and shifting must be done slowly and carefully or a gear grinding racket results.. Downshifting in motion can only be dreamed of…
One of the reasons Henrys primitive Model T remained popular there were no gears to shift so T drivers didnt need to learn doubldeclutching.
Oldest car I can remember driving was about ten years ago, my brother left a 63 falcon 4 dr with inline 6 and fordomatic two speed at my house for a couple of weeks, when I started driving in 1976, I inherited a 67 olds cutlass 4 dr, then move onto my dads electra 225, and then into the first car I ever bought which was a 67 Chrysler 300 2 dr. If airplanes count, I got to handle the controls of a Ford tri-motor and currently fly a 1961 piper colt, also got to fly a ww2 chipmunk, that was cool, so the airplanes were a lot older!
Also currently own a 65 Corvair 500 2 dr, lots of fun!
I have fond memories of my ’62 Corvair wagon. Small dash mounted power glide shifter, and a glass bottle of washer fluid.
Corvair owner here too, 1965 Corsa convertible, 4 carb 140, she’s a blast to drive.
3 spd, non synchro first with radio delete and original white interior, time machine! Oh yea,110 hp
The oldest car I’ve ever driven was a 1960 Chrysler New Yorker, all black and possibly the same one we had bought when I was 4 years old. It was about 1983, and a friend of mine’s uncle had just bought it. He had some paperwork on it, but nothing indicating the first owner’s name, just the dealer and the date it was sold, which was my birthday. That alone makes me think it was the same car. He only kept it a couple of months. He took it to an old car show, and got offered too much money for it to not take, so it was gone, replaced with a car I liked much better, a ’70 Super Bee, which he had until he died.
Oldest I’ve owned: 1973 Pontiac Ventura (Nova clone) 350/auto
Oldest I’ve driven: 1964 Chevy Malibu (a friend bought it in California and we drove it back to Milwaukee. So I probably drove the Malibu a farther distance, but it was over 3 days. It purportedly had a 350 newer than the car, and a Th-350 trans (it definitely had 3 gears) The steering wheel had a disturbing tendency to come off in your hands if you didn’t remember to tighten the bolt in the middle every now and then. Kept me awake on the long freeway drive…
It burned a quart of trans fluid, at least 2 quarts of oil and a 20-something tank of gas every 150 miles or so, so we may have spent more $ just driving it than it cost him to buy. He was going to restore it (it had been kind of street-rodded in the 70’s and he wanted it more original) but it got taken apart and sold years later without being finished.
Oldest car driven: 1965 Chrysler
Oldest vehicle driven : 1941 Alco S-1 Locomotive
Oldest ridden in : 1905 Curved Dash Olds
Oldest that I’ve driven? My ’78 BMW 530i
The newest that I’ve been driven /in/? A ’59 Studebaker Lark VI
In my case, my mother’s uncle Simca 1000, I guess from 1967 or 1968. I begged him to give it to me once he wanted to get rid of it but he ignored me 🙁
1949 Dodge with 3-on-the-tree fluid drive. If you got up to about 20 and yanked the steering wheel, it would start to oscillate and, if one did not stop it, get so bad it seemed like it was getting close to rolling over. Other than that, it was like driving your living room, and just as comfortable. Shit brown. One central brake light on the trunk with turn signals outboard. 6-volt system. Cool as shit. I wonder where that car is now…it belonged to a friend’s uncle.
Flat-head 6, I forgot to mention.
oldest I’ve driven was a ’29(I think) Model A Coupe Cabriolet. The CC was a model I wasn’t previously familiar with, it had a fabric roof so it looked like a roadster but it did not fold down and had doors like a coupe.
On the road, my dad’s 1973 Mk III Cortina estate, which was on its last legs – rust and filler everywhere, Miami Blue metallic faded to a sort of matt peacock shade, clutch worn to the point that it only started to bite in the last inch of the pedal travel, and to cap it all a collapsed piston crown so that there was nil compression on one cylinder and an effective engine capacity of about 800 c.c. rather than 1600 – and it disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke when it pulled away from a standstill. My dad believed in getting his money’s worth out of his cars.
As an aside, it was 10 years old and had 80,000 miles on the clock, the same as my current Citroen C5, which continues to run faultlessly and if it looks a bit well travelled (it lives under a tree and has the scars of a number of car park battles) has not a sign of rust anywhere. They don’t make cars like they used to…
Off the road, my mum’s 1935 Austin 7 Ruby – she is probably the only 77-year-old still to have her first car. Not that it’s been on the road lately – it was parked up in 1966 when she stopped work to have me. When she needed a car again in 1973 it was not really suitable as a daily driver (top speed of 45 mph) and she bought a Morris Minor – she still has that up on bricks in the barn as well and actually drives a Renault Clio.
The interesting characteristics of driving a Ruby are 1) a clutch with a total pedal travel of three-eighths of an inch (unlike the moribund Cortina above, it was made that way); 2) a low first gear so that it has neck breaking acceleration 0-10 mph; 3) cable-operated drum brakes of legendary ineffectiveness. I just managed to stop it before it came out the wrong end of the garage…
As to the oldest car ridden in – the 1913 Sunbeam 12/16 tourer that my wife and I had as our wedding transport back on 9/9/1998. Anyone wanting a look can find it on the imcdb website if they search “The Mouse that Roared” (1959 comedy in which it is driven by Peter Sellers playing the Grand Duchess). (Notwithstanding the comments it is not the same one as in Aces High – its actual registration is AX 602 not UI 404 which is another car). But I digress.
We were married in the village church and to get to the reception (in a hotel five miles away) we had planned on a leisurely tour of the country lanes at 30-35 mph. But a medical emergency in the congregation (NB: if feeling faint on the hottest day of the year, don’t use your nitroglycerine inhaler, it drops your blood pressure and you will have a very impressive collapse and the paramedics will be called) held up the service for a half hour and so we agreed with the car’s owner/driver that we needed to go the quick way. Down the A14. That is,one of the busiest dual carriageways in the UK, especially when the 40-tonners are going down to catch the Felixstowe-Zeebrugge ferry. For transatlantic readers, think the I-405 full of 18-wheelers.
On the up side we got the reception you’d expect for a couple in full wedding outfits in a vintage car – waving, sounding of horns in a friendly way etc. On the down side, I got a closer view of the hubs and axles of a large number of Scanias, ERFs, Fodens, DAFs, Seddon-Atkinsons etc as they came past us than I had ever envisaged. I needed a stiff drink before we got into the receiving line.
The uncle who had passed out was quite OK, by the way. He got a round of applause when he arrived just as the company sat down to the parma ham and melon.
Off road 1942 GMC.
On road 1976 MkIII Cortina.
The oldest car I ever drove was a 1948 Frazer Manhattan – I borrowed it from my grandfather for a wedding. My dad had to teach me how to drive three on a tree (with the optional overdrive) – that brought back memories of the first time he taught me to drive stick 🙂
62 Tempest with the 4 cyl and 2 speed auto (glide?). A gazillion turns lock-to-lock.
My ’66 Tempest (OHC 6) had “Wondertouch” power steering, with the same gazillion turns lock-to-lock, only boosted.
Oldest one was a ’51 Dodge but only from the shop around the parking lot and then back into the shop again. It was a bone-stock survivor wearing it’s original paint. Clutch pedal had no feel at all and the brakes… I didn’t think it was ready for the road but the owner actually drove it regularly.
Oldest one that I’ve been a passenger in was a ’33 Chrysler Imperial. Very classy.
Other than that it’s been my abnormally aspirated ’69 510 wagon then the ’69 510 2dr sedan which was also abnormally aspirated. Much more modern and with the performance upgrades they were more than capable.
’37 Cord 812 Sportsman in the ACD festival parade. I was 18, and drove one of several Cords he owned for a friend of my grandparents. (This isn’t the car, but it’s twin.) Good times.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time with him working on his cars, antique radios and the many other things he collected. He was a great influence on my life.
1930 Model A
Fun as hell.
Well, I ALMOST drove dad’s 1950 Plymouth when I was playing around in it one evening in front of our house when I pulled something and it began rollong! I did something else and it stopped. I left the car immediately! I think it only moved about a foot, though, but to a 4- or 5-year-old, it scared me half to death!
Other than that, my first car, a 1952 Chevy DeLuxe.
My 1926 Ford Model T Runabout (Roadster). Completely stock with three pedals on the floor, hand throttle and spark controls and 20 horsepower.
Oldest car I have driven on any kind of regular basis was the 1959 Pontiac Star Chief that my grandmother had when I got my driver’s license. With 389 V8 and the “old school” four speed Hydramatic it would accelerate like a AA/FD compared to my six cylinder Ford. It was fine in a straight line but the combination of no feel power steering and super sensitive power brakes made the Chief a handful to drive on a winding road.
The oldest car I have ever driven is a 1936 Oldsmobile coupe. My best friend’s older brother brought it home from the army with the intention of making a hot rod out of it. The car did run under its own power but not very well, it sounded like it was only firing on 5 of its 6 cylinders. We took it out for a spin once but came back after a few blocks, in addition to the engine miss, the brakes were close to non-existent. The Olds sat in their backyard for a couple of years and then one day it was gone, don’t know where to.
1925 Model T that my dad owned for a brief period of time in the early 2000’s. Completely upside down and backwards experience from any modern car, the throttle and transmission operation took a LOT of getting used to.
Oldest “modern” car was my 1963 Beetle.
1956 Hillman, a couple of years ago. Oldest car ridden in would probably be an early 20s Lancia Lambda.
1918 Winton Touring car. I used to work for a company owned by a car collector named Chet Krause and he would have the employees drive them in the local parades.
Got to drive a lot of awesome stuff like the Winton and a WWII military half-track.
My Dads 1972 Olds Cutlass Supreme 442 w30 Convertible (paint colour I think was known as saturn gold).. Had to drive it to the local drug store to get him some medicine, only time I got to drive it heh. I believe I was just underage too. After that its been garaged.
1939 Ford Deluxe V-8 coupe owned by my brother.
I guess it’s my first car, a 1987 Chrysler LeBaron k-car sedan.
I feel so young.
Owned a ’57 Chevy. Sit up nice & high with a commanding view of the road.
My grandfather’s 1969 Sedan deVille – once.
Very smooth – but didn’t have the power I expected it to have.
Owned a 1972 240z in the 90s – great car!
One of my best friends inherited at 1947 Ford Super Deluxe V8 Coupe-Sedan from her dad about 7 years ago. It ran when she got it, but she was too afraid to drive it, so it sat in the garage. The body is perfect and all it needed was a tune-up, new gas, oil change, and to bleed the brakes. I learned what “points” are, and there were several other unfamiliar parts that we’ve never seen on a modern car. We started making up names just for the purpose of communication. Before we knew it, the car had a flux-capacitor (weird spring style resistor) and octopus tubes (tubes where the spark plug wires are run through. total PITA).
We finally finished the car on the day that I was moving from Cleveland, OH to Las Vegas, NV. I got to drive it and it drove beautifully. The 3-on-the -tree was much more intuitive than I expected.
1903 Oldsmobile Model R
’63 Corvair Monza convertible
When I turned 16, my father taught me to drive (a stick) on either a 1954 Dodge or Plymouth sedan. The reason I can’t be sure which it was is because he had one of each at different times. And, I can remember the experience better than I can which car it was. With a couple exceptions, basically all my cars up until 1990 were automatics. Since then, I’ve only had two automatics with the rest all sticks. I can’t offhand recall any older vehicle(s) that I’ve ridden in. And, the oldest car I’ve owned was a 1961 Chrysler 300-G which was in decent running condition but needed a full restoration to be a show car.
The oldest vehicle I’ve ever drive was 1951 Ford tractor. I learned to drive on it when I was maybe 10 years old. Hand throttle, you sat over the transmission, so the gear shift was more or less between your legs. Separate front and rear brake pedals. I had to stand up to depress the clutch. The oldest vehicle I’ve ever ridden in was a 1911 American La France fire engine. A man named Austin Clark had an auto museum in Long Island’s Hamptons. It’s long-since closed, but we went there once, pretty near closing time and to more than make up for the fact that it was closing soon, Clark took us for a ride in the antique fire engine. Way cool.
1981 Checker. It was last year and I was so proud when parallel parked it!
With those bumpers, who COULDN’T parallel park one of those? 🙂 Unless you mean without damage to the other cars. Then I’m impressed.
Oldest I’ve driven was a 1958 Corvette, black with red interior. I was a salesperson at Schonlaw Chevrolet on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood in 1984, and this car belonged to a customer that needed some service work done. I can’t recall now why I had to drive it, it may have been to drop it off to the customer.
Oldest car I owned was a 1962 Coupe de Ville, my first car (It was sort of old by then).
Oldest car I’ve ridden in was a 1947 Pontiac convertible as a baby. Once again, it was old by then, and shortly thereafter traded in for a 1959 Bonneville.
For me, it’s a 1918 Nash Quad truck (four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering – top speed 18 mph). There’s also a 1917 Indian motorcycle, and possibly a 1917 Model T ambulance. That’s a possible only because I’m not sure of the actual year of the base Model T. It’s been rebuilt as a 1917 ambulance (representing the American Ambulance Corps. in WWI France), but the actual Model T engine/chassis could be more recent.
Thought I was the winner until LeBaron added the 1903 Oldsmobile. Rats.
I’ve driven a 1910 Brush many times. My father restored and owns it, and it will eventually make its way into my garage. Two forward speeds (crawl and walk), one reverse speed. It’s a chain-driven, one cylinder runabout with wood axles. Top speed of 20 mph … downhill … in a hurricane.
Oldest driven: 1936 Chevy 4 door sedan.
Oldest owned: 1953 Kaiser Manhattan, 4sp automatic, Jade and Ivory.
62 Beetle. It felt ten years older than that.