Perhaps my earlier post about using this Cadillac as a driver’s education car was part whimsical fantasy combined with a heaping helping of organic fertilizer. But most of you figured that out rather quickly.
Credit for this question must be given to CharlieD612 from his suggestion in the other post. So here it is: What was your driver’s education car?
My school had a deal with a Ford-Buick dealer, quite the dynamic contrast of brands in the late 1980s. Located over an hour away in Perryville, Missouri, this dealer coughed up a new car every 2,000 miles. We went through four of them during the school year when I was in driver’s education.
I missed out on the Buick Century. I also seem to remember a J-body Buick in there, too.
As I was one of the youngest ones in my class, I had wheel time toward the end of the year. The first car I navigated was a white Ford Taurus. Equipped with a red interior and a 3.0 V6, I only drove that car once.
Upon the Taurus going away, and the dealer likely not liking the rate at which the school was accumulating mileage, we got a tan 1988 Ford Escort. I still cringe when I think of that car.
So, what about you?
I don’t remember what kind of car was used in actual driver’s ed class, which for me was a very small component of learning to drive. The first car on which I learned to drive was a beige 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit with a four-speed manual transmission and no options whatsoever (no power steering, no radio).
Learning to drive with a manual car made for a much steeper initial learning curve. Just when you’re trying to get the hang of steering and accelerating, you have:
“Okay, now you need to shift to second.”
“I need to what now?”
The car didn’t have a tachometer either, just some little dots on the speedometer and an upshift light that would come on if you opened the throttle more than a hair and glared at you disapprovingly until you finally shifted at some profligate speed like 2,500 rpm. (Which is to say that it was not completely useless, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.)
It was fun to drive, for all that, and it made driving automatic cars (which I’ve done only occasionally) seem very strange. However, to disillusion all of you who love the idea of driving a complete stripper with no extras to break, it was never that reliable, suffered several persistent and very annoying chronic issues that long mystified a very reputable mechanic, and was alarmingly expensive to repair even at independent shops. Also, I hope to never again have to deal with a car lacking even the most basic of radios.
I recall the upshift lights coming on for not opening the throttle far enough. They were connected to vacuum sensors in the intake manifold, so they could tell when you were accelerating more slowly than you would in next gear for a given throttle opening.
I learned to operate a manual gearbox on small motorcycles, so it was easy to transition to a car. The principles are the same, even if the shift pattern is different. Steering was learned on peddle-cars, go-karts and lawn tractors. Although I drove my first manual car at a very young age, I didn’t drive one on the range during driver’s ed. I saw driver’s ed as a formality. It was more important to complete the course with minimal irritation than to show off what I could do in a Chevette with a burned out clutch among the students with well-intentioned but misguided fathers who thought they should learn on a manual at the hands of a grumpy public servant. The range’s Chevette stank like a San Francisco cable car, such was slippage experienced by its clutch. I have memories of it jerking between stalls while its terrified drivers were screamed at from the tower over one-way radios we all had to listen to in our own range cars, but none of it circulating the range.
I’m not entirely sure if the Rabbit’s upshift light was triggered based on manifold pressure or what (and I certainly didn’t know back then), but in any event, its function was not to guide you to more efficient throttle settings, but rather to nag you to upshift at absurdly low engine speeds in whatever gear you happened to be in. Without a tach or a chart of speeds in gears, I couldn’t tell you precisely what shift point it recommended, but my guess would be around 2,000 rpm.
An actual vacuum gauge, or even a vacuum warning light that operated on the principle of “drive to keep the light off as much as possible for greater efficiency,” might have been genuinely useful, which this was not. Its main effect was to train you to shift twice before you cleared the intersection.
I’ve never driven a motorcycle and I didn’t even learn to ride a multi-speed bicycle until after learning to drive, so that wasn’t much help!
I remember VWs upshift lights as being horrendously unreliable.
I had 2 different VWs, an 82 Rabbit, and an 85 Jetta. The Rabbit bought almost new as a demo. The Upshift light quit a month after I bought it. Dealer fixed it, quit again, never bothered to fix it.
I bought the Jetta used, and didn’t even know it had one until it flashed on one day. Never came on again. So in 6 years of ownership, it came on once.
It worked in this particular car, although one of the other warning sensors (the low oil pressure warning buzzer) turned out to be the culprit in two of the car’s most persistent and annoying recurrent problems.
http://tech.bentleypublishers.com/thread.jspa?threadID=43872&tstart=-1
If it was me I would have installed a mechanical oil pressure gauge and disconnected all the other pony show bells and whistles. Forget about a light to tell you when to shift, IMHO if you can’t figure that out for yourself you have no business being behind the wheel of an automobile. Although somewhere in all my junk-err priceless vintage auto stash I have a NOS vacuum “Mileage Minder Light”.
Most cars back then didn’t have a tachometer, nor upshift-lights. Which was just fine, the sooner shifting gears became an all natural process, in any car with a manual you had to drive.
Ultra-strippo base models didn’t, certainly. A tachometer was typically optional, though, at a cost of around $60 U.S. (Since I haven’t gone in for base models, I’ve never owned a car without a tach, although I’ve also never owned a car without a radio, cruise control, or air conditioning.)
The upshift light, to be clear, was mostly about optimizing fuel economy on the contemporary EPA cycle, which is presumably why it was standard equipment even on an otherwise option-free Rabbit.
I think the first car I drove with a tachometer was my own 1995 Ford Escort 1.8i GT with a 5 speed manual.
By now all cars have those upshift lights. Even in cars with small naturally aspirated gasoline engines they tell you to upshift at ridiculously low revs, resulting in driving 50 to 60 km/h in 5th gear. You just feel and hear that the poor lil’ engine does not agree with that kind of nonsense. “Give me more revs please, more revs”.
Circa 1985: “in car” on actual streets was a beige Chevy Citation II with red velour. A scary, scary vehicle to merge onto I-40 in when you have been driving for about 10 minutes. “Range” driving for a few hours in a huge parking lot with painted intersections, RR tracks, fake pedestrians that pop up, etc., came before that. As I recall it was all Pontiacs. I lucked out and got a 6000, the most “normal” car there. A very small, petite female classmate got a Parisienne so she flunked the parallel parking test miserably! I think she re-did the test in a T-1000 and was fine.
My 16 & 17 y.o. kids report it’s now all older Taureses (Taurii?), the body before the current body, on the Range. In-car are W body Impalas.
Hello CC… long time listener, first time caller.
Very surprised to see no Chrysler K-cars represented here yet, considering their numbers. My Driver’s Ed car in 1983 was a Plymouth Reliant K wagon.
After perusing some brochures and online info to refresh memory, it was a fairly well optioned ’81 SE, brown metallic paint and tan interior. No power windows or locks or seats, but it did have A/C, AM/FM stereo, 14″ road wheels, cloth seats and DI-NOC delete. It also had the optional Mitsubishi 2.6 plant, which makes for a funny anecdote…
My main memories of DE were:
– The Reliant being a pleasant little beast, compared to the ’73 Super Beetle and ’78 Cutlass Supreme coupe I was cutting my teeth on at home (though I loved the Beetle, which was handed down to me eventually as my first car – and was too young to realize just what a dog the Cutlass was with its 260).
– I have no recollection of the other DE cars, other than there were 4 or maybe 5 in total, but the Reliant was the only Chrysler product, the newest of the bunch, and the only wagon. I never was in any of the other cars. I do remember that none of the cars had a manual transmission.
– All of our DE cars came from the local Chevrolet dealer’s used car lot, as was the case since our HS opened in 1966, and changed yearly. None of the cars had secondary brakes – at least mine didn’t.
– There were no memorable mishaps or shenanigans during DE – everyone was on their game. At least in my class.
– I’ve read in the comments of 4 or 5 kids to a car plus the instructor, but in my class, it was always student behind the wheel, instructor shotgun, and 3 students in the back seat.
– (This is how I determined after all these years the Reliant was an ’81) – While we were out in the high school parking lot being introduced to the range and the cars, a friend and I were goofing on the “HEMI 2.6” badges on the Reliant (which only appeared on the ’81 Ks with the 2.6) and verbally hoping we would get it to drive. Mind that this was during the Days of Malaise, and “That thing got a HEMI in it?” wasn’t a thing yet – but we were aware of Chrysler’s leveraging of the name based on the past.
Both my friend and I were confirmed bookworms, known (and disparaged) by the instructor, your typical manly man’s man football/basketball/Phys Ed coach – indeed, this guy had it in for me as I was second tallest in my class, and never went out for basketball. But now, here he was discovering we were gearheads – and both friend and I got a verbal warning about pulling any stunts (like a K car is capable of any). “I don’t need any lead foots ruining my day”, or something to that effect.
You’d think that Mr. Coach wouldn’t do anything to remind or encourage us – my friend did get assigned to a different car, but I got the Reliant, and Mr. Coach always addressed me as “Leadfoot” when it was my turn behind the wheel.
For all the hassle I endured from him (and that’s a longass story in itself), I think it was his way of offering an olive branch. I passed easily, and my visit to the DMV for the written and road test were non-eventful as well.
I’m not usually an online poster, but I have been following CC for a while now, and thinking about offering my services. I’ve only owned 13 cars since I started driving in 1983, but I did write about one of them here many moons ago, to serve as an example. Please forgive that it’s on the wacky vwvortex site – you’ll notice I only posted the one time. Also the formatting – vwvortex has been upgraded several times since I posted that, and it’s lost some paragraph breaks. (page 3 post #65 from drmcd if linky no worky.)
I have very much minutiae stored over the years – my grandfather was a mechanic and service manager for a Nash-turned-AMC dealership, my older brothers campaigned a couple drag cars in the 70s, and I was born in 1967 – so I’ve got a pretty expansive view on things automotive over the years.
I figured this CC topic was a good place to start posting – where else to start but about when I started to drive? But alas, it got long – Ima finish this beer and call it a night. Thanks for reading.
An Audi Q5 with a 2.O TDI and a manual gearbox.
Depends who the driving instructor was. John had a mid-aughts Pontiac Vibe, Lorrice had a Toyota Yaris sedan, Ronnie had a Ford Focus sedan (2nd Gen, US), and Mike had an early-mid-aughts Chevy Malibu/Classic (I can’t remember if it was pre-2004 or post-2004. The ‘Bu was by far the worst car of the bunch. It smelled like stale cigarettes (although that was probably the instructor’s fault), and the steering wheel shook like a Chihuahua when the car was stopped. All had automatic transmissions, as is expected in ‘Murican drivers ed circa 2014.
1963 full size Chevy 3-speed manual supplied by local dealer. Formal training wasn’t required in those days and I already had my license when I took the class to get a discount on insurance. The car was also used by the athletic department for hauling stuff to and from practice fields and I actually drove the car quite a bit before graduation. Extension bars allowed clutch and brake to be operated from the passenger side which enabled lots of fun pranks when two students were alone in the car.
I learned to drive in the pasture at home in a 1947 Studebaker Pickup when I was 10. The car I took drivers ed in when I was 15 was a 1962 Ford Galaxie with a 289 and three on the tree that was donated by Old Capitol Ford.
I reckon both were my driver ed vehicles.
1989 Plymouth Reliant LE America four door sedan. I still remember the first time I put my nervous hands on that steering wheel being able to legally drive on the streets finally.
If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I would choose the K in a heartbeat. With it’s boxy design and low trunk height, the visibility in that car was amazing and it really helped in taking out the horror of parallel parking. Also, that was the last year of that car design, so most of the kinks had been worked out by then (says my present self in hindsight) and the fuel injected 2.2 was quite a nice little muted growler.
I can’t profess enough love for the K-car. When my parents first bought that three year lease return, I rolled my 14 y/o eyes as my stomach churned. After it had proven its reliability and ability in the snow, as well as its comfortable velour seats with almost as much room as the M body it replaced, and its ability to drag a blown out tire for miles down the highway unnoticed (the tire got fixed by plugging the hole and we were back in business), I understood why some people considered the K-car a smashing success for Chrysler. I was hooked by then and had developed a fondness for a car that I never would have expected to.
I really do miss my Reliant that my parents eventually handed down to me, but also realize that it was what it was for the times and that in this day and age, to drive one would be — to me — like making a weird statement of oppositional defiance done in vain when “better” cars are widely available with no fundamental purpose in saving a company.
I still would like to drive a nice maroon late model LE with a balance shaft 2.5, A/C, floor shift, console dash, “loaded” version Reliant, however….
Yep, as Bryce said, no driver’s ed in New Zealand (although the idea was being discussed last week); most Kiwis are taught, for better or worse, by family/friends/independent instructors.
My first drive was in 1988 in my parents’ 1983 Ford Cortina – but it was traded on a 1985 Ford Sierra before I drove it a second time. Both the Cortina and Sierra were manual transmission, but I did some learning in my grandparents’ 1986 Ford Fairmont auto around the same time (I discovered the Fairmont’s speedo worked in reverse gear and commenced learning reverse slaloms through the thistles in the paddock outside the dining room window…oddly the Fairmont was excluded from my future learning experiences…)
There are some parts of the US that have “driver’s ed” before driver’s ed. Specifically in my home state of Michigan, parents will take their kids out on a dirt road (no cops) to “get a feel” for driving. The parent or parents will have the child start doing this around age 13-14, and the driving will be done in the parent’s DD. The parents will eventually have the kid do one or two drives a month until actual driver’s ed starts. I am speaking from experience from this one, and will readily tell you that everyone around here does this with their kids, even the licensed instructors themselves.
My “family” DE was my brother’s 67 Mercury Cougar (302 V8), 3 on the floor, hell of a clutch at 5AM in City Park (New Orleans). By this time, the love birds were gone and the NOPD was a snoozing.
Phase II was my sister’s Karman Ghia (40 HP) refining the art of the”California stop” (i.e.: rolling thru stop signs in order to maintain what little momentum was available).
Formal DE was a 83 Pontiac Catalina with 400 cid, 3 speed automatic. Being used to the stick shift, I nearly put the instructor and fellow riders thru the windshield when I attempt to shift to second gear and mistaken the brake pedal as the clutch!!! Needless to say, I was regulated to the back seat for the remainder of the program.
In Warren, PA 1961, our driver ed car was a 1961 Ford Falcon 4 door sedan. Automatic transmission of course with the anemic Ford 6 cyl engine. I was already used to driving our family 1956 Ford Ranch wagon with stick and Thunderbird V8 so the Falcon was no thrill for me but it was fun tooling around town during school hours with the teacher and two other students. The Falcon did seem a pretty solid smaller car if somewhat slow.
Oof, AAA driver’s ed! Mr. Brady (who had been the art teacher at my elementary school) taught in the classroom, and probably out on the roads as well, but I drew Mrs. Wilmoth and a thoroughly disagreeable Chevrolet Cadavalier for my on-road instruction time. That didn’t stop me taking my license test in my father’s (now my) ’62 Dodge, which dad had let me drive around the big, empty parking lot at Bonneville Dam in the middle of a road trip we took in it when I was 14 or so.
The year was 1998 (which makes me feel a little young) when I had received my learner’s permit. Driver’s ed at my high school was originally about $300, consisting of about 25 hours in class lessons and at least 10 hours behind the wheel. My instructor drove in from about an hour away from Barrie to Toronto. Our vehicle was a fully loaded 1998 Plymouth Voyager minivan- yes a minivan! It looked blue or was probably a color called Deep Amethyst Pearl. It had a column shifter and a foot pedal operated parking brake.
My first time behind the wheel was out on the road when it was dark outside and I never felt much of a difference between day and night thanks to this experience. Our classes were after school and it felt relaxing driving at night with the extra brake pedal that my instructor had installed on the passenger side. Later, since it was about Winter time, it got a bit trickier when there were huge snow banks on the sides of the road, along with slush at every turn. We even practiced doing an emergency parking brake stop in a snow covered parking lot. Drivers in Toronto appear to be a lot more careless now.
The van was hard to park and I was at a huge disadvantage because unlike the rest of the class, my dad wouldn’t allow me to practice driving with him until I had learned something from the course. More experienced drivers flew by the course, but in the end I just managed to get by. Of course I had even taken a few driving school classes in a black Mazda 323 which felt like a toy car in comparison. Later I had done most of my driving practice in my dad’s old two tone burgundy with silver bumpers V6 ’90 Pontiac Tempest (Canadian Chevy Corsica clone).
I learned to drive in a a early-2000ish Taurus in driver’s ed. At home I drove my mom’s 1998 Grand Voyager, the 2002 ML320 or my dad’s 2005 Taurus.
I drove the Voyager the most, since it was a few years old by then and wasn’t used by my mom as much. I was worried about getting into expensive fender bender on the Mercedes, especially at first. Dad’s Taurus (or the identical Taurus I used in driver’s ed) was a little small for my taste as someone who was (and is) big and tall.
Ironically, my first car was a 1997 Chrysler Concorde. It felt a bit more roomier (and more comfortable) than the Taurus even though they’re roughly of similar size.
Two cars: first one was a 2003 Chevrolet Cavalier two door, which I despised, and then a Ford Taurus at the same timeframe. Later, because I let my permit lapse, I had to retake the road test (can’t remember why) but I retook at in a 2005 Chevrolet Malibu.
The Malibu made me hate that generation forever. Horrible steering, awful dash texture, and being a 2.2 probably didn’t help anything. Made my first roadworthy vehicle seem like a speed demon, and I wouldn’t exactly call a 1991 Ford Explorer fast.
I got to train on a Chevy Nova (the boring Toyota Corolla version). Being even then a lover of old American cars, the bigger the better, I was a teenaged quiver of competing emotions: excitement to be driving vs dislike for the Japanese interloper hiding behind an American nameplate.
The driver’s ed films we watched in class were pretty cool, though. They were made by Shell and Ford in the 70’s and had all sorts of beastly cars featured.
Adult perspective has made me grudgingly appreciate the practical qualities of Corollas and their NUMMI brethren, but just thinking about them practically puts me to sleep!
A mauve ’96 Hyundai Excel (Accent in US).
The car was only about four years old at the time, but the manual shifter was that flogged out it was like using a wooden spoon in a mixing bowl to find gears.
Otherwise, I mostly learned in my Dad’s blue ’82 Holden VH Commodore, my Mum’s blue ’79 Ford XD Falcon or my mum’s partner’s fawn ’77 Mazda 323 (GLC); the latter later became my first car.
In the spring of ’77, we got a brand spanking new Pontiac Phoenix (nee Nova) 2-door sedan, orange with a tan painted top/interior. It was delivered to us for use without the Drivers Education signage, and we were finished with it before the signs even showed up. I went to a very small school in the country, and we were all very glad of that fact. I’d already been practicing on large cars (’67 Monaco, ’76 Grand Marquis, ’73 Lincoln Continental) for a while, so driving the Phoenix was a breeze. It was equipped with a V-8 (Pontiac or Chevrolet, I can’t recall) and a fair smattering of options — somewhere between a stripper and a loaded car. It helped make the learning experience an easy one.
Somewhere in the historical section of this site I did a post about my learning to drive it was in something most of you will have never seen live, A 1966 Austin Gipsy 4×4 SWB Hardtop pickup manual naturally.
Oh wow I’m going to piss off some Torino fans here, I’m sorry. It was a 1975 Gran Torino 4 door. I loathed that car. I know you could get handing packages and whatever to make them better but nobody did the in the midwest US. Going straight at 45 to 55 mph it was a smooth ride but it was a wallowing pig for braking and cornering. One weekend my instructor pulled up in a 75 Plymouth Gran Fury. It was a bigger car but the ergonomics, visibility and around town handling were worlds better. I really liked that car. Apparently the Torino was in for service or something. I think my instructor liked the Torino better. My heart sunk when it came back the next Saturday. Oh well, I had a ’65 Corvair Monza 4 door waiting for me at home when I got my license. Bonus!
Took driver’s ed in 1980 in a powder blue Plymouth Volare.
New 1987 Pontiac Grand Am sedan in black.
With the gorgeous blonde “T” as a driving partner,
I wanted the class to last forever.