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?
From what I remember, our local school system had 1970 Chevrolets at the time I took Driver’s Ed – mostly automatic -equipped Chevelles but some Impalas and Novas too. The Chevelles stick most in my memory.
Started driver training in the dead of February 1975 in a new Malibu Classic 2-door, dark blue over light blue, just like the car on the right but with the plain wheel covers of the car on the left. After spring thaw, I did my highway driving in a white ’75 Olds Delta 88 Royale.
I took driver’s ed during the summer of ’79, and we had an aeroback Olds Cutlass on loan from the local dealer (Coleman Oldsmobile).
The dashboards and steering wheels in the simulation trailer (which we, being teenaged boys with our minds in the gutter, called the “stimulation trailer”) were from a Chevy II.
1980 VW Rabbit. I took the summer course which was taught on stick, while the spring and fall sessions were automatics – Volares and downsized Malibus as I recall. The Rabbit had round headlights, so we must have still been getting German built cars in Canada, rather than Westmoreland ones with the rectangular lamps.
We didn’t have driver training in schools in Australia, I learned on a 1975 Valiant Galant wagon 4 speed ( probably Dodge Colt in the US.)
I’d driven tractors before, but my first time on the road, Dad could see I was having trouble on the bends. He said don’t just look at the front of the car, look up the road further (Duh….) I was fine after that.
Passed my test Ist go in a 1976? Toyota Corolla, and boy was I glad to finally jump in my 318 Valiant Hardtop and start driving on my own.
Mitsubishi Colt over here four headlight front instead of the Valiantesque grille Aussie had.
IIRC the four-headlight face was the original, the facelift (full reskin for the coupes) got single headlights (with inset, foglight-esque turn signals in the grille on US cars).
We had 1973-1974 Caprices. Stripper models 4 door, v8 and AC. Multi Chevrolet in Union NJ provided them. The gym teacher doubled as the driver education teacher and he was a lush. He would fall asleep as soon as you left the parking lot. Legend has it that one particular juvenile delinquent stopped at a liquor store to buy beer during his instruction. The Caprice was parked in front with the teacher asleep in the passenger seat. When the proprietor asked for ID, the student told him that it was for his dad who was asleep in the car.
Private driving school, 1982 as well as 1984 Toyota Corolla’s. Both in white.
Summer of 1967, summer school Driver’s Training class at Venice High School. (Already went through the 1/3 semester Driver’s Education course). SOP for the Driver’s Training class is classroom instruction with those funky ‘driving simulators’ set up in a trailer. Then, the instructor would take as many kids out as possible, all at once, then you would get maybe 20 minutes behind the wheel on a 2-hour drive around town. Soooo the cars were big. We had a fleet of white, ’67 Plymouth Fury III 4-door hardtops, 2 in the front, 3 in the back.
Wow, that’s my school, too! Driver Training in the spring of 1963, with those silly simulators in a trailer, it was sponsored by Aetna at the time. Driver’s Ed was a classroom course taken the year before, as I recall. For whatever reason, I was assigned to a beater ’57 Ford Custom, while others got to use the newer ’63 Studebakers. Same setup with the students, one in front with the instructor, and three in back. I still vividly recall one of the girls freezing up driving along Venice Boulevard, the instructor had to hit the dual brake, throwing all of us in the back seat into the backside of the front seat. Pretty scary, no seatbelts, either. Amazing that we lived to tell the tale with all these mishaps.
An ’81 Malibu Classic with a V6/automatic. Barely tolerable around town with three students and the instructor, but scary on the highway. It was just too slow, and I don’t know how GM got away with it for so long. The car I took my test in (our ’78 Gutless Cutlass) was no better, but I suppose our teachers and parents were content to let us take potluck. For myself, I didn’t really care. I got my licence and that was all that mattered.
1997 Ford Taurus SE Bright Blue.
The real fun car was the one I was able to accumulate my hours on. 1986 Cimarron V6 w/ the D’Oro package. That was a nightmare to drive and it caught fire when I was coming home from my high school job at Sbarro Pizza!!
The local Chrysler Plymouth dealer used to supply the school board with new Drivers Ed cars every couple of years. My class had two 73 Plymouth Satellite sedans. One gold and one light metallic green. I already had my license when I took the class and used to piss off Mr. Kunkle because I didn’t like keeping my hands at 10 and 2
The school used Buick Century
At home I practiced with Mom’s Buick Century
I took the test in a rented Chevy Cavalier
I was in driver’s ed in 2001 and it was an early 90’s Chevy Lumina. What a terribly uninspiring vehicle. It pretty much taught me nothing.
Learning to drive my ’71 Beetle and my Dad’s 1970 F-100 were what really taught me how to drive.
Our school had a ’94-ish Plymouth Sundance in light green aqua metallic with the seperate brake. Lots of fun practicing winter driving.
in the mid 90’s the only cars I remember being used for driver’s ed was a late 80’s/early 90’s Chevy Corsica and a Mercury Topaz of the same vintage, I remember them being blue in color
1998 Ford Taurus, white
Our school had a deal with the Chevy dealer. Learned in a ’66 Chevy wagon with no ac. Fifty years later I still remember the teacher had a thing about merging at full freeway speed. Spent plenty of time going down ramps with the loud pedal nailed to the floor. Steve
Our driver’s ed car was a tan 72 Chevy Vega wagon with the 2.3 liter standard engine (90 gross HP?) and Powerglide to make it “go” (I use the term loosely), and very touchy brakes to make it stop. The instructor always kept the A/C on max. As the A/C was one of the few things that was over-engineered in the Vega, I learned to always bring a sweater to DE drives, even in the summer.
The A/C helped make a slow car a rolling hazard. There were many exciting “unintended non-acceleration” moments when making left turns on busy US 1 and merging onto I-95, but the most challenging by far was entering the Merritt Parkway. It was one of the first limited-access highways in the U.S., built in the 1930’s with a design speed of 40 MPH, and very little in the way of acceleration/deceleration zones. Thirty years later people started to use it as an I-95 alternative, and actual speeds were probably 55-60 by the time I started driving. The only safe way to merge was to floor it, the earlier the better. I wonder if the instructor intended to teach us racing techniques so early on our driving careers.
1992 Chevy Beretta in 1992.
Hey, I’m still alive! I’m still around! Anyways, my driver’s ed classes took place both in my high school and in a second-generation Ford Taurus. It was white with a red interior, the most interesting interior color of any car I’ve ever driven. Too bad carmakers shy away from putting anything unique in their commuter lease specials these days.
1980 dodge diplomat sedan, slant six in that godawful green Chrysler had at that time.
also had dual brake pedals which I thought was wonderful as one of the other boys had a tendency to freeze at traffic lights.
that was in the fall of 79 and when I graduated in june of 81 he still did not have his license. let us hope he moved to a city with good public transit! 😉
76 Ford Gran Torino. NO. not Clint’s firebreather. but the strangled later model Murilee Martin called the “Malaisiest of the Malaise era”. ours had a partial vinyl roof and all that 70s ford badness that was part and parcel of the times. still, it was better than anything my family drove. and would be until my own first new car purchase of an 89 Mazda B2600i ext.cab truck.
A first generation white Ford Tempo with passenger side steering and pedals. I took a private driver’s ed course. It was my first time driving a Ford and the dashboard and plastics in the interior looked rubbery and cheap. The surface of the steering wheel was smooth and shined like linoleum from being worn down and smelled like French fries. I got yelled at for taking too long to release the ignition when turning on the car. I was used to holding the key in the Start position until the engine fired up – Ford ignitions fire up instantly at the twist of the ignition, which I did not know about.
A 1968 Dodge Dart sedan in October 1969.
My province and I think most of Canada does not have public school driving lessons, private is the only option and is not mandatory. I went through a driving school last year (money well spent) they had a late 2000’s Honda Civic sedan, the digital dash was super helpful during my time behind the wheel (I did my test in that car). They recently switched to a fleet of gray base model Fits, look pretty unispiring.
1989 or 90 Ford Escort, with their unique extra-annoying version of motorized mouse belts and that last butt-tuck the very late firstgen Escorts got that just made the car seem even more dated. Took the test on mom’s ’86 Plymouth Horizon.
Fun times and how could we forget the details when getting a license was the most important thing?
Drivers training in the summer of 1965 in a small town Midwestern high school. Local dealers supplied two cars, a new burgundy Impala four door hardtop with A/C and a new white Plymouth Fury III four door sedan without A/C. IIRC the Impala had the 283 and I’m guessing the Fury III had the 318. I was assigned to the Plymouth.
It was a hot, humid summer and we all envied the kids who got to drive and ride comfortably in the more stylish and air-conditioned Impala. The Plymouth was a perfectly decent car with a V8 and the great Torqueflite auto but it suffered from a number of obvious assembly defects common to a new model, including a poor alignment of the shift pointer and the transmission quadrant.
I passed the course (did anyone fail? I think one kid did and deservedly so – another story) and passed my state driver’s test a few months later and got my license at age 16+one month, state law at the time. Without D/T, you had to wait an additional five months to try for a license.
I did most of my learning to drive in a black with white vinyl topped ’73 Dodge Dart “Swinger”. 318 auto with A/C. The driving school my parents used had a bunch of them. One in particular ran much better, almost like it had a 340 in it, and I was always happy when I got that one, which was most of the time, since the owner was my instructor. Just before I got my license, I started driver’s ed in school, and they had an older Chevy Caprice, but just before I took my test, they got a brand new blue ’73 Caprice, which went to the body shop almost immediately when one of the girls in my group sideswiped the passenger side mirror off on a bridge. Almost as soon as it came back, it went to the body shop again when a tiny headed kid named Bobby spun out on a side street near school and did a pretty bad amount of damage going 25MPH.
The two above drivers were still trying to pass their road test over a year later. The girl did eventually get hers, but I always wondered if Bobby ever got his license.
Summer school 1980 – Seattle
Plymouth Volare and a VW Rabbit for stickshift practice
I wish they still instructed us in manuals when I took it in ’95, but it was sadly long gone by then. We didn’t have one in the family either at the time, so it was two more years before I learned (mostly) to drive a stickshift.
1980 Chevy Malibu Wagon. With the Small block V8 and the extra brake. Not to bad of way to start. Took my test in my Dad’s 74 Dart. It was a government car, other than the auto, had absolutely nothing for options. Back then, Dad’s philosophy was a/c and power options were just something more to break. LOL
The first couple of times I went out on the road, a very plain jane Pontiac Ventura sedan. Then, one day the Pontiac dealer swapped it out for a very nice ’75 LeMans Sport Coupe, with console and floor shifter even! That was a kick, as the car was absolutely brand new. I think I drove it before the teacher did.
1973 Malibu colonnade two-door, no vinyl roof – a very basic Malibu of that year, although it might have had air conditioning. It and its predecessors were parked at the rear of the Sophomore Choir homeroom.
1949 G M C 1/2 ton straight 6 w 4 speed long box. Dad took us out on dirt roads thru sagebrush on marginal land grant property in central Oregon. We had to go in reverse with gas petal pushed to floor and keep truck on the trail. When accomplished we could drive forward back to home. Very educational and it didn’t take long to master driving in reverse then going forward was fun and easy.
Ahhh. 2004. Our 1800-ish student body had a choice between 3 cars in driver’s ed: The Chevrolet Cavalier (base 4 dr), Ford Focus (LX Sedan), and Chrysler Sebring (base sedan). Never had a chance to pilot the Focus, but the Sebring certainly proved more tossable. It also came across as a more upscale driving experience than the Cavalier – at least it did in my 15 y.o. mind. About a year later, my first car ended up being a 2003 Cavalier LS Sport Coupe. It being a tad nicer than the sedan I experienced in driver’s ed, I had no complaints.
A brown ’75 2-door Monarch with a gutless 302 that would momentarily cut-out in certain part-throttle conditons. I remember thinking how our ’72 Comet 4-door LDO with the same engine could have spanked it.
First of three Granada-Monarchs I had wheel time in.
Got a unrelated question for you. Did your Comet LDO come with bias belted tires or the DR78-14 radials. I have some contradictory dealer info that shows the first three months of LDO option production, they came with C78-14 bias belted tires. In Whitewall of course. Do you remember the production date of yours?
Our school had a fleet of 1975 Chevy Novas that had brakes on both sides of the front cabin. Our typing teacher Mr. Weldon also taught driving and was a very patient man. At that time in the mid-seventies our local cops also drove Novas, which always seemed a bit weird to me. Even today, I crouch down or flinch whenever I see one of those two-headlight Novas!
A new 1971 Chevy Belair Sedan. These two cars are Impalas, but I wanted to post a photo of one that looked like the one I took Driver’s Ed classes in. The bronze one at the top is the right color. It was a really nice driving car.
’74 Plymouth Satellite. Stripped down 4 door, 318, auto, AM radio. Got it up to 80 doing passing drills, the instructor was real pissed.
1984 VW Jetta diesel, manual of course.
I took my driver’s training in the spring of 1980, which was the same year I graduated HS (early). I had been driving since I was 13 or so, obviously quite illegally. In Ohio we still had school sponsored driver’s ed and they usually had an arrangement going with a local car dealer of some kind. We were in deep GM territory (Lordstown was 20 miles to the west) so they were usually some GM car.
I had a 1979 Nova sedan (similar to the one pictured but in brown), a fairly low optioned model but it did have air conditioning. I think the drivetrain was a 250 ci six with the three speed autobox. We usually had all the seats filled during our drives, I was 6’0″ and 180 lbs., at the time. Stuck in the back seat with two other kids roughly my size and weight we were VERY thankful for the strong A/C.
However, with a full passenger load and the A/C on in the car we nicknamed the Nova-caine, it was a slow ride. It did make it up and down the hills of Northeast Ohio, but not very rapidly. IIRC I passed my test on the second try and got my license about a month before I graduated high school.
In addition to the school Plymouth and VW, which I mentioned above, we had a trailer full of driving “simulators”. This was the space age 1960’s after all. The dash looked like a ’57 Ford. A film of driving displayed on a large projector screen in front of the room with about a dozen 15 year-olds. When a basketball rolled into the street, we all hit the gas instead of the brake as the instructor yelled at us from the back of the room.
1987 Olds Cutlass Ciera. The school had two of them, blue and maroon, because there were two drivers ed teachers and one was assigned to each. I had the maroon one. Brougham trim and 3.8 V6, so it was a pretty quick car for a family sedan at the time.
We went out in groups of three, 90 minute lessons where each of us had a half hour drive time. Whoever was driving got to pick the radio station. I was in with two girls – my cousin and one of her friends. I think the instructor liked it better when I was driving, not because I was a great driver (I wasn’t) but because I always put a baseball game on the radio instead of the pop music the girls preferred. The lessons were on Wednesday afternoons, which then as now often had day games on getaway day.
I remember having to ask if it was okay to brake on the freeway, because I’d come down the onramp so fast I’d gotten it up to 70 (!) at a time when the speed limit was 55. He told me it was.
I had driver’s ed in the fall of ’85. A Cutlass Ciera supplied by the Olds-Honda-Saab dealer was probably the newest and nicest car we had on the driver’s ed range. It was used for evaluations on our first day of range driving. Although it was a new car, I still remember that the bench seat was an issue. It was designed so that the driver could pull a lever on the left base of the seat that unlatched the seat position lock on both sides of the car so the seat could be moved forward and back. The slave side of the equation had gone on strike. As a result, the right side of the seat slid forward and back, crashing into the ends of its travel whenever a new driver struggled to get the hang of power brakes and smooth throttle applications. Naturally, in the right front seat was the short-tempered, power-tripping, abusive driver’s ed instructor. He singled out people for ridicule on that first day of driving and stood by his judgement throughout the course. Lucky for me, I’d been driving for years by the time I turned fifteen. It wasn’t so lucky for the kids who hadn’t operated anything that required more physical dexterity than a soccer ball.
My assigned range car after acing the pre-evaluation portion of driver’s ed was a 1976 Pontiac LeMans Enforcer sedan, a pretty fast decommissioned police cruiser. I remember that its dashboard was covered in GM-applied badges signifying its calibrated speedometer, large capacity oil cooler, heavy duty transmission, heavy duty 4-wheel disc brakes, 455-4 barrel Pontiac V8, etc. The only thing I needed to do was throw out the ashtray to turn it into a GM emulation of the Bluesmobile, although it was dark blue or brown instead of black and white. For some reason I can picture it in both blue and brown. Maybe I’m confusing it with Buford T Justice’ ride when it comes to the color. Looking back, it should have seemed REALLY fast compared to other cars I was driving at the time, but it didn’t. During passing exercises, I could pass any of the other students even when they tried to resist, and it did awesome smokey burnouts in reverse during ‘T-maneuver’ practice, but it really didn’t make an impression as being really powerful the way many cars do.
That’s pretty funny with the Ciera’s seat.
I guess I was pretty lucky that we had brand new cars. Ours were in perfect working order.
A ’76 455 wouldn’t have any power. Just lots of torque.
Heh. The Ciera was a brand new car loaned by the dealer!
Driver’s Ed?? I’m feeling very old. In mid-1960’s Nova Scotia, your parents were usually your teachers, and had to subject themselves to long Sunday drives with eager 16 year-olds, when they would likely have much preferred napping in front of the TV watching Championship Bridge or All Star Golf.
For me that usually meant my mother, in her ’64 Rambler American. It was a few months before I was allowed to take out my father’s 390 cu. in. ’65 Galaxie. Even for a confident 16 year-old the Galaxie was an enormous, overpowered, floaty beast, almost too wide for the local two-lane highways of the era. The Galaxie of course became my wheels of choice later on, but the American was in some respects more fun to drive, especially on winding gravel back roads.
The times are different now in many ways. By the age of 16 I already had several summers of informal driving experience, thanks to a semi-private dirt road we shared with 4 other families in the summer. I passed my test in the Rambler and got my full license about a month after my 16th birthday.
1976 Malibu Classic, donated for a year by the local Chevy dealer. This beauty had a second brake pedal on the passenger side that our instructor could and did use in a panic stop. Since we went out in groups we usually would tease the girls mercilessly and giggle when they made driving errors that required the use of the auxiliary brake. I can still remember the ice cold R12 A/C on those hot sunny days blowing on my nervously perspiring face hoping I didn’t shame myself in front of my buddies in the back seat. One word of advice from my Driver’s Ed instructor I remember and use to this day was: “never back up further than you have to” and “never ever back up without looking out the back glass”. The latter has made it impossible to use the backup cameras in modern cars, I still crane my head around to look out the back.
Lotta good memories in this thread.
My school was like a lot of the ones above, the local dealer provided new cars for us to drive. In my case we had two brand-spankin’ new Buick Park Avenues (this would be 1986 BTW) a red one and a light green one. Our “teacher” would load the car up with us kids, direct us out onto the highway, and promptly fall asleep. One time, we ended up in Illinos (I grew up in southern WI), one time we ended up in Milwaukee, where we ran out of gas, and none of us on board had any cash on us to buy some… I remember liking the cars we got, they were quiet, rode very smoothly and seemed easy enough to drive. Especially compared to the manual everything pickup my dad drove, and the 10-year old Malibu (with 4-speed manual) my mom drove… On one occasion we got a brand new GMC S-15 pickup for learning stick shift on. Neither of my parents had ever owned a car with an auto, so I could drive OK, but one of my fellow students drove the truck right thru the garage door to the auto shop area…
I’ve toyed with the idea of finding one of the Park Ave’s now, but I’m sure a 30-year-old one won’t be as nice as the ones we had. I remember being kind of sad, seeing less than 10 miles on these very nice, luxurious cars (considering the worn out, 10 and 15 year old beaters I was used to driving) and knowing they were gonna be abused by a bunch of inexperienced teenagers (and our teacher, who we suspected of living in the cars when we weren’t using them)
I remember the car like it was yesterday….powder blue 1973 Ford Grand Torino.
The drivers ed teacher that was doing my behind the wheel training was also my Shop teacher in high school.
Two strong memories of my behind the wheel was that 15 minutes into my first lesson he looked over smiled and said “You have been driving for quite a while already haven’t you?”
Yes Guilty as charged 🙂
Then on my third lesson while merging onto the freeway he reached his leg over and stomped his foot over mine that was on the accelerator.
There were no dual controls then, and he was trying to cure me of what still seems to be a Minnesota drivers affliction.
Merging onto a Freeway at no more than 45mph.
Stomping on one of those doesn’t result in much more forward motion anyway, unless it had a 429.
Wow, it was a LONG time ago. I think it was a ’73 Buick Century, or whatever the mid-sized 4-door sedan from Buick was called that year.
1965 (or so) Chevy Biscayne. Big ass long wide vehicule had a hood that disappeared into the distance. 4dr, 6cyl, perhaps 2 speed automatic, std steering – about 80 turns lock to lock , std brakes – which stopped eventually…Land yacht that made you appreciate just how tenuous life could be.
Our High school had a Chevy dealer for a sponsor. My dad had already taught me how to drive in parking lots in his ’68 SAAB 96, but a school sponsored drivers ed course was required to get a learners permit before you turned 17. The year I took drivers ed (75/76) I found the Novas were by far the best of a bad lot (Vega, Malibu, Impala and Novas). The first over the road drive with the instructor I put the instructor on the dashboard* as I learned that the tank like Impala had massive power brakes, and did not need the stomping the assist-less disc brakes the SAAB did to stop.
Funny thing 2 years later my sister (Dads 96’s clutch had by then taught 4 people to drive a manual so she learned to drive in my moms new Subaru GF, all 1.2 liters of it) Sprayed gravel all around in her first turn in the Impala as she discovered that an automatic on a big V8 did not need to be pegged in order to not stall starting on a hill. Maybe by then Mr Doepner had at least learned to wear a shoulder belt.
*(I was wearing belts, he was not)
Is this post on the way to the most comments posted about it on Curbside Classic? At 204 and rising it is the most I have seen. Maybe there are older posts that I am not aware of that have more comments. Inquiring minds would like to know. If not which one is?
576 is our record: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/qotd-whats-in-your-fleet-the-great-cc-check-in/
We’ve had some others go over 300 and 200 is not that uncommon. But the sheer numbers of comments seems to be a bit less these days since I stopped writing GM Deadly Sins. It’s about time for another…..