Cars Of My Parents

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– Posted on March 28, 2025

First car I remember is my parents’ MG 1100.   Dark green.   A lot like this one.  Looked like a somewhat bigger Mini, pretty much.   Big enough for a kid in back, but smallish all around.   Then a dark red Austin America, pretty similar.   They are what Dad commuted in and what we took trips in, around Ohio mostly, to relatives for holidays, and to festivals and museums.

I remember the clutch, and the choke, and sitting on Dad’s lap pretending to drive. And him changing the oil in our garage. I remember him steering with his knees while he opened a beer bottle. And smoking, at first pipes, then cigarettes.  It was a different time. Those were unusual cars for Ohio in the early ‘70s. Dad had a job working on a fleet of VW Buses years before, and his dream car was an MG-TC, so he had always been into smaller, foreign cars.

We took many trips in the Austin America like this.  I don’t remember seatbelts.

We got an army green Ford Pinto wagon for my Mom when my brother arrived.   Darker than this, in my memory.  Two door wagon, big in the back for kids, and no explosions. No real issues with it till the exhaust went and Mom said it “sounds like a Sherman tank.”

When they got divorced Mom took the Pinto. I remember car shopping with Dad. My brother and I lobbied for a TR7 or a Jeep, and we tested them, me watching the road through the holes in the (brand new) Jeep’s floor. I also remember looking at an MGB and a Spitfire. He test drove a bunch of stuff just for fun, for both himself and me. He eventually got a Le Car (Renault 5). Yellow, with the “sunroof” (hole in the roof with fabric that snapped on.) The car was too small for his 6’4″ frame, but he liked it. The wheels were tiny, and the spare was under the hood. He ended up getting another for his girlfriend a couple years later, in white.  Then a Fuego (more sporty.)

 

Granddad and brother looking at all the stickers on Mom’s ’82 Civic.

Mom shopped Japanese wagons and ended up with a light blue ‘82 Civic wagon. I put the first scratch on that, I think putting a bike carrier on.  She was not thrilled. Learned to drive in that some, and a Topaz in driver’s ed class at the local high school, with cords showing through the tires. The instructor was good, and patient. I still remember him teaching us how to keep a constant speed on hills. And him having us lock the doors when we went through downtown Toledo and scantily-clad women approached the car full of young boys…

They always had cars with manuals. As did I, till my knees went. Mom would not let me learn on her shiny new Honda Civic wagon, and I really learned about driving a stick from my math teacher in his Volvo 240 station wagon.   Practiced in a mall parking lot; it took an hour or two, in my memory. Then I taught my friend how to shift in mom’s car, without her knowledge.   He picked it up much quicker than I did, literally in 5 minutes.  Later I taught my high-school-age brothers-in-law how to drive stick in my Fox wagon. Mom kept the ‘82 Civic, drove it into the ground, often back and forth from NC to Ohio, and to Florida for church camp. Then she got a ‘97 Civic 4-door, which she put 250k on and only stopped driving when she, well, stopped driving after a stroke. I drove it sometimes, with all the bumper stickers including “Women are great leaders, you’re following one.”

Neither of them are around anymore. They both loved driving, though Dad was more into it, and into cars, than Mom. I think they were proud that I ended up working at Honda. Dad came for a tour shortly after I started working there, and Mom loved her Civics.  I inherited the “small car” gene, and the “drive it into the ground” one too.

 

All phots from the web except our ’82 Civic.