While it’s far more likely that most of us learned our first auto-related factoids from our fathers, the first cars many of us remember in detail were owned by our mothers. For all the times I went to the repair shop or car dealer with my father or asked him what a turbocharger does, there were many more rides to the doctor, the grocery store or out for a fun day of hookie with my mother.
In most movies, and among most of the upper middle class families around me, matronly motoring was solidly based around the station wagon until the latter half of the ’80s. It wasn’t until the very late ’80s and early ’90s that the minivans which came to define the mothermobile for many of us became ubiquitous. Now that we’re in 2014, it would seem they had a rather brief moment in the spotlight, with the SUV and crossover boom seeming to enjoy unending popularity. When the current Caravan is succeeded by a rumored Journey replacement, it will truly be the end of an era.
My own mother never had a minivan, however, and kept the same 1986 Accord in daily use from the time I was two until I turned fifteen. My older sister and I therefore spent long trips fighting over the center armrest in the modest rear seat, but now I realize we failed to appreciate what good taste my parents had. At one point, the same could have been said of my mother-in-law, who once locked her keys–along with her then-newborn son–inside the 300ZX she owned in the late ’80s (after a long succession of other interesting machines including an Opel Manta and Renault LeCar). That incident led to the succession of more family-friendly Isuzu Rodeos, which my partner remembers much more clearly. But many of us who were born before minivans and SUVs took over can associate any number of fondly remembered, genuinely cool cars with our mothers.
A certain trend I recall, during the peak years of divorce in this country, was the substantial portion of single mothers dropping their kids off at school in the sporty coupes of the era. For as many classmates as I saw dropped off in Buick Estate Wagons, Ford Country Squires and Volvo 740s, there were nearly the same number arriving in Celicas, Probes and even Subaru XTs. Mustangs and Camaros were also well represented. You don’t see that kind of variety in front of your average elementary school or pediatrician’s office today. If one were so motivated, he or she could even extrapolate some greater meaning from this shift in automotive trends (i.e. are women today expected to be more domestic than they were during my childhood twenty-five years ago? Or do such shifts in automotive taste have no greater implication?).
At any rate, if I was jealous of the more kid-friendly rides of the era, I could still tell plenty about my classmates based on the habits of their parents’ consumption. I knew, for instance, that a new Windstar LX signified a classmate with too many Crayola markers whose mother was always around for field trips, and I had a sense of pride in having a mother who had a career to build. Perhaps my snobbish judgment unknowingly identified a large image problem of the minivan. After all, they were relentlessly functional devices, cool in their own way, but have obviously fallen out of favor as the default family hauler.
These days, of course, making a healthy profit on a car has become increasingly difficult and a good number of manufacturers base their model line on a small number of platforms, most of which are conceived with a nice, big crossover in mind. Those of us whose youth was spent in a more diverse automotive landscape, however, were introduced to a number of interesting vehicles by way of our mothers, running the gamut from full-on domestic conveyances like the Town and Country wagon to that famous anticar, the VW Beetle. Which cars do you, dear readers, forever associate with Mom?
My mom had several rides while we were growing up. We always had 2 cars that were ‘ours’ and my dad always had a 3rd company car. Some were distinctly Dad’s rides such as the ’69 CJ-5, ’78 F150 SuperCab, ’79 F-250. Some like our ’85 and ’88 Broncos were claimed equally. While we owned it, no one really claimed our ’79 VanDura conversion van since it was seen as a necessary evil. As a little kid, a few were more hers than Dad’s: ’75 Coronet Wagon, ’75 Ford Elite, ’78 Olds 98 2 door…Those were the domain of my mom while I was in grade school. But while she’s had rides since, the one that will always remind me of her was our ’91 GMC Safari….every time I see one of those, I think of her and the one she had at the time. My mom went thru a phase in the early 90s where she was all about anything ‘country’…especially cows. She had all kinds of knick nacks associated with everything bovine….including a personalized front plate (remember those?) that had a painting of a cows face and the words ‘Heifer collector’. This wasn’t a state issue plate, rather one of those that was done up at a kiosk at the local mall. It was bad. So bad, that when my running crew in college took a trip to New Orleans, I actually grabbed a clearance Skil Twist screwdriver (I worked at Sears at the time) just so we could pop that anti-poon artifact off the front of the van before making the run to the Big Easy. My buddies Dwight and Freddy had no end of laughs over that plate on Mom’s van. Whats funniest about that is that she got that van in ’92 when I was 18, my middle sis was 15 and my youngest sis was 12. So I was 2 years deep into driving, one sis was 1 year away. Even if we went somewhere as a family I had my newfound freedom AND I was a gearhead so Id NEVER ride with ‘the fam’. So why a minivan? Who the hell knows. But no ride since has ever captured my mom’s essence like that van.
My parents had some nice cars when I was a kid, including the ’89 Regal GS I use as a profile image here. I don’t really associate that car with either of them though – that ones more of my odd obsession along with their old ’87 Chevy Z-24.
The two cars I really associate with my mom are:
The light blue ’88 LeSabre Custom that my parents bought together right before they divorced – it replaced their silver & black ’84 Celebrity sedan. Mom ended up with the car in the divorce (dad got his ’85 Chevy Custom Deluxe pickup), and kept it til around 1998 if I remember correctly. The car was nothing special, but it got us from A to B for a long time with no issues.
And probably my moms favorite car ever made; her white ’99 Bonneville. That was her dream car from the day that body style debuted, so I was thrilled for her when out of the blue, she bought it in 2000. I was shocked that she only kept it for 5 years. This was one of the cars I learned to drive in. She traded in a tan ’89 Ford Tempo for that car. The Tempo bridged the LeSabre & Bonneville ‘eras’. The less said about that piece of automotive excrement, the better!
We never had a minivan either. Well, my dad had an Astro but that was treated more like a “work van” and my mom refused to drive it because it was “too big” !
The number one car I associate with my mom (she’s only had 4 or 5 in her whole life) was the ’76 Nova I was brought home from the hospital in and which she drove for many years afterwards. I still have nightmares about sitting on those vinyl bench seats with no A/C in the summer, but I loved it because it was way older and cooler looking than any of the cars my friends’ parents had. The hum of a 250 six is seared just as deeply into my skull as the vinyl pattern is into my thighs, and is probably responsible for my love of old straight sixes to this day. I remember being so sad when she gave it to my cousin, but it lived a long and productive life – way over 200k miles, which was almost unheard of for a car back then.
It greatly resembled the car below that was featured on CC awhile back. Identical condition, body style, trim and similar color – just a slightly darker shade of poop. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this picture on here, because I remember looking out the Nova’s windows with my burning ass at younger versions of these same exact trees along the Southern State Parkway, which our house was right off of. That’s one of my strongest memories from when I was really young – the sound, the smell, the light shimmering between the leaves of the trees, the stone bridges, a vacant gas station… all of it comes back so easy. OH! And Christmas lights! I remember driving around for hours and hours with both of my parents looking at Christmas lights and getting ice cream with candy cane chunks in it at some place.
My mom shared very few qualities with this derelict Chevrolet, but they were both practical and reliable to a fault!
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cohort-outtake-getting-passed-on-the-right-by-a-flesh-colored-nova-but-whats-the-official-name-of-that-shade/
My parents had one of these too, a blue sedan with a remote-control mirror and AM radio as its only option.
My late mother always had an eye for cars. While she was driving her 2-door ’61 Falcon (white/red), the new Mustang was introduced. A few weeks later, she had scoured the countryside until she found a white/red 1964.5 Mustang coupe at a small Ford dealership in the sticks, about 50 miles from home. She didn’t waste any time buying this car, and it was my good fortune to take the first ride home from the dealer (I was 6).
Now, I wish I could tell you it was a burner, but it only had the base 170 CI six with the 3-speed manual (floor shifter!), and the only other options I remember were the AM radio and the AIR CONDITIONER (the first A/C equipped car we owned), which made summer trips a lot more pleasant (we lived along the Gulf Coast). The cost as I recall was $2613.
The car was a great hit with the kids in the neighborhood, as she would give us rides home from school in the afternoon sometimes. We could fit about 7 kids at one time, by scrunching a couple in the front seat and the rest in the back seat.
The car lasted until I was about old enough to start driving, and I tried a few trial runs with the stick, but I couldn’t quite get the hang of it. The car eventually succumbed to cowl rot and a burned up clutch, and my father eventually had the car hauled off after it had sat for a number of years in non-running condition. A sad day indeed.
There were other Mustangs, including a used ’68 with a 289/auto, which I eventually took over from her, but yer first is one you’ll always remember.
Well, my mother is someone, that just sits behind the weel.
She knows nothing about cars.
She’s driving conservatively and no chrashes og accidents at all.
And she’s definitely not a good driver !
Curently she’s driving a Skoda Octavia (DSG7) and she feels safe in it, and knows it.
She’s had Octavia’s since the second model came in 1996 (the first came in 1959…).
But she should be driving a SAAB 900CD…!
My parents put so many miles on a car, and traded often enough, that multiple spring to mind.
The brown ’73 base model Ford Torino
The brown ’78 Plymouth Volare two-door
The gray ’83 Plymouth Reliant four-door
The white ’85 Ford LTD Crown Victoria
The gray ’91 Dodge Dynasty
The red ’95 Mercury Cougar
They had other cars also, but these are the ones my mother drove the most.
The cars I most associate with my mother are Oldsmobile Ninety-Eights. She had three of them during my formative years: a 1971, a 1975 LS and a 1979 LS. No brocade or pillow-tufted velour for her though, just family friendly vinyl all the way. One funny thing I remember about the cars was how cavernous the back seats were. While roomy on their C-Body platform anyway, my 5’3″ mother enhanced the effect by moving the seat forward and up (it was a bench in the first two, thankfully a split bench in the ’79). She always complained whenever the seat was moved from “her” position (a frequent problem given that my father was 5’10” as is my brother, and I am 6’0) and she’d grumble as she’d work to reset it. I learned to drive on the ’79, so have especially fond memories of that one. It had the 403, and boy could that big girl move…
Neither of my Grandmothers ever learned to drive. So I don’t really have any car I associate with them. Guess that wasn’t uncommon back in the day when some families didn’t even own a car or waited until times of prosperity to buy one. (by then they were older, and I guess never got around to learning to drive)
My Mother learned how to drive in her Dad’s 1951 Chrysler Windsor wih semi-automatic transmission…to this day, she’s really never been completely comfortable with a manual transmission (which isn’t a big problem these days here in the US) but about 15 years ago she and her brother took a trip to Poland and Slovakia, and I remember taking her around in the parking lot of an abandoned Walmart so she could practice driving (she wanted to be a backup for my Uncle, who for some reason has had really odd things happen to him on trips that put him out of commision). My ’86 GTI clutch survived the sessions (I remember replacing it the year before, since even a new clutch can be burned out pretty easily, guess I was pretty brave letting her practice with the car so soon after putting in the clutch).
Of the cars pictured in the intro, I think I associate the Mark 1 Scirocco with myself more than my mother…I bought it in ’81, and is still my favorite car that I’ve owned.
As for my Mother, she has the record for length of car ownership in my family, having owned an ’88 Ford Tempo bought new for 21 years, until 2009, so I guess that’s the other car I associate with her (besides a series of station wagons she drove throughout the ’60’s to early ’80’s). The strangest memory I have of that car was seeing it on TV starting with the hubcap with the camera panning up and out and seeing my mother driving the car…she had taken it to a city sponsered pollution check they had at some parking lot, and she and the Tempo I guess were at the front of the line so she made the evening news…she was worried that the car might not pass emissions as it got older and they started testing for that, but it never was a problem in that car…I think its demise had more to do with non-working airconditioning, which my sister (who shared the car with my mother as it got older) wanted to have, but wasn’t inexpensive to fix…so the car ended up being traded for a ’09 Focus as part of the cash for clunkers program…the Tempo wasn’t a great car, but it turned out to give her good service for a long time.
She even drove a ’59 Beetle my Dad owned (Red. like in the picture) for awhile in the ’60’s….only dual tailpipes though on that one. Of course she didn’t like the hills and even though it was good in the snow (compared to her ’65 F85) she didn’t drive it much…my Father used to park it on the road in front of our house (single car garage back then) and it got totaled by a son of one of the wealthy people who lived at the end of our street who crashed into it with his XKE (drunk at the time). My Father replaced it with a ’68 Renault R10 he got at Almartin Motors in South Burlington. (My mother’s least favorite car)…I was too young at the time, so I never got a chance to drive the Beetle.
This one’s easy – her gold 2001 Mustang GT convertible, aka “Goldie”. She’s had that car since it was brand new in the winter of ’00 (Dad got it for her for Christmas) and now it has close to 200k of in-town miles on it. She’s a Realtor in Nebraska so there are about a thousand other more practical choices, but I honestly believe that we’ll be burying her in that car.
Lots of memories are in the small confines of that beast, but everyone associates it with her. Not only because they know her, but how many gold Mustang GT convertibles have you ever seen? At first I thought the color was “tacky”, but now it’s most definitely… Mom.
I don’t think she’s ever given that car the beans, but that’s what my Dad, brother, and I are here for. Last time I drove it the old 4.6 definitely didn’t have the giddyup that it did when it was younger, but aside from the intake manifold that goes bad on every old 4.6 with the plastic manifold, they’ve really never had an issue with it. Oh, and the big fat 17 inch tires that they seem to replace a set a year of. They aren’t exactly nail resistant, and Mom drives through lots of new construction.
They keep talking about replacing it and those talks generally end with Dad rolling his eyes and Mom frustratingly declaring she’s keeping “Goldie”. It’s amusing to say the least.
1978 Charger SE. She still talks about that car!
Although I barely remember it, every time I see a 1st generation Celica I think of my mom. It’s what she was driving when I was born. I love her story of having to driver herself to the hospital while having labor pains with me, with my grandmother shotgun because my grandmother can’t drive a manual. The car was burgundy 1977 Celica ST coupe 4-speed.
She loved that car and still talks about it.
Not nearly as cool but for much of my elementary school era childhood she drove a 1984 Ford Escort 2door also 4-speed manual. I remember her letting me shift the gears while she drove, “Ok, now put it in 2nd.”
One more car mom memory is when I was in high school talking cars with some friends
and who could and couldn’t drive a manual. One of the girls goes “Well, that’s a guy thing, women don’t drive stick shifts.” She had no response when I looked over and said to her “Um, my mom is who taught me how to drive one.”
My mom was not much of a car person, so it took a moment to think of some associations.
Well before my time, my mom tells me she thought the Edsel was cool and had some influence on her dad buying one. No one today is sure, but it was probably the 1st year 1958 model.
My folks married in ’59 and mostly made due with one car, my dad had some access to a company car. In a sense, my mom’s first car was a 1978 Caprice that she got from her dad around 1981 when he could no longer drive. That car was in my mom’s hands for about 12 years before my brother took it over.
The first car I remember my mother driving was a 1968 Pontiac Executive that she and Dad had gotten hand-me-down from his parents. It was followed by a succession of less than stellar models and some recently, that were/are quite good:
– 1974 Ford Pinto wagon – The A/C never worked and it had branding irons on the “custom vinyl” seats that scorched bare legs during the summertime.
– 1977 Ford Pinto Squire wagon – Forest Green, 4 Speed with wire wheel covers and green plaid seats. A tonier Pinto has never existed…such as it was.
– 1982 Ford EXP – The heater coils went out on it a year or so after she purchased it used (post-divorce “sporty” coupe as you mentioned above…) and it smelled like a rodent had died in it. Nasty little car with an automatic. It wheezed its way to 60 in 2.5 minutes.
– 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais – Mom’s first foray into GM products since the Executive. Also wire wheeled with the mouse fur velour so typical in mid-80’s GM products. It was a great little car, until she got plowed into from behind…
– 1987 Honda Civic LX – To this day she describes “Little Red” as her favorite car. It also bit the dust with a rear-end collision.
– 1997 Toyota Camry – Bleah…
– 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara
– 2011 Kia Soul
– 2014 Nissan Rogue
1957 DeSoto — two of them actually.
The Adventurer 2HT she got new when I was really, really young and barely remember, back before the divorce.
The Firedome 4 door sedan from after the divorce, a few years later, Sad thing was already starting to rust in the traditional places like over the headlights.
Station wagons, station wagons, station wagons. Mom got her first one in late ’58, a brown and while Chevrolet Brookwood (? – BelAir equivalent), which also meant that the Paczolt family had two cars for the first time ever. Of course, between ’59 and ’65 model years, there was a new station wagon every years, preferably an Impala or equivalent. With dad leaving the dealership, his last company car (and first keeper) was a ’66 (I believe they called it) Kingswood Estate Wagon, the first one in the driveway with wood on the sides. That was kept for years as a heavy hauler while a ’70 kept it company (same model). Sometime during the late ’70’s the Chevrolets were replace with Buick LeSabre wagons, one of which was a diesel (which gave flawless service).
The final one is the one I’ll NEVER get our of my head. 1986 Buick Century Estate Wagon, maroon with the wood sides, fake wire wheel covers, bordello velour interior, and every option (especially the tacky senior citizen ones) available. Mom died about ten months after getting the car, and I suddenly found myself inheriting the damned thing. Even though I didn’t want it, being very happy with my lightly hot rodded ’84 Escort GT TRX. I was forced to take it, was absolutely embarrassed to be seen in the damned thing, only made worse by it being the most reliable car I’d ever owned at the time.
I figured three years was enough politeness, respect, and appreciation; and it got traded for an ’89 Ford Festiva LX which had me much happier. I’ll always consider that car as “Mom’s last chance to make me miserable.”
I’m only 16 but will forever associate a beige 2004 Honda Odyssey with my mom. That or a white 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager. (SUCH A GODAWFUL CAR WHEN IT CAME TO RELIABILITY). I was like 5 and remember how many issues it had…
My mother had a penchant for driving into the face of diversity. Not only was she the first single mother on the block, my mother was known for the lengths of her skirts, her boots, and her cars…and a station wagon or sedan was the last thing she would be caught dead driving. So here’s to Mom who drove off into the sunset still flippng the bird to anyone who felt the need to comment on her lifestyle and her car choices. My favorites were 1964 Cutluss, 1970 Grand Prix SJ, 1976 Fiat Spider Convertible..1986 Z28..her last new car and her favorite and it out lasted her last husband..
I guess the car most closely associated with my mom is a Honda Accord. We had a ’77 and an ’84 during my middle school through college years, and a decade or so later she got a 2003 Acura TL which is basically a fancy Accord and just replaced it with a loaded 2013 Accord because she didn’t like the looks of the current Acura and didn’t see the point of spending extra anyway. Since she averages 10 years per car I expect this to be either her last car or to be replaced by another Honda.
My Mom drove an ’87 Porsche 924S from ’86 to 2004. She bought it shortly after I got my license, leading to many an unapproved borrowing incident. She loved that car, but only drove it regularly for the first three years she had it. I think it only accumulated about 1,500 miles a year over the last decade it was in the driveway. She never cared for the BMW that replaced it, but loves the 2012 Honda CR-V she replaced the BMW with.
let’s see …
a blue Renault 4
then a yellow Renault 4
after this, a red Renault 4
then, a green Renault 4, (which was tumbled down a hill)
oh, the disappointment to learn that no 4’s where sold anymore.
so a blue Supercinq was next.
My parents got married in 1964. For the first several years they were married, my mom worked, and they had two cars. My mom would get the good one, and my dad drove a series of short-term older cars. I was born in 1970 (their first child), and my mom stayed home with me and my younger brother for the next several years. At some point when I was small, they decided to consolidate to one car. In 1977, they reversed course and decided to get a second car for my mother again. From that point until the time I moved out of the house when I was in my early 20s, my mom had the following cars:
1974 Ford Pinto 2-door sedan, yellow, 2.3-liter four, bought used in 1977, kept until 1982.
1978 Buick Century “aeroback” 4-door sedan, maroon, 231/3.8 V6, the first car my parents ever owned with A/C (this is in Massachusetts), bought used in 1982, taken off the road in 1986 after my mom got sick of its many problems and put it aside to wait for me to get my driver’s license.
1987 Plymouth Sundance 4-door sedan, light metallic blue, 2.2-liter four, the last car my parents owned that didn’t have A/C, the first car they ever leased, bought outright at the end of the lease and kept on the road until 1995, although by then my mom had long since taken over what was originally supposed to be my dad’s vehicle (see below).
1989 GMC S-15 Jimmy 2-door, white, 4.3-liter V6, 4-wheel drive, bought in the summer of 1989 as a replacement for my dad’s previous vehicle (a ’76 Ford Club Wagon) but quickly taken over by my mom, eventually passed back to my dad when they got another new car in 1995 and re-painted dark green, they still owned this/had it on the road until last fall, although it saw very little use the last several years they had it.
For about fifteen years starting in 1995, my mom got in the habit of leasing a new car every few years. I’m not sure if I remember everything she had, but there was a Mercury Sable, a Pontiac Grand Prix, two Honda Accords, and two Buick Rendezvous. Throughout this entire period my dad continued to drive the ’89 S-15 Jimmy.
A few years ago, when the lease was up on the last Rendezvous, my parents decided that were no longer in a position where it made sense to keep rolling from lease to lease, so they bought a used 2009 Chrysler PT Cruiser with the intention of it being a longer-term vehicle. My mom liked it, but they eventually encountered some kind of stalling issue with it. At that point they decided to get rid of the ’89 Jimmy and give the PT Cruiser to my dad, and they bought a used Saturn Vue (not sure of the year).
Reading over the above, there’s not much of a pattern, other than that my parents mostly bought vehicles from American brands, and that they only ever owned one Chrysler product. I’m actually struck at how untypical and untrendy my mom (and my dad, for that matter) have been. They never had full-size cars after the ’60s, never had a wagon, never had a minivan, and had just one SUV. They were GM/Pontiac people when they were younger — every “good” car they owned through the mid 1970s was a Pontiac — but after that bounced around a lot among brands.
The car that I think of as “mom’s car” was the first car that she picked out for herself. Instead of the usual Ford Country Squire she finally got to choose her ride. For her it was a 1976 Chevrolet Monza with Bicentennial interior. Her “sports” car. She had that car, from new, until some one hit her in the late 1980’s. After that it was a boring K car, then a Camry, a Saturn and finally her Mitsubishi Outlander, that we decided she shouldn’t drive anymore. But that Monza was her favorite car that she still talks about now.
B-body wagons. She had a Malibu wagon before and a (downsized) Malibu and a Volvo wagon after, but I think first of the green ’79 Caprice and the gold ’81 Caprice we had in Venezuela.
Late here, but this is really a great discussion. The cars I most associate with motherhood are Oldsmobile Cutlasses. My mother drove a:
Burgundy 61 F85 wagon
Dark green 64 Cutlass hardtop
Light green 72 Cutlass Supreme hardtop.
Both of the hardtops were bucket seat cars, so Mom had nothing against a little style. My stepmom continued the Cutlass trend with a dark green 68 Cutlass Supreme hardtop and a white 74 Cutlass Supreme coupe. So you can see why nothing says “Mom” to me more strongly than a 60s or 70s Cutlass.
Mom switched to sedans from there out –
Maroon 74 Luxury LeMans
2 tone blue 80 Horizon
Navy 85 Crown Victoria – I bought this one from her
Cranberry 93 Crown Victoria – My children are still driving this one
Red 06 Buick Lacrosse – still has this one. 22K on the odo now.
If I had to chose one car it would also the one car that I would like to have today. It was a 1960 Monarch Lucerne four door sedan, metallic bronze with a white roof. In my family all of our cars were by default my mothers cars as my father was totally blind. My mother was a great distance driver and It was in this car that she set her one day distance record of approximately 950 miles. It took me until the late nineties to eclipse that record and I did not do it with a blind man sitting beside me and three kids in the back seat. The roads in 1962 were nothing like they are now either.
My mom usually drove a 1965 Valiant Station Wagon or a 1966 Valiant Signet in baby blue, but I only have a picture of her in the 1960 Porsche which I now drive. Picture taken in 1961.
My earliest memories were her 54 Chevy. I thought that little red ball in the end of the radio station indicator was a piece of candy, and I always wanted to get at it. I used to stand up on the front seat while she drove, and to the day she died in 2010 whenever she made a quick stop her arm would automatically be thrown across any passengers chest. The 62 Chevy wagon is the next, it used oil even though only a couple of years old, when the attendant would check it and say it need 2 quarts, she would say “just put in one, it just throws the other one”. Around 1968 she got a blue 57 Olds 88 Super 2 door she called her “Blue Baron”. Once when shopping we hopped into the unlocked car to leave and the key wouldn’t turn the ignition. She said “this isn’t my car”, sure enough, it was another parked a few spaces away. One time Dad was driving it downhill from Mt Wilson downshifting into low and hit reverse, the axle hopping like mad and the wheels spinning, he shifted back to low, the car was fine, no damage. Around 1970 she got a 62 Monterey 2 door with bucket seats and floor shifter, It had an under dash add on AC unit which never worked too well. One time she called my dad, the tie rod’s popped off and the car came to a stop at a stop sign with both wheels facing out. The repair shop had not tightened the nuts or replaced the cotter pins. Another time after a long drive on the freeway, Dad was driving, no brakes and the end of the off ramp. He slowly drove it to a gas station, when they pulled the brake drums everything fell out onto the floor. The same shop that did the tie rods came back to haunt us. She later had a new 72 Pinto, scared the hell out of me when she ran a stoplight and the car on my side was sliding sideways in a cloud of blue smoke! I asked her if she knew she ran the light, she said, “what light”? She died in 2010, I miss her dearly.
Always a Oldsmobile or a cadillac that I “helped” pick out.
“Oh,mom, you must get the opera lights”
With out my knowing she Traded the DTS for a Hyundai …we haven’t talked since
Lol(kidding)
Mom refused to drive!!
Dad did all the hauling of the groceries, kids, & school, until each kid got his/her drivers license. Then it was our responsibility to chauffeur her around.
We tried to get her behind the wheel of a 66 Ford Falcon, but this lasted only a few days until she panicked while crossing the Greater New Orleans bridge.
Just to keep the peace, my dad listed her on his auto insurance until he could no longer drive (83 years old).
I associate our late 1982 2 door Olds cutlass Supreme in a nice light shade of green with matching interior with mom. She loved that car and thought she died and went to heaven after the miserable 1979 Fairmont we had before it with no A/C, uncomfortable bench seat, sluggish 85 Hp straight six and no features whatsoever. And oh was it ever noisy.
The Olds was purchased in show room condition in 1987 with but 40K miles from a previous elderly owner who kept it serviced and garaged and like new it’s 5 year life. Dad and I brought the car home to her and she came out stunned at how amazing this car was. We drove it for a good half hour and went right back and signed the papers and picked this gem up the following day. Mom held on to that car right through until the mid 90’s when the road salt Winters started taking there toll on the rear bumper and inner doors and a trade up to a 1992 dark blue Cutlass sedan came in the later part of 1994. She still talks about that 1982 Cutlass to this day and says that was her favorite car of all time. They now drive a 2001 Bonneville and 2008 Impala LS which they are overall very happy with.
Ma loved fast cars, especially when they had no top. 1950 Olds Rocket 88 convertible, ’58 Chevy Impala convert. She got sidetracked for a while with a Corvair, but came roaring back in 1968 with a Ford Mustang coupe, in Brittany Blue with white C-stripes, factory fog lamps and white stripe Goodyear Polyglas GTs. She liked nothing better than to drop the top and take off with her dark hair flying. Ma, after all these years, I still miss you.
64 Mercury Montclair slant back window
74 Ford Gran Torino
78 Mercury Zephyr
86 Ford Taurus
97 Ford Taurus
2011 Buick LaCrosse
All bought new:
51 Buick Super- my mom drove until the brakes failed in 1961. She was 5′ tall then.
61 Rambler Classic wagon- she drove it until 1968, the left front wheel fell off!
68 VW Type II- Sold in 1969, She had trouble reaching the pedals.
69 Mercedes 230S- Great Car, but just too small!
71 Buick Estate Wagon- Nice car, fully optioned. My oldest sister totalled it in 1975.
75 Sedan De Ville- Mom drove it until November of 1976. My Dad kept it in great
shape for 25 years. I exercised it on the DC Beltway every other
weekend.