Cars

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Let's talk about cars. What was your first car? What's your dream car? Do you like driving? Did you go to the Motor Show, and if so, what did you think?

-- Tim (tim@almighty.co.uk), October 23, 2000

Answers

my first car was a 1987-ish chevy s-10 pickup. It was terrible because it had rust all over it. The car finally bit the big one and I have been happy with my other, less obnoxious, car (a 97 hyundai senada). My dream car is an aston martin, but those things are very expensive. I also like the thought of driving around in a porche boxter. mmm..... driving is okay, when there's no one else on the road. People either go too fast, or waaaayyy tooooo slllloooowwwww... ugh.

-- Tiffany (andthefish@mail.com), October 23, 2000.

The first vehicle I ever drove, though it isn't one that I can claim sole ownership of, was my dad's rust bucket '85 chev pickup truck. (two years younger than yours truly!) Nickname it bore: Bets. It had no tape deck, and the radio was fried due to the cold, so every trip usually involved some form of singing to stay alert. :) (Travelling for hours down lonely northern highways with ones parent singing 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' over and over again... oh, the memories.) Air conditioning was rolling down the windows or wearing your long underwear, and the clock (also fried) told time in a mass of unreadable l.e.d lines. Sadly, she was laid to rest this past week... on to the great 401 in the sky. :)

-- Sarah (unexpected_poppy@hotmail.com), October 23, 2000.

I still haven't had my first car yet, although since my parents' blue 1995 Citroen AX was bought for my benefit, I'll claim rights to that. Although I'm not sure why I'd want it - it contracts hiccups at inopportune moments and often cuts out altogether. And I can never get the handbrake off when my brother's been out in it.

I don't really have a dream car, I see vehicles as means from getting from A to B. That said, I like driving . . . theoretically. Country lanes that have lines down the middle I like a lot. Towns and hairpin bends on half-a-lane-wide roads, I could do without.

I didn't go to the Motor Show this year, but I've been before. I don't like the new Mini at all, but then, I don't like Minis anyway . . . actually, I love Minis, just not certain connotations they have . . .

-- Zed (zed@swansongs.net), October 24, 2000.


Oh here we go... Zed is about to deny nothing, absolutely nothing happened between her and Chris, in Chris' mini... we've heard it all before, how about the truth! ;)

-- Tim (tim@almighty.co.uk), October 24, 2000.

I'm sorry - 'vehicles are a means of getting from A to B'? I beg to differ. To me, vehicles are a way of getting from A to B, screaming along to C, sideways round D, and wheelspinning up E. I have to agree, country lanes are nice to drive along, but strangely enough I've never noticed the lines before... Hairpins on narrow roads? Lovely. Go round them very fast. Sideways. With the tyres screaming. Mmmmm, nice. I would like to hear how you managed to do anything in a Mini though!

-- Nik (nik@achtung.co.uk), October 24, 2000.


I did indeed go to the Motor Show(for free-ha)and I fell in love with a car. I didn't think it was possible to feel such strong emotion towards a piece of metal. But this wasn't just any piece of metal it was a beautifully crafted one off Spyker C8 and it was art on four wheels. I don't even particularly like cars and have no idea about 12 speed or V6 engines, well some idea but not much, anyway thats not important. The point is a person can feel an insane forbidden attraction for a perfectly formed sports vehicle. Before I was happy just to have a VW Beetle 1300 but now...

-- Dani (danisian@hotmail.com), October 24, 2000.

Okay, Zed... they are not just a means of getting from A to B. I have to agree with Nik. I love cars. Thats why I get a new one every two years... but still haven't found my dream car. My first car was a Plum colored Saturn, with everything... when that was a new company. Then I moved on to a Dodge Stratus, black... I love black cars. Of course, when gas prices went up I moved to a smaller commuter car, the 2000 Dodge Neon in Dark Green... but now I'm back to black with my new Honda CRV. I've always wanted a small SUV type of thing..

Anyhow, cars are more than a means of getting from A to B... they are enjoyment and excitement. Whipping around corners on two wheels, screeching up the street, blasting the music and singing outloud on a lone country road.... ah... heaven. Okay, I'm getting carried away.

-- Greg Barber (gbarber@gbdesigns.com), October 24, 2000.


My first car was a 1991 Geo Prizm. This was an insignificant little whitebread car with a lousy stereo system (no tape deck. Just a radio. Ugh), but I was sixteen and I was glad to have transportation. Of course, I wrecked the poor thing about a month after I got it, and was carless for the next three years.

So now I have a 1991 Mazda Protege. It's about as boring as the first car, but at least the stereo is better, and at least I'm a good enough driver now to where I know I won't go pulling out of my neighborhood without looking both ways and running into a tank of a SUV (which is what happened the first time).

For all my mishaps, though, I love cars. When I was twelve I learned the makes and models of every car on the road, and I used to amuse my friends on school trips by hitting them with a constant stream of BuickCenturyToyotaCamryHondaCivic,etc. as we went down the road. My favorite cars, though, are ugly boxy things from the 70s. Don't laugh at me. I would love to have an orange Volvo from 1978.

-- Laurie (Laurie317@prodigy.net), October 24, 2000.


My first car (okay, my ONLY car) is an 88 Buick Lesabre. He's a big brown gas guzzlin machine and he's cleverly named Boat! I will cry when Boat dies. I LOVE to drive, my car is so big I feel like queen of the road :) until a big SUV drives up next to me...

-- Liz (emiro@siu.edu), October 25, 2000.

All right, I confess: on 15th July 2000, Something did happen in The Mini. Are you happy now? But, as Nik rightly pointed it, it was not Something as in Something, because this is physically impossible in the given environment, especially taking into account the size of the persons involved (or not involved, as the case may be).

More to the point, up until that point in time, NOTHING HAPPENED IN THE FLIPPING MINI!!! (Note to self: borrow Bryn's axe to kill Roe for starting this idiotic rumour. Also kill Tim for perpetuating it.)

Anyway, having read all the follow-up posts, and had my plans to blame my gender for my lack of enthusiasm for vehicles shattered by Laurie, I consent that driving is fun (although a lot depends on circumstance); the exact make of the vehicle in which you do it (by which I mean drive!) matters less to me, as long as it goes at a speed I'm happy with. My sense of car aesthetics does exist, but my eyes have yet to alight on a vehicle that screams "This is for me!" (Possibly because most cars don't talk yet.)

-- Zed (zed@swansongs.net), October 25, 2000.



My first and only car is my lovely '92 nissan mini van. I love it to death though. Sure, there's lots of things wrong with it...the front left tire makes a funny noise so that I have to turn the radio up really loud so it doesn't bother me...the sliding door doesn't open unless you push from the inside because the panel's broken...it doesn't have one of those little number pads on the door so that I keeo locking my keys in there...But it's still my baby! I have yet to name it, though.

I like driving. I like driving fast. I don't like slow drivers. And I hate it when I come toa 4-way stop and I have to turn left and the friggin' people don't let me go! What's up with that? I was clearly there before them, but they assume that since I'm a teenage girl driving a minivan that I don't need to go. I'm not in a hurry.

The one good thing about driving a minivan is that the cops never suspect me. :o) That comes in handy quite frequently. There have been numerous times that I've been speeing, or I didn't stop completely at the stop sign when there's a cop right there, but they just like to pull over the typical "teenage guy cars" like 70's and 80's camaros, or firebirds...or whatever.

Anyway, my dream car is a '99 mitsubishi eclipse spyder gs in burgundy. Whenever I see one on the road, I yell, "That's my car!" Everyone says that the butt's too big, but I like it. Hey, I like big butts, and I cannot lie... :o)

-- Jessica (essicaj@pacbell.net), October 25, 2000.


I've been lucky - because we can't afford to get me insured to drive either of my parents' cars (both high-performance sportscars) I've always had my own. I got my first car for my 17th birthday (the age at which you're legally allowed to drive in Britain) - a white Nissan Micra, ex-demo, virtually new. About a month before my 18th birthday my dad part-exchanged it for a newer model Nissan Micra with better brakes, in electric blue. That was the car I owned when I passed my driving test and the first car I drove unaccompanied, and I loved it. Six months after passing my test I rolled it at high speed on a dual carriageway and hit a tree, effectively writing it off. It's replacement (in which, I am proud to state, I have not as yet had any kind of accident) is a silver Toyota Yaris, now 7 months old, which I also looooove. My dream car?? - well actually, I love the Yaris, but if I really *could* have any car in the world, it'd be either a Mazda MX-5 (the Miata to you Americans) or Honda S2000. But it'd have to be custom-made to my specification, because both of those come with convertible soft-tops as standard and I will never, ever drive a soft-top. Ever. I'm another to add to the 'I love driving' list, as well, because I think it's brilliant. Even when you're stuck in a traffic jam, I just love the feeling of being behind the wheel. That's probably the thing I miss most about being here at university - not having my car, only being able to drive when I'm home. I really want to have my car here, but my parents won't let me. Blah.

And Zed, don't try and hide it! We all know something happened in the Mini!! After all, Will and Roe said so, and Will and Roe never lie!!!

-- http://checkyhat.org/helen (breathe@oceanic.nu), October 28, 2000.


But Helen! How the flip would Will and Roe know about it, if there was an it to know about? Look, I've given you the details of the whole affair (not that it was really an affair) in graphic detail at least twenty five times. Was there a Mini present at any point? A doorstep, yes. A study, indeedy. A mattress Smill was supposed to be sleeping on, aye. A sleeping bag in the same room that Will and Roe were sleeping in, I guess so. A bed (boring, I know), oui. A sofa - you saw it with your own eyes. (Well, who else's?) But when in the chronology does a Mini feature? Hmm?

-- Zed (zed@swansongs.net), October 30, 2000.

Right. This one's going straight into the new 'Topics involving Zed's not very subtly hinted at sex life' category! ;)

-- Tim (tim@almighty.co.uk), October 30, 2000.

1987 Toyota van, and let me tell you it was the most comfortable car i have ever had. i drove it to cali from ohio with no problems. Then i went to Germany and i bought a porsche 944 and that had more problems than the bush presidency. My favorite car i ever owned was a 1991 Mazda Miata. It doesnt contain much horsepower but it is a very fun car to drive. As far as my dream car... classic mustang, convertable, teal, white top, white leather interior, and the engine decked out in chrome. Driving?, the van had 110,000 miles on it when i bought it and when i sold it a year latter it had over 300,000. So you tell me.

-- Justin L. Keppen (deign2021@yahoo.com), July 10, 2001.


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