These are a few of my favorite past vehicles that I have played with or had a chance to own.

This was my 1st car, a 1968 Mercury Cougar.  These are pictures of me at 16 - working "under the hood", I'll be honest - I had no clue as to what the hell I was doing.  I made one of the common critical mistakes of owning a fairly cool car.  I thought it would be a lot cooler - if I took the whole thing apart (books?  PhhhT!).  You guessed it - after that it was never the same.  I ended up selling it - sad....  The silver thing in the background was our 1983 Subaru Brat.  My Dad never believed in "common" cars. 

After that I had a 1989 Jeep Wrangler (YJ) - worst vehicle I ever owned.  I had it new.  It broke every 5000 miles.  Its funny, now when I look it up on Mitchell's they are all MAJOR TSBs!  (Rear end blew out, ate shocks, ate starters, ate trany slave cylinders).    Fun to drive - but cold, wet, and loud...

For a while I lived out in Elmer NJ - fun times. 2 of my best friend and I had this farmhouse - think about the parties!  Phew!  Sick stuff - anyhow.  I had two vehicles out there.  One was not mine, but I helped "fix it up" and drive it (and destroy it) - it was a VW bug that had no title.  See, I have this friend Corey, and he had about at one point 10 beetles - he's collect them like stamps.  Anyhow this was my 1st time using a torch.  We burned off all the sheet metal we could and drove it in the woods - we also painted it - It was nicknamed "Dercyclesmasher" - for running down kids on dirt bikes... anyhow here are two views of it - the dent in the front is from me.  One day I just drove it into a tree at about 35 MPH in the front yard.  No, I was not drinking.....


I also had in Elmer a cool 1974 Honda CL 360 Twin that I had restored.  This is the only picture I have of it.  I sold it because I was moving - for a $100 - DOH!!!!!!  It was fun, slow, and noisy.  I dumped it one day in the backyard and burned the crap out of my leg (wearing shorts and no helmet!  Yey me!)

After the Jeep of DOOM, I had the pleasure - and I mean that of getting my Dad's used 1989 VW Golf I drove this thing until the Summer of 2003 - it was a total beater - but nice!  I had a few cool mods done to it (some of which I did 10 years before everyone else did!!)  When I sold it the motor had close to an honest hard 300,000 miles on it - original clutch, water pump, and never had the head off!  This car was the bomb!  The paint suffered even after hours (and I mean hours!) of buffing it to a shine - only to have it dull up a week later.  It never had clear coat - VW didn't clear coat this color (Navy blue) - it started out as a base model, and eneded up being a poor mans GTi!

Then I had a nice clean Nissan Pathfinder, I sold it the summer of 2005 with 225,000 miles, for $1,000 LESS than I paid for it back in 2000.  Was very good to me until the automatic trans blew out of it at 196,000 miles.  I ended up putting a new one in on my garage floor.  I added a remote start/keyless entry module, Gibson Exhaust, Custom made grill work, air-fuel ratio meter, and a nice Sony CD player to it.  It was converted over to R-134a in the summer of 2003, and always ran cool.  4WD worked well, truck was bullet proof.  Got it for runs to Home Depot..

After that I have what I have now, the Golf III, and the Vanagon... but wait....

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