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.....
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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