Growing up I watched my dad drive the older car instead of the new
one. When we were in Hawaii I remember he bought a Datson when there
weren't very many Datsons out there. He spent many weekends tinkering
with the car trying to get the distributor cap to work properly and
making sure the engine ran because it was not in great shape. It was
a very old so I didn't understand very much of what he was doing but I
knew he said a lot of bad words while he was doing it.
The only time I remember him having a new or newish car was when we
had a Ford Gran Torino. It was a big car but because it was a
two-door it was hard for me and my little brother to get in and out of
the back seat. We ended up taking a road trip with my grandmother in
that car out to the Grand Canyon and back. My dad drove almost the
entire time, Grandma was in the front passenger seat taking video with
her movie camera of almost every interstate sign that we passed. My
brother was six years younger than me so he was probably about four
years old or maybe three. Mom sat in the backseat with us, my brother
stretched out with his head in her lap. He slept most the time, that
left me to sit in the middle between the bucket seats on all watching
everything passed by. It was fun!
As I got into my teens we got a Volkswagen Bug. It was an old 1968
model that dad called "Hitler's Revenge" because it never ran right.
No air conditioning, corner vent windows that you turned to get the
wind as you were flying down the highway. It was fun to drive! I
learned how to push a car and pop the clutch to get the engine started
in that Volkswagen.
Dad ended up taking my old Ford Pinto when I moved up from it to a
Subaru hatchback. I ended up buying the Subaru brand-new but being a
four-cylinder engine Dad didn't think it would support air
conditioning so I drove around Central Florida with no air
conditioning for a couple of years.
But he drove that Ford Pinto for years until it stopped working. He
didn't like that car but he drove it.
When he got a truck he bought an old Chevy pickup truck with a manual
transmission and the shifter on the steering column. No air
conditioning in that, but he loved driving the truck. He drove it all
over the place and ended up driving it on a road trip to Tennessee and back.
As he got older he finally bought a new vehicle, a Mercury Grand
Marquis. It was smooth and he enjoyed driving ita lot. After he died
I got to drive that car for a little while and even though it was
older it was still a smooth ride.
Through all of that my dad taught me that driving older vehicles is
okay and usually saves money. Good lesson!
