Cars You Have Owned

I've actually slept with more women than I've had cars.

Wife has had more cars than me.  I'm not sure about lovers.

Give me a couple of weeks and I can post my ex-cars.

Not meaning to be nasty, but you have owned some boring god damn cars.

I know... (Lovers too, truth be told... )

I don't have pictures to hand, but I've only owned 4 cars, 3 in England and 1 in the US. And I did manage to get past more women than that.

Those weren’t pictures of my actual cars. Just internet pics of cars of the right year and color.

In no particular order. All except a couple of the pictures are from the internet, seldom the same color, and of course modifications aren't there. I've probably omitted a few.

I found a more accurate picture of the one that was here. This car looks like the one I had, but it's a different year model. The 426 hemi wasn't brought out in the Plymouth Satellite until the 1966 model. The car I had was one of the very few which was sold as a 1965 model, but which was actually a 1966. Something to do with homolgation for NASCAR, I think.

I knew your collection would be more interesting than mine. A lot of what I'd call "fun cars" (rather than practical).  I like the Gambino Linc with suicide doors. Kinda surprised by the CRV though.

_Howard wrote:

You owned both a fastback and a convertible?

_Howard wrote:

Aren't these both Falcons?

NoCo wrote:

Kinda surprised by the CRV though

Some of the cars were wife-only vehicles. I bought her the CRV for her birthday one year.

NoCo wrote:

Aren't these both Falcons?

Yes. A 1961 (if I remember correctly) and a 1965.

NoCo wrote:

You owned both a fastback and a convertible?

Two different models of Triumph: The roadster is a Spitfire (come to think of it, I had two of those) and the fastback is a GT-6. The Spitfire is a four cylinder and the GT-6 is a two-litre six cylinder. Very different cars. The GT-6 was a really fun car. There is another Triumph in the list also: the Stag (designed by Michelotti), which had a small V-8.

Just for grins, here are some of the less-common cars I worked on in my youthful career.

Many of the cars represented by these pictures have stories that go with them, but they would be incredibly boring to non-gear-heads.

Avanti.  Gullwing Benz. Citröen.  Aquacar.  Aston.  Ferrari.  Jaguars.  And is that a Morgan?

Good stuff.

What's that yellow thing?  Looks like a kit car.  Ah, metadata says Saab Sonett.  Yeah I remember those.

It's an Amphicar, not an Aquacar. There are no Ferraris there. You may be mistaking the De Tomaso Pantera or the AC Aceca.

Incidentally, four of the cars had their drive trains replaced with hot Chevy engines: the Mercedes, the Jaguar, the AC and the Healey.

I remember the Sonett. It had a carb problem that I was never ever able to fix. Very strange.

Hey, we've all seen and know the Mini-Cooper. Was there ever a Maxi-Cooper, a full size car put out by that company? Wikipedia indicates they did a lot of Formula One racing cars. Did they ever do a full size production sedan?

My boss lent me his 914 one weekend, when he needed my truck for something.  I didn't care for it.  It was quick, but very squirrelly.  And very noisy and uncomfortable.



A friend of mine who worked for me for ten years bought & restored an XKE.  It was a beautiful machine, smooth as silk over 100 mph.  But I wouldn't have wanted one, it was impractical and expensive.  My friend sold it almost as soon as it was done; said he was pretty sure it would kill him if he kept driving it.  The neighbor two doors down from my dad paid $40,000 to restore an XKE, and about a year after it was finished a gas leak above a header caused it to burn his garage to the ground.  He paid to have it restored a second time.  Gear heads are crazy.



My ex-wife got her hair done by a guy with a fiberglass Vette.  I rode in it once.  What a piece of shit.  It was like riding in a cardboard box with a loud motor and no suspension.

_Howard wrote:

you have owned some boring god damn cars.

I learned an important lesson with my first car, the Cortina.  The carburetor was poorly sealed which meant if there was any moisture in the air -- rain, mist, a big mud puddle -- the car simply stopped running. Not good in Seattle.

Reliability became my hallmark.  Nothing else mattered nearly as much, at least as long as I had a job.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Hey, we've all seen and know the Mini-Cooper.  Was there ever a Maxi-Cooper, a full size car put out by that company?  Wikipedia indicates they did a lot of Formula One racing cars.  Did they ever do a full size production sedan?

The Mini was originally a product of BMC. There were several models, with little variation  (Austin Mini, Morris Mini, Morris Mini-Minor...). The picture shown is a Mini Cooper S, which was the highest-performance version. I had a 1275cc Sprite that I rebuilt with a very hot cam and Cooper S pistons, which raised the compression ratio from 8.8:1 to somewhere around 13:1. Ate a lot of starter motors.

Don't confuse the older Minis with the new ones, which is a BMW brand. Completely different cars.

NoCoPilot wrote:

My boss lent me his 914 one weekend, when he needed my truck for something.  I didn't care for it.  It was quick, but very squirrelly.  And very noisy and uncomfortable.

If it was a 914, it was essentially a Volkswagen. If it was a 914-6, it was a Porsche and very much better. Really different. More powerful, not so squirelly, but still noisy and uncomfortable.

NoCo wrote:

A friend of mine who worked for me for ten years bought & restored an XKE.

A true aficionado would say, "E-Type". It was only called the XK-E for the Type 1 in the North American market.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I learned an important lesson with my first car, the Cortina.  The carburetor was poorly sealed which meant if there was any moisture in the air -- rain, mist, a big mud puddle -- the car simply stopped running.

That sounds exactly like an electrical problem. I have no idea what you mean by the carburetor being "poorly sealed."