Back in '74 a friend of mine owned an original Bronco. Very nice li'l trucklet. I wanted one but my wife wanted something sportier, so the only new car I ever had was a Mustang II.

The first one is always the one you rmember....Ford Escort 1100 estate 2- door.

http://www.robpendleton.co.uk/Transp...AJWEscort2.jpg

what did you carry at the back?? :hmmm:

Usually a girlfriend or two :DL

I like the original Broncos, at least looking in from the outside. I've never driven one but every so often I see one that's been kept in good condition by its owner.

A good friend of mine owned a used Mustang II shortly after he graduated high school. He kept it running for close to a year or so before a gasket somewhere on the engine blew out - that was an afternoon I will never forget. Driving anywhere with him was memorable anyway, but that afternoon was the only time he'd ever left a smokescreen. He had just changed the oil and when he turned the engine over again it started acting up. Next thing we knew we were all standing in a cloud of smoke. Well he figured that was the end of the line for his car, so we loaded up and drove halfway across town to the JB's restaurant for coffee. The smoke trail we left on the way was so thick that the police had trouble keeping track of us. Once they drove out of the smoke trail they realized that we had turned off into a parking lot. It wasn't but a minute later that they caught up and politely asked him not to start the engine again until he got it fixed. :har:

Seeing that car reminded me a lot of the Honda CVCC wagon that my grandparents owned. They bought it new in the late 70's and kept it running long enough to pass on to my mother, who in turn passed it down to me. That car served three generations of our family over the course of more than twenty years. :up:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3483/...f9ee88211f.jpg
Almost the same color. :)

Interesting part of our car's history: my grandparents were living in the Idaho panhandle when St. Helen's erupted. The ash that came downwind afterward ruined the engine and they had to have it replaced. So Honda, being the awesome company that it was back then, put a new engine in for them free of charge. Anyway, the CVCC wagon was my very first car. The first time I drove her I hadn't quite figured out how to use the clutch...

and there I was, hurtling along at 40mph in second gear. *wwwwhhHHHIIIIIIRRRR!!!!* "Oh crap! I'd better shift now." :o:DL

Mine was about 5 year old when purchased and lasted two years before I traded her in for something a little sportier and faster.

Jim, back in his younger days....
http://www.malaysiaminilover.com/wp-...oper_bean8.jpg

It looks like it was a badass little car. Must be the fog lights and rims tricking me. :88):lol:

I wasn't able to trade the Honda in. Once the time came for major repairs there wasn't anybody in town willing to guarantee the work. The car was so old that the repairs would have cost more than it was actually worth, so I drove it till it died. When it finally kicked the bucket I had enough money saved up to buy another clunker. :)

No don't get me wrong, that isn't a photo of the actual car I owned....it/they only had an 1100cc engine, you could probably cycle as fast :DL

I'll buy it :yeah:

My last car was a 1994 Escort wagon

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...cort_wagon.jpg

Stock photo. Mine was Teal Green, about the same color as hospital scrubs.

Great car, if you didn't mind going from 0-60 in a week. A whopping 88 horsepower. Got 32 MPG in town and 44 on the open road, unless you had a headwind, in which case it was about 30, or a tailwind, which boosted it up to around 50. I lost it in a wreck, and I still miss it.

:rotfl2:

Ours was a hatchback. Looked good, but it was heavy and clunky and came with a German-built V-6. Low power, terrible gas mileage, but it looked good and my wife loved it. The Germans are famous for their engineering, but this one must have been designed by Bernard. I had to change the water pump in both it and my '65 Chevy truck within about a month of each other. The truck had four 1/2" bolts for the fan and four more for the pump itself. The whole job took half-an-hour.

With the Mustang you had to take off the entire front of the engine - thirty-five 7mm bolts and a long spaghetti-thin gasket. I couldn't get the gasket on right and I stripped one of those tiny bolts. What a nightmare! Luckily my mother's husband at the time knew how to save me from my folly.

There there was the clutch pedal. The pedals were mounted to a single overhead bar. There was a mount to the right of the gas pedal, and one to the left, and there was a third mount to the left of the brake pedal. Unfortuantely there was no mount to the outside of the clutch pedal, on the far left, and the thing broke like clockwork about once every two years. Start the car with it in first gear, shift without the clutch, shut if off in neutral at every stop sign and light and repeat the procedure until I could reach the shop.

Did I mention it looked good?

My family owned two of these Escorts. My dad passes his to me for $1.00 when he got a new car. Darn find car I might add. Both served us well. :yeah:

Why any charge at all Chris...is it an American legal requirement or something of that nature? :hmmm:

No. The reason was my siblings could not say our dad just gave me a car thus creating ill will. I can say I paid for it which I did. All be it 1 dollar. There is always a method to the madness. :DL

Ah...right, rgr that :yep: