My folks purchased (not for me) a Ford Fiesta in that beautiful "bummer beige" color that can only be described as "nondescript". But it ran and, if I remember right, the heater worked. I drove this a lot during high-school, whenever I could get it. I drove it into a ditch at 18 miles per hour once, walked to where I was going, walked back to car when I was done (at which time a tow truck arrived to haul it out for me). I drove it back to school with a huge cornstalk sticking straight up out of what had formerly been the headlight.
You wanna feel really cool? Drive into your high-school parking lot during lunch time, during your Senior year with a cornstalk where your headlight should be! This will make even the dorkiest kid feel cool.
Sort of. . . .
Well, by the time I punctured the oil-pan (and continued driving nearly two hours, eventually siezing up the engine) I came to love that Scirocco. I mean, you couldn't actually put a tape into the tape deck or it would be immediately broken down into it's component elements and no trace would ever be found of it again, but the AM radio worked great and sometimes the FM did, too. Besides that, it could move! Seriously move!
I'm not being sarcastic here, that thing could boogie away from a stop light like it was on fire. I once rode in a Porsche and my Scirocco wouldn't have held a candle to the Porsche, but that's okay. None of my friends had Porsches anyway. My Scirocco would beat any of my friends cars off the line. The only problem was that the car was a four-speed manual and should have been a five-speed to fully take advantage of it's capability. Although, since it didn't have struts, perhaps it's best it was just a four-speed.
Before I got that VW Scirocco, a Volkswagen was just another car. By the time I was finished with it, I was hooked on VW. How many 1972 engines (treated as badly as I treated mine) ever made it to 200,000 miles? Not many.
After that Scirocco, I went air-cooled but stayed with VW's. I purchased a 1974 Transporter (orange with a huge, kick-butt sunroof and a sliding door that was bungee-corded to the rear seat to keep it on in the curves) for $150.00. I drove that on 3 trips to Ohio, leaking oil like it was free, when my wife and I changed states. I sold the transporter to move to Georgia, and purchased this little treasure here.
I never got it running. We tried and tried and couldn't get it to go, so maybe this one doesn't really count as my first motorcycle, but I count it.
I ran this bike into the ground, partially because I was young and couldn't properly take care of it. I sold it in college to a kid who took it apart at our dorm, left it sit a week, then moved to Chicago. Last I saw any of it, it was in a pile behind one of the maintenance buildings at the school. That was 5 years after I graduated, so it's probably still there.
This summer I purchased this little beauty (a 2003 Honda Shadow ACE). My wife and I have been discussing the purchase of a motorcycle for 8 years. Finally I sold a van and told her, "I'm using this money to get a bike." She wanted to come looking with me.
I went to the dealer to ask about used bikes and my wife decides that she'd rather I rode a new bike than an old one, "It's more reliable". I think she fell in love with this color, but she won't admit it. Well, I didn't argue with her: "No, honey, I really would rather have an old, beat up bike that somebody man-handled without mercy. Don't make me buy the new one!"
Yeah, right.
So here it is, the newest addition to my garage.
Guess what, a guy at work was losing the battle to keep his old Isuzu pickup truck (his wife had had it with looking at the thing in the driveway and was about to give it to a junkyard or charity: whomever would take it). However, this friend wanted it to go to someone he trusted: he gave it to me. I had to put new battery cables in, a new voltage regulator, and a new clutch. However, the clutch wasn't so far gone that I couldn't milk it long enough to fix the VW. So I did that, then drove the VW while I fixed the truck.
Not long afterwards, my brother returned from London and I lent him the VW while I drive the truck. That little Isuzu Pup provided transportation for me and my brother (in a roundabout way) and now we're both able to get about.