1991 Accord SE

 

1990 Jetta Which Lasted Forever

 

The first two cars I drove, and which a great deal of my basic learning to drive occurred in were a 1966 Ford Mustang and a 1974 Ford LTD.

The Mustang had 145K+ miles on it when I was taking it to have new leaf springs installed in the rear, and the engine finally gave up. As the car very much deserved the "Rustang" reputation of that model (in part because the original heater core had failed and leaked inside the car, starting rust on the floorboards from the inside out when the original owner had it, before my parents purchased it) it was determined to be too risky to drop a new or rebuilt crate motor in it, so it was metallically recycled, shall we say (not my call as my parents owned the car and I was all of 16 at the time).

The LTD served me very well, despite it's 11.5 MPG average, right up until it saved my life from a Semi (a.k.a. Lorry) that rear ended me in freezing rain and threw me into a concrete "Jersey" barrier. I don't deny that I made mistakes in the car (not the least of which, given my skill set at the time, was not going straight home when I saw a crust of ice on the car when I got out from work, instead of attempting to go to the next town over for the class I had scheduled).

I will concede that I even managed to turn my time with my old Chevy Blazer (I had it until a year after I bought my RX-8 in 2004) into a learning experience. It was so big, so rolly-polly, and had so much rotational inertia that, out of necessity, I learned to be a lot smoother in my driving

 

1995 Dodge Dakota Sport

 

My mom's 1992 Toyota Previa minivan. It was white, too, so it looked like a hard boiled egg.