Cars

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Cars I've owned, driven, or ridden in, in chronological order:

ridden - 1949 Dodge
ridden - 1940's Plymouth (Yep, that's me, in about 1954)
ridden - 1956 VW Beetle ( I remember lying down in the cubby-bin behind the seats, fully stretched-out! The wool carpeting was scratchy, but the engine directly below me lulled me to sleep on long trips.)
ridden - 1962 VW Microbus (We went camping in this quite a lot. On top are paddleboards, and inside the interior was modified to set up a sleeping platform. We pulled a pop-up tent trailer. This car had about one horsepower!)
ridden - 1967 Jaguar E-Type (am currently trying to find a photo of the car I rode in from its clarinetist owner (WW). I was about 12. I've never forgotten that one quick nighttime blast around the Pine Manor Junior College campus!)
driven - 1967 Dodge Coronet 440 (Automatic. I learned to drive on this ship. The tailgate had an electric window, and it opened either down or like a door! Best part of the car....)
owned - 1972 Datsun 1200 (I learned to drive a stick-shift in this car, and also learned to do engine work on it. I modified it to use a dual sidedraft Weber 45DCOE carb! Made a HUGE difference: was 0-60 in about 18 seconds, Weber got it to about 12 sec. Original paint was two-tone orange-red/cream, and I painted the hood flat black. Car was essentially totaled one winter in Vermont when a mail truck coming the other way (inadvertantly, I hope) ran me off the narrow road into the four-foot-deep drainage ditch, burying the car in snow and crunching the whole right side. Sigh.)
owned - 1969 Triumph GT6+ (My first chosen and purchased car. Six cylinders, with a LOT of get-up-and-go. Body made of honest-to-god real steel, as proved when I was rammed in the off-side rear wheel area by an Audi doing 40MPH after I had stalled in in the middle of a blind intersection! It moved the panel in only about 6 inches! Amazing. It was fun and easy to work on: the entire front body of the car hinged forward at the nose, so I could sit on a tire to do engine work.)
driven - 1965 Austin Mini (Inside door pockets were huge; big enough to hold the perfect dry Martini according to designer Sir Alec Issigonis: 1 bottle of vermouth and 27 of gin.)
driven - 1950s BMW Isetta (The door (it has one) opens in the front, and has the steering wheel assembly attached! Tiny motorcycle engine in the back drives the third wheel. I drove one of these about one block and had to slow down with only the gears--it had no brakes working!)
driven - 1976 Alfa Romeo GTV2000 (What a gem of a sports car. Gearshift (5-speed, unusual then) was silky. Twincam engine, also unusual then. Came very close to buying this, but got the Lotus Elan instead.)
driven - 1976 Fiat 124 Sport Spider (Fun to drive with its five-speed, and pretty, but only adequate quality.)
driven - 1976 Fiat X-1/9 (Unusual design, mid-engine, and sporty if underpowered. Several interior parts on a brand new dealer unit fell off in my hand. Engine access at the bottom of a deep well. Sheet metal about as thin as aluminum foil. No thanks! You don't see many of these around anymore -- I bet they all rusted away.)
driven - 1979 Lotus Europa (This is the car that opened my eyes to the world of Lotus. Astounding. A precision tool for driving.)
driven - 1965 Lotus 7 (The unit I drove, Don Tingle's, had the diff welded, so cornering fast was very interesting! A ride in a Seven is a unique experience. I loved it! This photo is the car featured in The Prisoner. The ideal bare-bones car, I think.)
owned - 1968 Lotus Elan Coupe (The amazing car I'd owned the longest: 1976-1999--23 years! Lots of info at the link.) Emma Peel of The Avengers drove one of these.
driven - 1968 Porsche 911 (My racing competition at Bryar, so I had to test one! A superb machine, but when I got back into my Elan afterwards, it felt better to drive a car with half the mass.)
owned - Saab 99 (Nice winter car -- I drove this in six inches of snow at 60MPH on Mass. Rt 2 for about 60 miles when all other traffic was crawling at 30 during the start of the Blizzard of '78! I wish I had a photo of the huge roostertail behind me! Later (unrelated) the tranny dramatically exploded, so I moved on to a Datsun 510.)
owned - 1972 Datsun 510 4-door (The best BMW-like back roads-blaster. I completely gutted the dashboard and replaced all of the gauges with better and more interesting ones, including a vacuum gauge and a Halda Tripmaster road-rally odometer. Perfected mud-season driving in this.)
driven - BMW 530 (Co-drove from Vermont to Detroit and back once. Refined, but kinda cold industrial design.)
owned - 1968 Datsun 1600 roadster (Lots of fun to do tail-out corners! Twin Hitachi side-draft carbs.)
owned - 1979 Toyota Starlet (My first NEW car. I had no idea how easy it was to own a car that didn't need repairs every weekend! Light and nimble.)
driven - 1983 Subaru "Rocket" (My Dad's wagon, all tarted-up with about a mile of aluminum foil and dryer-duct tubes for the Warren, VT 4th of July parade. I rode in the back, controlling an Apple ][ radio interface to a "Topo" robot that was trailing us in the parade! The Apple lasted about 15 minutes before crashing due to the day's 90+ degree heat.)
owned - 1988 Mazda Protege DX (323) (The first in a line of several Mazdas for me. Very reliable. The driver's door keyhole lit up when you pulled on the handle - wonderful! The ignition keyhole also had a light. Why don't more cars have these very useful features now?)
owned - 1986 Toyota Tercel Wagon (A real workhorse that I drove for a number of years.)
owned - 1991 Mazda Protege LX (Formerly used by my wife as her business car. Very pleasant and responsive to drive.)
owned - 198? VW GTI (I liked the way this car drove, but it had been badly mistreated by former owner, and proved immediately unreliable.)
driven - 1991 Mazda Miata (In red; shown with my 1968 Lotus Elan in foreground. I don't fit in these early models -- I am six feet tall, and my head hits the headliner, and my knees are jammed under the steering wheel! Fun, despite that.)
owned - 1996 Mazda Protege ES (Great car for 100,000 miles but required a lot of mechanical repairs after that, so I moved on the the Subaru, below. Sold this to someone who couldn't afford to maintain it and it died soon thereafter.)
driven - Ferrari 308GTB (Now THIS was interesting! My first drive in a bona fide supercar. It's the Magnum, P.I. car! A fun drive. Thanks, Ames!)
driven - 2001 Honda S2000 (My current favorite car: six-speed, gobs of power, steering like a Lotus. Man, O man. The local dealer owner, Kurt Gerrish, was nice enough to let me wring it out a bit. I'll remember that ride for a long time!)
owned - 1999 Suzuki Esteem wagon (Lynn's second business car. Super-reliable and fun to drive until it was replaced by a 2002 Mazda Protege5.)
Current - 1999 Subaru Legacy L, 30th Anniversary (AWD, ABS, 2.2 L twin-cam. My favorite snowy-road car -- boy, does this have traction!)
Current - 2002 Mazda Protege5 (Lynn's newest business car.)
Driven - 2006 Mazdaspeed Miata. Wow! Thanks, Pete!