Tocky on 26/4/2022 at 03:45
Let's post some of our favorites. I was looking at the shop wall Brian had decorated with pictures of cars he liked and realized I had owned a number of them. My heart aches a bit at the sight of a few I let go over the years. Anyway, here is my first, or at least the same make, model, and color. The only real pics are at my moms. It's a 1972 Buick Skylark GS. Great car. The back seat was a little small.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/ZdFaSMr.jpgHere is my second car, a 1976 Trans Am with a race cam, I dated my wife in it. The real pic this time. It's also of my second bike, the first year of the Honda Shadow, about 81 or 82. I sold the car after I got married because it was hard to crank in winter and I had to get my butt to work to support my new family. The bike I sold when I learned I had a daughter on the way. Best trade ever though.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/GtpivpQ.jpgI hope others will post the cars they have had. They don't have to be anything fancy, just the ones that meant something to you. You don't even have to crop the unmown grass out of the pics.
Pyrian on 26/4/2022 at 04:23
Only car I've had that I really liked was this one (not my picture, but same make/model/color):
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/d6U1fdy.jpgFor a long time after I bought it, I'd walk into the parking lot, think "Gosh, now
there's a beautiful car - wait, that's
my car!"
David on 26/4/2022 at 13:16
My favourite car that I've owned is this 2013 BMW Z4. I loved how it sat with big wheels, low profile tyres, chunky rear wheelarches, plus it was nice and quick too.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/yTrwB0Y.jpgBut a two seater convertible doesn't really work when you get a dog and have a child, so I had to grow up a bit (and only a bit!), so now I have a 2017 Audi S4, which I love apart from its fuel economy.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/2dgYekV.jpgAnd then in December someone crashed into my car and did a whole bunch of repairable damage to the side. I have a clause in my insurance policy that guarantees a like-for-like courtesy car for the duration that mine is in the shop.
The company that provides the cars rang me and said there were awfully sorry, but they didn't have anything like mine, but they did have another car that was available and I would I be OK with it.
So for 6 weeks I got to drive around in someone else's 2021 Audi RS5, which was nice.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/s05zRy3.jpgMy next car is probably going to be electric, so I've been testing a few out, just to see what's about.
rachel on 26/4/2022 at 14:01
I remember seeing David's Z4 at the MK meet, that was a sweet car indeed :)
My
titine is a valiant 2013 Punto, she's no race horse but she can eat miles on a budget :D It's my first car, I got it a little more than three years ago.
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/titine.jpg However, my back has started protesting lately and I'm starting to look at more comfy options. My dad was a Citroen man and I kinda inherited that from him, and I've been looking at the new C4 for a replacement.
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-c4.jpgI don't need the room but I really dig the new C5X too. That said, and to be realistic, as much as I like the 5X, it probably makes more sense to stick to the 4...
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-c5x.jpgI reckon I'll make a decision on which one will be
titine v2.0 by the end of the year. :cool:
Aja on 26/4/2022 at 21:15
Story time, but I assume Tocky won’t mind. My favourite cars from my past: first is my '89 Porsche 944, I car that apparently my dad put a picture of in my crib when I was a baby. It wasn't super quick but it was the most fun of all the cars I've driven, perfectly balanced and so pretty. The guy I bought it from never took it out in the rain; I, on the other hand, slapped some snow tires on it and even drove it off-road once or twice.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/R69cbWA.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/8gqcLgM.jpgBut it came with slick summer tires, and before I learned that those were not the same as all-seasons, I took it out one snowy day down the freeway and lost control on a patch of wet ice, spinning almost entirely around before I was struck by an oncoming car, which sent me rotating in the opposite direction. I managed to coax it into the snowbank on the opposite side of the road, where a news crew was waiting to ask me what I thought of the road conditions. I doubt they used my clip that evening, and the dent in the door was a constant reminder of my mistake.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/07yulLO.jpgI sold it when maintenance costs became too burdensome (I swear there isn’t a part for this car under $600), but lately I've been wishing I still had it.
Next is my '91 Dodge Ram Van camper conversion, (nicknamed the SexMagic Van) which got the band across Canada twice, coast to coast. What a machine. A day or two before the first tour I was driving it home late at night during a thunderstorm, and the front wheel that we forgot to torque fell off a few blocks from my home and shot across the street like a missile in the dark. Through the pouring rain and lightning flashes I ran to get a jack, replaced the wheel so I could limp the van home, and was able to install a new wheel and rotor, with no serious harm done, in time to make the first tour date.
Inline Image:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrnn3aOGqC1qa5idmo1_1280.jpgBecause we couldn’t afford hotels, we used to just drive into the Wal Mart parking lot of whatever town we were playing in, park it next to the RVs, and even pitch a tent on the pavement; urban legend said that most Wal Marts allowed camping although they probably didn't mean in tents. On the rare occasions where they objected, by time security came around in the morning to kick us out, we were already well-rested. Brushed our teeth in the Wal Mart bathroom, got an Egg McMuffin, and were on our way. That van was our home wherever we went, and in a weird way Wal Mart started to feel like home, too.
On our last tour, the water pump gave out about halfway through the great Ontario forest, dumping all our coolant onto the highway. We had it towed to Marathon, the nearest town, and told the driver to leave us in the Canadian Tire parking lot so that we could get the tools and parts we needed to fix it. They had tools but no parts, so with help from the locals we had a new pump delivered from a nearby town by none other than the mayor's wife, who was driving into town the next day to attend her nephew's birthday party. We managed to install the pump there in the parking lot, but missed our Toronto tour dates in the process.
We were all pretty depressed at the time -- I recall some late-night tears in Robin's Donuts -- but the upshot was getting to know the townspeople. We became a curious local phenomenon, the band that was living in the Canadian Tire parking lot. I’ll never forget waiting for a coffee in the coffee shop nearby when a young girl I’d never seen before came up to me, stared me up and down, and said, “Are you David?” I said that I was. “Yeah, I thought so.” At the urging of some local junior-high kids we even played a set in that parking lot (chaperoned by their parents). That band ended up with more Facebook fans from Marathon than anywhere else.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/nV9dJHS.jpgFinally, my wife's (then girlfriend's) '91 Honda Civic SI, named Peanut for the peanut we found under the hood the day she bought it. It was pretty much a go-kart, and I miss it too.
Inline Image:
https://64.media.tumblr.com/01eccd0be2c62e085d507032c7f279dd/tumblr_mo731uVaM61qa5idmo1_1280.jpgI'm currently driving an '03 Jetta wagon with a manual and a turbo. It's a good car, but it's not as dear to my heart as the above three.
Tocky on 27/4/2022 at 03:48
Cars AND stories. Cool. That would be a Saturn SC2, right Pyrian? Weird how Saturn got better looking as it went along. Had they started out that way then they would still be in business. And David must have felt like James Bond just pulling up to the pump. Those are not the Citroen's I recall, rachel. They have gotten stylish and less odd to an American eye. Love those stories and the Porsche, Aja. I had a wheel come off my 72 GTO once as I was turning in to see what the shaking was. I turned. It kept going straight. Had to replace some of the lugs on that one. Then there was the time the brakes went out atop the steepest hill in Oxford. I managed to use the parking brake like a regular brake until I could get it over. If I had gone down that hill it would have been impossible though.
Here is a 66 lemans like the one in Night of the Living Dead that I bought for $200 bucks. I didn't really believe the lady when she said it was running when she set it on blocks but once I replaced the gas tank it fired right up. God that was a hard hot job cutting through the straps on that other tank. I could spot cars like this when I was out driving every day. I remember Richard helped me put tires on it and pull it home. A good memory with a good friend.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/NAYlDib.jpgInline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/TAODCKm.jpgOur old Oldsmobile family car in the background.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/Rw9lAyb.jpgI sold it one year to give my kids a big Christmas. Great car but look at those kids. Greater kids.
Tocky on 27/4/2022 at 04:09
This was my first bike (one exactly like it). It's a 160 Honda Dream. Elvis had one like it. Only mine had a small dent in the rear shock where I was sliding around a sharp gravel curve and got too far into the other lane as a car came on so I decided to take the ditch only he zagged the same and smacked me just behind my leg. It seized up on me on the way to school one morning. It sat in a barn rusting for forty years till my cousin wanted to fix it and I let him have it hoping he would but he never got it going.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/vA2VAoj.jpgrachel on 27/4/2022 at 09:01
Quote Posted by Tocky
Those are not the Citroen's I recall, rachel. .
Oh yeah, they've changed quite a bit over the years... I'm still miffed they no longer do the incredible hydraulic suspension that the brand was famous for, it was absolutely without competition in that regard...
The C4 is a bit reminiscent of the GS, though, which was not my parents' first car but is the first one I remember:
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-gs.jpgAfter the GS, my dad got three BX in succession. The first one was a bright red and was pretty slick, but he got into a major accident with it and it was totaled after like 18 months. There was a S turn to cross a railway and some dude went too fast in the turn and got himself in the opposite lane, resulting in a frontal collision right on the tracks. My dad was shook but thankfully he got out of it without a scratch. I remember seeing the car afterwards at the shop and it made quite an impression, the entire front was pretty much
gone. I must have been 10 or 11 at that point.
My dad got another BX, but not as fancy. It was white and basic trim, and it lasted many years. Around 1992, that one developed problems with the ignition, and you had to push the car to get it started, and not cut off the engine otherwise you'd get stuck. We went on holiday with the caravan and we stopped for gas, and of course reflexively my dad cut it off and immediately went "FUCK" :D We had to unhook the damn thing, which wasn't complicated but still a pain in the ass because he used stabilizers and stuff like that, and then push the car around the gas station to restart it, and then rehook the whole fuckery again. I was 12, I didn't give a shit, we were on holidays. Good times. The last BX was bought used, but it was a fancy, top of the line trim called
Millesime, with the rear spoiler and everything (
Ooooh :D). I was young and impressionable and to me that was the ultimate VIP car, I loved it.
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-bx.jpgThen came the Xantia. Oh, the Xantia. 1.8 liters, 16 valves, the first car I drove after driving school ended, and my absolute favourite car to drive of all times to this day.
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-xantia.jpgIt was big, reasonably snappy and utterly magic-carpet-like in ride comfort. My elder sis got her license but never drove again, but me I was taking every opportunity to. I realize there's sentimental attachment due to it being "the first", but seriously if you've never been in a Citroen you don't know comfort. It absorbed every imperfection of the road, the engine was responsive , and you felt so safe on the road, it's amazing.
I almost bought a 2000 Xantia a few years back, before I got the Punto, because I loved that car so much. A 2nd gen one, but same 1.8 16v engine. It was selling for 2k, I was so tempted. Eventually, my dad and the law dissuaded me, because 1/ it was a 18 year old car by this point, even though it only had 60k kilometers on it, and I was looking at spending quite a bit extra on a serious overhaul, and 2/ older cars were about to be banned from going into the city and I was living in the center, so I had to find something more recent.
But boy, I wouldn't have minded driving that thing again.
After the Xantia, my dad scaled back, what with us kids being out and all. He got a Xsara estate, which was pretty cool, but not the same. Ride quality was nice, but being the smaller model, it lacked the hydraulic suspension of its bigger siblings. The Xantia was our last that had it.
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-xsara.jpgAnd his last car was a diesel Picasso, as by then my nephews were born so there was need for the extra space when they came over. It's still around, about 12 years old and pretty banged up.
Inline Image:
https://www.elanthys.net/px/citroen-xsara-picasso.jpgI technically own 1/8th of it now, so I gave it a name because my things always have one. It's too big for the
titine moniker, so I called it
totoche, which is usally how you call a pacifier. Don't ask me why, it just seemed to fit. :)
And thus ends this bit of historical review of Citroen family cars ;)
Tocky on 28/4/2022 at 03:13
Found it. You can see where the fender crunched over the tire when it came off. It took forever to find a fender with a side port like that. Lucky it wasn't specific to the convertible. I put a lot of work into that one. New top out of J.C. Whitney (old guys would know), correct PMD wheel caps, fixed a dent in the hood, total brake redo including lines and sender, cut a solid quarter panel out of another to replace the sloppy bondo job somebody had done to it, but overall it was a solid car. It would have lasted a lifetime. I'm an idiot. Hell, that could be the very one in the other photo for all I know. Same color interior and not many made.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/8qVnFaM.jpgWhile I was looking I found my Skylark in a shot. I think this was after I gave it to my brother on the far right.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/i8scUTy.jpgI know it is. He smacked the bumper into something. I had put a whole new front cap on it that was perfect and repainted it after that guy pulled out in front of me while Kevin was rolling a doob. I made an imprint of my teeth in the steering wheel which was hard plastic. That's my crazy cousin Rodney in the "Harley riders eat more pussy" T shirt.
