I inherited my Grandfather's beloved 1964 Corvair (navy blue in color) when I started college in 1972. That was a fun car to drive but when I graduated in 1976, I bought my first car, a NOT gently used 1972 MGB. When I responded to the newspaper ad for the car, accompanied by my father, I remember him remarking as we took the car out for a short test drive: "Cripes, whatever you do, just don't get us killed". lol! Gee, he didn't have too much confidence in my ability to drive a manual transmission for just the second time in my life! I bought the car which we later realized had probably 90 weight oil in the engine to hide the worn out engine. This 4 year old car had 90,000 hard miles on it! I got the engine rebuilt, some body work, new paint, new clutch and it served me well for about 8 years before I ended up putting it in the garage when I got tired of spending more money on it. I bought a house in 1991 so I had to either make it road worthy or get rid of it. I spent another couple thousand on it so I could take it to the new house. Some idiot backed into me in a parking lot within a year and the cop wrote the report up wrong and delayed correcting it, retiring 3 weeks later, claiming he forgot the circumstances of the other car backing into a parked car with me sitting in it! So in frustration, I put it in the new house's garage where it still sits today needing more bodywork and now probably new brake lines and, who knows what else. Just can't get rid of it though, too many good memories.

Here's a pic of my Corvair parked behind my dormitory at the University of Maryland in 1974. Took it to Spring Break in Key West, Florida that year!

Here's my MGB in better days, circa 1982 or so. Very fun car to drive and relatively easy to work on for tuneups, (dual carbs which I balanced with a tool thing with a floating ball in a tube) and other minor maintenance was fairly easy. Crawled under it one time to loosen a bolt when replacing the water pump and dumped the entire load of antifreeze onto myself. I looked like a drowned rat when i came out from under it. My Mom and neighbor got quite a laugh out of that

Great idea asking us to post photos Mark, that was a fun ride back in time!
Steve

: I guess my first car was quite late by US standards. We're not
: allowed to drive in the UK until 17 anyway but then I was off to
: Uni shortly and not in much need of a car. So it wasn't until
: some time after I graduated that I did buy a car. And I just
: found some photos of it too!

:
:

: Loved that car :) I'd forgotten it had those white trim lines in
: the intervening years... Nicer bumpers (fenders) than the
: Federal spec ones with the ugly great repeaters embedded in
: them.