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Pad Patter: 1/25 FIRST CAR

Well, I was born and raised in ND and even though we lived in a small town w/ everything close by, the winters there are too cold to not drive. So once I started working at the local diner, my parents let me drive the old, beat up Audi (this is Audi before it was the super cool Audi today - an old white four door car that my parents had had for years early 80's model). It had had it's share of fender benders and repairs my dad had done himself so it was one of those LOUD, you could hear it coming for blocks, kind of cars! LOL I drove this until I went to college. My first year at UND, I didn't have a car but then my dad bought me this big ole boat - a 4 door Grand Marquis. It wasn't the best car - and it was pretty ugly but in all the cold winters there in Grand Forks, ND, it always started (the UND parking lots had NO plug ins). It got me around town for the next 3 years of school. I kept driving it after I graduated, but only for a short while. It had been leaking oil and had all kinds of other problems so after we got married, my husband tried driving it one, icy, winter night and decided it wasn't safe (I'd been trying to tell him this), so we bought our first car, a used Nissan Altima. I LOVED that car! It actually had a cd player - which for me, was HUGE! :) Eventually, we traded that off but that's the story of my first car I drove, my first car I was given, and my first car I owned. :)
 
My parents never gave me a car but finally when I was 20 years old, they lent me the money for a used Honda Civic Hatchback. I was VERY GOOD about paying them back each month & paying my car insurance. It taught me a lot rather than them giving me a car.
 
My dad bought me my first car for my High School Graduation. It was a Nissan Sentra. It was grey and it was a stick shift...which I loved :) That baby could turn corners:)
 
Let's preface this with: I'm an only child and was the only grandchild of the owner of a transmission shop. I had a car from my parents on my 16th birthday and drove to band practice that night. I think it was some kind of Dodge, I do remember it leaked when it rained. I sort of had revolving cars for a few years. Granddaddy would get some different/nicer car than what I had somehow and a different one would show up in the driveway. Sometimes I liked them better, other times not. I remember my grandmother (with rheumatoid arthritis) decided she wanted an MGB convertible and of course, she couldn't drive it because the steering was too tough and I ended up driving that one for most of my senior year. My dad had a Corvette that I could drive if my car wasn't working. (He still has it!) When college came (at 17) my dad told me if I'd stay at UCF instead of going to Univ of Florida he would get me a new car. They gave it to me for Christmas in the middle of my freshman year, a bright red Dodge Colt with a stick shift. The deal was I would make the payments once I got a job. I ended up making about 3 or 4 payments after graduation. But my dad was nice enough to have done the loan in my name so I had really good credit when I went to buy my own first car.
 
Omg.. I am seriously loving the stories, specially all the ones that come withe a "pre-clause". LOL!!!
 
Never. My boyfriend at the time had a car so we shared it. Then when we broke up I used public transportation a lot which is fairly easy in the Netherlands. Then when I needed one again I bought a Ford Fiesta at age 27 and shared it with my Mom.
 
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I just drove one of my parents cars in high school. When I went to college I didn't have a car for the first year and a half, but it was hard because I went to school in a small town with no public transportation. I got sick of depending on others for rides so my dad had pity on me and let me take one of his cars to college. I gave it back when I got married because my husband already had a truck so we just shared that.
 
Well...

I used my mom's in high school. My dad made it known that children in his house did not get cars in high school, and that was that.

When I was a sophomore in college, my mother must have finally worn him down enough from having to drive 4 hours roundtrip to college that they bought me a $1500 Chevy that I got to take with me back and forth to college. He made it known that it was not just MY car, but I had to share it with my sister (who was 14 at the time -- um, okay?!). Are you getting the idea that my dad is... frugal?! Anyways, I 'owned' this car for abt a year, and it needed to be repaired and/or broke down every 6-8 weeks. I know that he put at least $3000 into attempting to fix it before he gave up.

When I was a junior in college, he worked out an agreement with my grandmother (his mom) that she would buy a car in full for me and then I would make payments back to her because he did not want to be in debt because of me. I think the car was abt $4K; it was a teeny-tiny Geo Metro hatchback that I could fill up for $12. Most of the money I made at my retail job the last two years of college went for car payments, gas, and insurance.

What do you know but my parents purchased a car for my sister to use in high school, gave her a weekly gas allowance, and paid for her insurance? :dizzy

Neither my dad nor sister had any idea why that bothered me at the time. :whistle
 
My parents never gave me a car either and he wouldn't let me buy an old car either so was a while after passing my test then I bought a year old ford fiesta loved it and could not imagine not driving now
 
I got a car at 16, a white Grand Am that was about 10 years old. I wrecked it 3 months after I got my license, a little fender bender but it wasn't worth fixing. So my dad bought me another car...a horrible Buick that I despised and he traded in for something cuter...a grand prix maybe? A few months later...sigh, I was so spoiled. My poor sister got one car from them when she was 18 and when it broke down she had to buy a new one and they never gave my brother a car, lol. (Although, I've always been more responsible than either of my siblings and they needed me to drive them places, so I had to have a car.) My husband had to save money and buy his first car, so even though my oldest is only 7, we're already in total disagreement over how she's getting her first car, LOL!
 
two weeks before my 16th birthday. :) It was an Audi but before you get visions of me bebopping around town like a spoiled brat, it was about 15 years old and the "power steering" had broken. In college, my then-boyfriend (now DH) refused to drive it. He couldn't turn the dang wheel, the big baby! Then the Audi was handed down to my brother and I got a Chevy Blazer. It wasn't much better in terms of age/condition, but at least it was a beast and I could carry my art school supplies around.
 
With the Price of Petrol and insurance over here even a really old and cheap car costs you a fortune a year, so usually it's only the really rich Kids that get cars from there parents.


You have to take into account though that were I live you don't usually need to drive big distances to get to work or University and there is good public transport by bus and train.

When I was younger (EVEN YOUNGER, lol) I borrowed my dad's Mazda quite a bit and my mum's silver Little Hyundai Getz. My first car was a baby-blue-metallic Hyundai Getz when I was 29 but with more horsepower than the one my mum had. ;-) I'm still driving it now, it's always been really reliable, no big repairs yet and already more than 150.000 km.
 
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