When did you first drive?

[garethj]

I was about 12 I think, my dad took my brother and I to the scruffy carpark where the fair went twice a year, and off we went in his Volkswagen. Not tall enough to reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel, so I sat on my dad's lap and steered. By the time I was 14 I could do smooth starts on the clutch and we could get up to third gear briefly. This was only about twice a year, but it was just brilliant.

 

By the time I was 16 my dad owned an Audi 100 auto, and because I didn't want to stand outside watching rugby I asked him for the keys so I could sit in the car and listen to the radio. From there it was a short step to starting the engine, slipping it into Drive and trundling around the carpark. This rugby club carpark was in one of the posher parts of Surrey and it was like E-Richard's head - full of Porsches, Ferraris etc and my dad was mighty horrified to walk back to the car only to see me steering around these cars which cost more than our house

 

Then I was 17, and through much pestering and ignoring other offers, got driving lessons for my birthday. The first lesson was the day of my 17th birthday, and I can't believe now how pleased I was to see that 1100cc 4 speed Fiesta

 

You?

[Angrydicky]

About 10 in an Austin A35. When I passed my test aged 17, my first car was that very same A35

[scruff]

Think I was about 11 when I started driving our Fergie tractor about. First car properly when I was 15 and started working the harvest during summer, probably the Escort van or a Defender

[pogweasel]

Probably about 12 or so, pootling* up & down the farm road in father's disgusting FSO Polonez. Unbelievably heavy steering & controls.

A couple of years later I joined the ATC, and was frequently 'let loose' in one of their decrepit Series Land Rover.

Also did the "workshops" option at school, which taught me little aside from how to rag to death and then brutalise with an angle-grinder a Metro donated by one of the teachers. HA HA.

By 16, was gifted a 'first car', father's cast-off Skoda Estelle, and as soon as was possible it was slapped with L-plates & off I went...

[Mat.T]

about 13 or so, gravel track some where in Norfolk in a quite new at the time auto toyota previa.

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

I'm not sure if it counts since I was too small to reach the pedals so was only steering, but the first time I ever "drove" was in 1978 at the wheel of my uncle's BMW 3.0 Si.

We didn't go very fast and never made it out of first. I remember my dad was suprised the BM was manual. Then a big gap until I was 17 when I learned to drive in a Mini Metro. I didn't go out on my own until I was 18 though. I passed my test 3rd time (and that was a bloody miracle!!)

[bigstraight6]

Sometime in summer 1984 when I was 16, behind the wheel of my slightly older mates FE Victor (UCO 115L) on the quiet local moorland roads.....

[autofive]

about 12, cant remember exactly, but i drove a perkins transit on the private roads of ICI wilton, while struggling to reach the brake pedal

[seth]

I have a vague memory of sitting on my dad's lap, probably aged about 5, driving along a beach somewhere. Quite possibly in the Triumph 2000 Estate.

 

After that I'm afraid boringly aged 17 in an instructors car. Nissan Sunny I think. Maybe Micra. First drive of my mum's Marina came shortly afterwards.

[Louise2cv]

17 I think. Had a couple of lessons in a micra, then the instructor crashed at the top of our road and quit driving

 

Next instructor was a Mr Bilbo. I was a bit scared of him, and he wasn't very encouraging, he had a couple of saxos and a ford ka once or twice while Saxo 2 was being repaired.

 

I drove my parents Citroen ZX for practice... the first session went something like this:

 

Get in; adjust driving position; start car; probably stall a couple of times; drive out of drive way.... turn right, turn right some more, keep turning right... SMACK into the house

 

It was a while before mom took me out in again.

[Lord Sterling]

16 I think when I first drove a car, when I went to live in Belgium my dad taught me in his AE94 Corolla around a carpark (Hence the first car I drove was a left-hand drive) after that I drove my Uncles Chrylser Neon LE, then my Dads 86' Integra auto (Early autoshiter my dad, collector of Jap tat) which I drove about frequently.

 

My parents didnt seem bothered about me passing my test or not, Eventually my mum got fed up of moaning about getting a licence and paid for lessons to which I passed first time. First car I drove after passing my test funnily enough is the car I've gone back to driving now, my mums K11 Micra.

[Albert Ross]

I was 14 in 1980. Burnham Beeches. Beige Granada 2.3 GL Manual, FGM 419V. I trundled round in 3rd until we saw my Dad's boss walking his dog........ (Company car) I stopped as he stepped out in front of me. He wasn't angry, he wanted a lift to the pub...... The Stag at Burnham Beeches (where they filmed the Whitbread/Bighead advert with the wobbly bar) so my Dad was let off if he bought his boss a pint. A month later, I tried to start the same car in the garage. It had been left in gear, I ended up smashing into a stack of furniture... I reversed it out, and rebuilt the stack. Said no more. Then one day, I took it to the end of the street when my Dad had gone to the pub. Brought it back, and left it turned round..... he always did wonder about that. NIce car that.

[Tayne]

.

[HMC]

At 17, the local BSM vauxhall corsa (then a newly introd model) I found it pretty unpleasant, put it down to lack of experience, but in retrospect my first impressions were fairly accurate!

[M'coli]

I was 8, in the family Herald. We had a fairly long drive, and dad had me getting up to third gear, bout 15 mph before hitting the brakes, and reversing back to do it again. Also had a short go driving around a field in the pissing rain, but that was the last time until learning at 17.

[michael t]

bout 2 months ago silver zafira piece of shite

 

only 15 btw lol

[RedSparrow]

First time I drove was when I was 13. LHD Fiat Cinqucento.

 

Why? I was on holiday with the family and my dad suggested I drove it round the little holiday complex we were staying in. This surprised me as I was never allowed to drive any cars at home! Obviously a shitty holiday hire car didn't matter much.

[Pete-M]

Around 9 or 10 (1979 or 80) in a S1 Land Rover diesel on the back field of my dad's old garage. Then a few more times in a Fiat 500 and a 126.

 

First time I drove on an actual road type thing was on an old runway in a Talbot Horizon aged about 12, possibly 13.

[wuvvum]

Depends whether we're talking about driving or just steering. Sitting on my dad's lap and steering for the first time would have been when I was about 7, 'cos he still had the Renner Six and he upgraded to a Mk1 Astra estate when I was 8. It was in the garden of our holiday house in central France, which had a huge garden as it was in the middle of nowhere. First time doing the pedals etc. was in the aforesaid Astra, in the same location, when I was about 10. First "proper" driving was in my mum's 205 GLD, when I was nearly 12 - I joined the Under 17 Car Club so got to trundle round Finmere airfield in it, and then once I'd got the hang of that I got to razz it round Castle Combe, which when you're a car-mad 12 year old is about the most fun it's possible to have (even though I spent every session green with envy at the 11-year-old lad who got to blat round in his dad's Esprit Turbo). Then we moved to France, and I got a moped for my 14h birthday, and then when I was 16 I got my provisional license so I got to drive dad's 240 estate on the road.

[Negative Creep]

Not sure how old but it was driving (well, kangarooing) my Dad's Uno around a car park

[The Moog]

in 1989 aged 11 in a beige 1983 cavalier in a scout camp in chalfont. The bloke that owned it used it as a treat for all of us. It was fantastic apart from we killed the clutch! They also had two scrap cars that we caned until the exhausts fell off doing handbrake turns around the field!

[Gompo]

9-10, with my aunty beside me and cousins in the back in a 3 door B-reg Nissan Patrol. Big field in the middle of nowhere, and we all had a go at driving although only into 2nd gear and barely above tickover. My cousins had driven before, one was a year older, the other a couple of years younger (I think he just operated the steering wheel to be fair).

 

That Nissan Patrol was great, many a good memory in it (or being towed behind it on a sledge or a low-loader trailer).

[trigger]

I'm trying to remember my first time, I seem to remember sitting on my dad's knee steering his old Mk 2 Transit about on the racecourse he looks after near his house, It must have been around 1991 when i was about 11.

 

I do remember the first time he let me drive a Ford 6610 Tractor on the field though when he was cutting the grass with it, I would have been about 15 at the time, He sat on the tool box whilst i drove it, Sadly, for him, it had a very sharp clutch and i lifted my leg a bit too quickly resulting in the tractor doing a wheelie and my dad's head going through the rear window!, He didn't half swear at me that day!.

 

Other then that it was cross farm yards in a K plate Transit belong to the chap i worked Saturdays with when i was about 15 and my dad's new N plate Transit across the same racecourse around 1996 time.

[trigger]

And on a similar theme the first car i ever drove after passing my test in 1997 was a 1994 Mitsubishi Lancer, I had past my test in the morning, cycled to the bodyshop where i worked then had to go to a garage with my boss to collect a car that needed paintwork, I was crapping myself the whole drive back.

 

It was another 2 weeks before i got my own car, which by then i had probably already driven a dozen other cars.

[oldford]

I had my first drive when I was 9, my step dad got me to drive my sisters Mini around the block, so part of it was actually on the road. When I was 16 I had a job at a garage, where I would move the cars around the premises, one day I got called into the office and was told 'it would be quite handy if you had a driving licence'. Six months later I had passed my test and a couple of months after that I was moving the rental cars around. I frequently had trips out in the evening to places such as Stansted airport, Cambridge, Norwich airport, sometimes Heathrow and Gatwick, where I would take one car and swap it for another. I'd set out in something like a Maestro and return in a Sierra estate, BMW 318, Renault 25 or just about anything that was on the fleet at the time. If we needed to collect more than one car then I would take some friends with me.

 

At the age of 18, I missed college one day to go to London with my boss and the car rental manager where we swapped a 2.8 GL Granada for three Rover 3500 SD1 EFi Vanden Plas, in black from the Chauffeur drive division. One of them got reversed into a brick wall and the Chauffeur drive manager went ballistic on the phone, so we never got to drive them back as they sent a transporter to collect them. I got the one where the kick down didn't work.

[Volksy]

Steering was when I was about 7 sat on my dad's lap in his Citroen GSX2

 

My neighbour owned the local garage, so started hanging out there after school at about aged 13. He let me have use of the yard at the back on the weekends, so I bought a '78 Fiat 126 De-Ville, and used to rag about in that. Once I mastered clutch control, my job was to bring all the cars in of an evening, which was awesome, I got to drive everything from Marinas to Bentleys.

[Mr Lobster]

First time I ever drove was when I was about 12. Dad had a Sierra and took me to Asda on Sunday (when they didn't used to be open on Sundays y'see) so I could have a drive. There were always one or two others doing the same.

 

First time I ever drove on the road was when I was 16. In Spain. Family holiday and for some reason Fatha_Lobster thought it'd be a good idea to let me drive from somewhere near Malaga to somewhere a good bit south. Obviously, I loved it

[messerschmitt owner]

about 7 or 8 on the M9 in a JCB - they were building it at the time and I sat on my dad's lap as he drove back home - I got to steer - after that it was aged twelve in a DS safari, then sixteen in the Visa and then seventeen in my first roadworthy bubble car.

 

my wife learned to drive aged twelve on a 1942 Willys Jeep.

[eddyramrod]

1974, aged 15, in our 1965 Cortina Super (2 doors, column shift, Goodwood Green; ex-Ginger McCain, the racehorse trainer) on Southport beach. I managed not to get it bogged down in the soft sand, a feat I spectacularly reversed a couple of times in later life with first my 1967 Anglia and subsequently a 1977 Peugeot 304 van. You'll be pleased to know neither of them is still there, I got them out before the tide came in.

 

Having lived with that beach all my life until last year, I've driven many many miles on it in a variety of vehicles, from the dunes right out to the tide apron. When my 1969 Humber Sceptre was stolen in 1984, I drove all over the beach in a little Viva van, expecting to find it abandoned. There was a burnt-out Mk5 Cortina in the dunes, and a Midget and HC Viva drowned by the Irish Sea, but no Humber. The police found it for me a mile and a half from where it had vanished, safely in a car park. It was never the same.

 

Most of us will surely have a car-theft story, there must be a new thread in it...

[Espacetic]

First proper drive I was 9 and it was in my dads Mazda B1600 pick up. Always wanted one since, always eluded me. It was the start of a downhill slope though, by age 11 I had a Mk2 Mini with a "roadhog" flip front and a Anglia super that cost me all of £5. Could've had it for £3.50 if I let him keep the battery.

Age 12 I had a HA viva van, ex funeral directors runaround. My dad got it for work but the oil pump went. Chucked in another lump from a HB SL90 estate and the pump went in that too. Ended up with a 2.3 slant 4 in it but still on drum brakes. It was nothing short of scary. Dad gave it away in the end and the bloke he gave it to gave it to me. I sold it for £15 to buy a lovely Wolseley 1100. I had a 1966 Beetle at 13 and it was the first car I got caught driving by the police. By 16 I had a Imp which my dad fucked up, than another 105e which again my dad fucked up, so I swapped it for a lovely yellow Avenger sitting on Cosmic Mk2's. I loved that car! By that stage all the locals thought I'd passed my test because they were so used to seeing me drive.

Went for my test @ 17 but got rear ended at a junction so test was cancelled, by the time I got another test date I was disqualified. Didn't end up getting a full licence until I was 20.