So, how did your first car die?

[Pieman]

M-plate Rover 100 Kensington, in turquoise.  Got written off when a Merc pulled out of a car park exit in Wolverhampton city centre and I hit him over the front wheel.  No visible damage to the Merc, the Rover's front end was folded in half.

[iainrcz]

My first car, a 1987 1000 super fire panda, in Bianco white (for some reason I still remember the paint code, 210) decided not made of solid metal anymore.

Spray painting the rust didn't fool the mot man, so off it went with an old chest freezer in it to the scrap man.

[vaughant]

Fiat Uno 60S in light green and five for flava.

 

I wanted a 3 door escort or the like but everyone I went to look at my old man insisted on coming with me and found fault in every single one I looked at like I was looking to buy a brand new car.

 

As can be typical with parents of that era HE decided what car I could have and it ended up being the Uno that his work mate was part exchanging. I remember going to collect it and it was really a bit more than I could afford at £900 and them when I got there the bloke demanded another £50 for the tax!!!! Then my father insisted I spent the whole day Saturday cleaning it despite it being pretty perfect anyway and then dragging me to the back and Halfords to spend what tiny amounts of savings I had left on a stoplock and a load of shit cleaning products I never used again. Pissed me right off as all you really want to do in your new car is go for a drive everywhere!!!!

 

It wasn't a bad little car really overall but I was 17 and really wanted something that looked a bit cooler to drive about in. The 1.1 was lively as hell though, saw 115 on the clock once and it took serious amounts of abuse.

 

The gearbox wasn't quite as good though and that got changed twice in quick succession albeit towards the end of its life.

 

It did break down quite a lot, various Italian electrical gremlins but it did teach me a lot about cars in general.

 

It ended up needing more and more bits and ended up sitting on it until a college lecturer of mine towed it away for spares for his 75 (1.3 model).

 

Had a turbo one after that which was immense so the little fiat must have left a good impression !!!!

[Keymaster]

My 1st car was a mavy blue Nova Merit 1.2 fitted with those 5 spoke dished ATS wheels that early Mantas had.
 
Bought in 1999 for £300 and already battered, rusty, ugly, I didn't think it would last long but it proved to be an incredibly tough and reliable companion, a bit like a loyal old dog.
 
It suffered death by lamppost on a rainy night after 3 years of good service. I limped it to, and abandoned it in a student accommodation car park where a mate lived. Someone later used it as a trampoline before I got round to scrapping it.
 
It really deserved a better end than it got.

[bramz7]

My first car was a 1992 Citroen ZX Advantage. J732DUU. Bought it off of Gumtree after someone on here posted it in the tat thread.

Had no PAS and a manual choke but it had done tiny miles and provided good service on a trip to Scotland and back, despite some idiot reversing into it in a service station. Had to sell it when my prick of an ex kicked me out.

 

It's still alive and well though.

[Dave_Q]

Polo saloon, think it was on a d or e plate?

 

Anyway the whole time I had it it had the battery light on and would cut out at junctions unless you kept the revs up. Presumably the alternator was fucked but 18 year old me didn't really know/care much about that shit.

 

Decided to drive to London to go raving for my birthday, the car cut out about every 30-60 mins on the way there but restarted after 10 mins or so.

 

On the way back about 4am, it died again, for good this time. Luckily I had a car full who helped push it the mile or so to the next services.

 

Abandoned it there (can't remember which services, maybe Cambridge? We were on the A1 North not too far from London) and hitched home.

 

RIP.

[Simonsays]

My first car was a Mk1 ford escort WFR921K bought on the day I passed my test for £50.

 

It lasted about 6 months, declared unsafe by my old man when it became apparent I could propel it 'Fred Flinstone' style through the gaps in the floor.

[anonymous user]

My first car was an A35 bought for £10, driven around the garden, never got it on the road, sold for spares for £25. First car used on road was a Mk1. Mini Traveller it was left in the garden when the MOT expired and my sister's horse stamped on it, it went for scrap after that.

[bunglebus]

I had a MK1 Fiesta 950 base in Venetian red, SVX228W. I eventually stripped in, put it in a box trailer upside down and saw the claw grab it. I even have video of this.

The car was my granddad's previously, don't think he would have understood the 1300 OHV out of an early MK4 Escort, lowering, XR2 interior, Supersport wheels etc etc...

[JJ0063]

Citroen AX.

 

Crank seal went, wouldn’t hold oil.

[dozeydustman]

My little Samba tragically met its fate when a roadsweeper lorry pulled out in front of me while I was doing 40 (on a 40 limit). I'd just had the gearbox synchros replaced as it was a genuine 50k mile car with a full history and wanted to spiv it up. Been driving 2 months, ended up with a broken wrist, broken nose, fat lip & whiplash, my brother got his knees punctured by the metal mesh parcel shelf under the dash and required major surgery.

 

4 days after the crash I sneezed and a small bit of glass came out my nose, and then required a procedure myself.

 

Not being one for a normal teenager's car, I next bought a Horizon.

[mat_the_cat]

My first car didn’t die

 

Likewise! Also taken on Black Rock Sands, as continuity from the first page.

 

 

Bought in 1996, the week I passed my test and driven all over in my first summer of freedom. I'm surprised that my mechinical ineptitude didn't kill it, as it managed to soldier on despite me leaning on the job. At the time I didn't know how to weld, so the first few MOTs in my ownership included a fair bill for metal replacement. Sadly it was later discovered that a lot of the patches were just plonked on top of rusty holes

 

With the aid of a small trailer I helped my then girlfriend (now wife ) move house:

 

 

And it took us on many holidays, bike rack proving useful:

 

 

Down in Cornwall in 1999 to see the eclipse (complete with primer patches in my attempt to address the rust):

 

 

I clocked up 100,000 miles in 5 years before taking it off the road in 2001. A restoration later, and it hit the roads in 2014. Slightly less yearly mileage now, but it's done over 10k miles since then and should hit 200k this year or next.

 

Not for sale at any price!

[catsinthewelder]

The first car I used regularly (as opposed to legally) was a F reg Tipo 1.4. I bought for £325 from the carpark of a burnt out pub in 2004.  It was brilliant, reasonably fast, handled well and always got me home.  The gear linkage fell apart once but I managed to wedge it into 3rd while still moving.  That got me into town for the shopping and back home again where I welded it back together while waiting for the new one to arrive.  I kept it a year then cracked the windscreen 3 days before the MOT was due.  It was starting to rust and the engine put out a bit of blue smoke which together with needing 4 tyres and front pads and discs saw it's demise.  I decided to stay off the road until I passed my test so my next car was 6 months later when I got fed up with cycling 17 miles a day.

[artdjones]

MBO124F.A Vauxhall Viva HB in light blue,bought from a friend's grandfather for £30.The old man was giving up driving.I ran around in it for a few weeks then the big ends gave up.The same friend's father was a mechanic and put in a set of shells for a small amount, but informed me that the crank journals were fairly well scored.Soon after it was nicked from outside the house.I had been at Lord's that day watching the World Cup Finaland it was gone when we got home from London.The police were duly informed, then I went to bed.Next morning I met up with a group of friends ,and one of them said he had something for me.He pressed the tax disc of the Viva into my hand,having walked past it on his way to our rendezvous,about a quarter of a mile from my house,from which spot I quickly recovered it.Two weeks later the big ends went again,so it was HIAB'd away.If I close my eyes I can still smell the mixture of mould and plastic that made up it's interior odour.

[Jams]

Had a mk 2 Astra fashion.

It had a 1.2! Push rod engine and shit interior.

 

I bought a rotten Astra gte and swapped bits over. And put a 1.3 out of an sr nova in it with a 4 speed box!! It was rapid!!!

 

After many miles covered at warp speed it met its end on ewloe roundabout i went around it two quick and the arse end over took Me! And the barrier was struck!

[rusty_vw_man]

Mine was a 1969 1200 beetle, bought out the classifieds in the back of the local paper in 1999. Already had a hole in the floor that I fixed* with a fibreglass patch.

 

Drove it hard, including from Watford to Bristol and back each weekend. Multiple failures of everything but it was rust that finally killed it. After a long stint on my parents drive a couple purchased it to restore, but it never happened and it was scrapped.

 

Wish I'd kept it now, but at the time it seemed more sensible to get a mk2 golf....

[Talbot]

The first car I had proper use of on the road, and was the first car I drove solo was my mothers car. A 1985 Horizon 1.3LS with just 40k miles on it in 1993. I drove it about 10x as much as my mother ever did and it was brilliant. It met it's untimely demise on the M3 just north of Winchester when I ploughed it at a good 80MPH into a Mini that was parked sideways in the outside lane at 11PM with no lights on, and the candles-in-jamjars that the Horizon had as headlamps gave me about 1-car-length warning of the impending mess. For good measure, the LOLvo 700-series that I had just overtaken slammed hard into the passenger side of the Horizon and burst the door into the car, right across the passenger seat.

 

Horizons were amazingly strong vehicles: I walked away. Painfully, but nothing broken. I still limp in bad/damp weather some 24 years later.

 

My own first car was a Rover SD1 3.5V8, which had broken down at the petrol station I worked at (co-incidently the same station that I was recovered to off the motorway after the epic crash above.. Winnall Shell station just off the M3/A34 roundabout). The guy who broke down just wanted to scrap it, so I gave him £50 for it and my father towed me home in it. Wazzed a new water pump on it, beat merry shit out of the inside of the rear boot floor where it had been previously hit, hid the crisp-packet-esque mess behind a scrapyard bumper and ran it for a few months before the crippling fuel consumption forced me to sell it. It was never reliable: the fuel tank was rotting from the inside out, so every few hundred miles the fuel line from the tank up to the engine would be solid with rust flakes. The taxi-driver who bought it off me had all manner of issues with blocked filters, but for £150, what did he expect?

 

It's one of the very few cars I've ever sold. Most cars come to me to die. Of the 50+ cars I've owned I've only sold about 3, and this was the only one I sold for more than I paid for it.

[Ghosty]

My first car was my Rover 200:

 

 

It's still going in someone's hands, not sure whose as the previous owner put it up for sale when I put the Volvo up.

The MOT is up in August though, and it's going to need repairs to the rear arch - it was fillered and primered for the MOT IIRC, but it's rotted out around the filler again since then. 

 

I miss that little airy buzzbox, tbh. I'll probably get a late '80s/early '90s Civic at some point to relive the memory. Or a Ballade/Concerto, if one came up.

[smellypoo]

MK4 Escort 1.4 GL, in Silica Gold, with brown bumpers and a very brown interior. The literal motoring equivalent of a turd rolled in glitter. Paid way over the odds for it as I took Dad with me, thinking he knew what he was doing when buying a car and would actually be interested in picking a good one. Turns out he just wanted to go home, so we went to a '2nd hand car dealers' on the Romford Road (notorious for dodgy cars since before I was born) and picked one that 'looked alright'. It really wasn't.

 

After some repairs (new tyres all round, brakes, tracking, back box, a sump drop and the oil pickup cleaned out) it served me well for two years, even limped on with some very shonky repairs after an accident (thanks to the use of a claw hammer, duct tape, cable ties, one new rad hose, a scrappy headlight, indicator and front bumper) to be traded in for a new Fiesta.

 

The dealership gave me £50 for it, I asked out of curiosity where it would go - the salesman pointed over the road to the firestation and said they'd use it for 'jaws of life' practice.

[Amishtat]

Not my first but the first actually capable of propelling itself, the one thing it still did well. DGN978H, a 1970 Cresta deluxe bought in January 1998 from Port Lane garage in Colchester without me realising what a heap it really was.Appeared to have been flatted back with a brick, driver's seat wasn't actually attached to the floor by any other means than gravity and wouldn't select reverse (3-speed on the column) unless you turned it off first. At not quite eighteen, I was blind to most of these faults since it went like hell on my completely illegal trips to the next village and back. Traded against a Triumph Toledo when my stepmother took a now-understandable dislike to looking at the Cresta occupying most of the front garden. It appeared on Ebay in 2008 or 2009 up in Tring looking just the same as when I'd last seen it and for a day or two I did entertain notions of buying it back before remembering the galloping inner wing and bulkhead rot. It was in the pits at the Mildenhall pre-70 in 2009 in Bears colours but didn't race as apparently they couldn't get it to run properly, which made me smile as it always ran beautifully during our short time together. Last seen on ebay as a rolling shell in 2010.

[sam simmons]

N reg Capri 1600xl that i rolled and landed upside down inside a greenhouse,thankfully i was on my own...

[puddlethumper]

 A £40 1959 Mk2 Consul in 1972.

Thrashed it from Guildford to Glasgow.

It didn't like it.

End.

[PiperCub]

My first Mini, 1975/N, 1000, damask red (ie: burgundy), cost £85 in 1983 when I was nearly 17. Fixed it up nicely on a budget of course! Passed my test soon after my 17th, used it and abused it happily for the next year with few problems. Fond memories.

 

Then made the grave error of selling it to my stupid elder sister who proceeded to commence a long career of ruining perfectly good cars, most of which I found & sorted out for her for the next 15 years until I got fed up and left her to her own devices. My old Mini lasted only 20 months or so before being scrapped for reasons she never made clear.

[Matt]

It's not dead, not yet anyway. Current owner seems to be more content spending money modifying it rather than looking after it so I fear that it's days are numbered. Black shit was applied before they bought it. Was a mint 18k mile two owner car when I bought it in 2009. I want it back but have nowhere to put it and it's all the way down in Norfolk now.

 

Then:

1990 Volkswagen Polo Ranger As Purchased by Matt S, on Flickr

 

 

Now:

G573 VNS by Kevin Miller, on Flickr

 

[Tamworthbay]

Towed for scrap after an encounter with a 340 ovlov driven by an utter twat, sad end for a Capri.

[doubleyeller]

 

[Faker]

Unofficially my first car I drove was my dads simca 1100 KiA5533... rust killed it.. and it was only 7 years old! My first proper car of my own was a 1978 mk1 fiesta in signal yellow. Killed by a Chrysler Sunbeam driver who pulled out in front of me, two weeks after I passed my test.

[Ben_O]

My first was a 1989 Citroen AX TRE which I paid £90 for.

 

I spent some time doing various body repairs and got it into grey primer as per photo

 

 

Being at a time when people didn't have camera's on their phone and relied on a disposable camera which made it so you didn't know what you had until you developed it, I don't have any more photos but basically, It was resprayed in it's original silvery/blue colour with a GT5 bodykit, GT interior and GT alloys and I drove it for around 8 months.

 

One day, I was driving like a loon on a country road and managed to flip it over. My elbow went through the glass sunroof and mullered my elbow which was unpleasent.

My mate who was in the car didn't even get a scratch despite the roof caving down on him

 

 

I loved that car so much that it was succeeded by an AX GT and a 994 4 speed facelift.

 

I'd have another

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

First one I owned, was dads spares car, Humber Singer iirc. Was used for bits for his Hunter, then I had years to fix it up for when I would be legal...... some scrote nearby decided to use it as practice for the local fire service. Car, garage and both either side went up.........

 

First on the road in my hands, Cortina Mk4 bought for £80 - first posting, I hit Wroxham hump back bridge way too fast as I missed the 10mph warning sign that was blocked by the lazy fat bunt leaning on it! Major air, Dixie style horns and a dukes style yeeehhhaaaaaaa and the entire front end was no more.........

 

Next one BGT - local farmer pulled out on me, all the way down the side as I ended up halfway up the embankment. He was still plastered, first words..... what're you doing on my road at this time in the morning? That car was no end of trouble.....

[sierraman]

J199VNO, a 91 Sierra LX. Clutch was going on it sold it my mate for £30. Then needless to say the clutch actually went so he scrapped it. I did tell him the clutch was goosed but like I say it was £30.