So, how did your first car die?

[purplebargeken]

It was a Triumph........ rust and lack of dosh to fix 'cos 18.

[Aston Martin]

He isn't dead.

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

A 1979 mini 1000 I bought to 'do up' when I was 12. Ended up being squashed in a skip and covered in hardcore because we moved house.

 

My first road going machine was a MK1 polo, cained the arse out of it constantly for a year and then two con rods let go. Shame really.

[Rod/b]

My ADO16 Austin 1300 died at the hands of a bin wagon that reversed into it.

That’s some serious thread resurrection skills right there

[sierraman]

Similar to above I had a Rover 214sli before I passed my test. It ended up being trailered away to be used for students to practice on at Sheffield College. Head gasket had gone needless to say so it probably made a good project for them.

[flat4alfa]

Fiat Mirafiori 2-door BASE

 

Went way too quick and and clouted the sump hard on a kerb.  The bonnet had the impression of the air cleaner.

 

Twat.  That shell would be worth £plenty now

[ProgRocker]

My first car didn't die but the prat who bought it put a dodgy tax disc in the window and got caught by the Law for it (1979 mini 1000). 2nd car got scrapped as the sills needed welding. I didn't realise at the time that in 1986 Ford was using inferior quality steel. Shame as the Escort was low mileage.

[Junkman]

Didnt kill my first car but had to rebuild it after hitting a bus of all things ,

I sold it in 87 where it sat on a drive til last year

 

 

In its hay day on Blackrock sands in 86

 

Its demize , 20 odd years sat outside with a leaky sunroof in N. Wales tends to kill cars

 

 

Interesting how the 80s pic is better than the a lot more current one.

Such is progress.

[Junkman]

Oh, and no car ever died on me unless I deliberately killed it.

[mercrocker]

Timely thread resuscitation....It was 40 years ago this weekend that I withdrew my Post Office savings account and spunked ninety quid on a 1964 Beetle.  Friday night I took it up the yoof club to impress the chix.   Engine grenaded on the way home.   Dad towed it back to the vendor on Monday evening and stopped the cheque.  

 

That was my first motor and the destruction of a ten-year dream to Own A Beetle.  

 

Cars have been disappointing me for four decades, now.....

[AMC Rebel]

That’s some serious thread resurrection skills right there

 

It's the only way to keep a thread from being merged into one of the three two allowed ones these days

[dave21478]

I bought a Mini when I was at university and when I failed/quit I got a full time job as a Halfords monkey. On my way to my first day on the job I was hammering it up the A90 as usual when it overheated and lost power. I didnt want to fuck up my first day on the job so kept my foot in and carried on. It crapped out and I coasted into the forecourt of the old pez station near Portlethen where it cut out and refused to turn over, having seized solid. I had dreams of fitting an MG Metro engine, but that was hopelessly beyond my skill level at the time so it langushed on my sisters driveway and eventually ended up in Persley scrapyard.

[Supernaut]

Liked mainly for the local references!

[Slartibartfast]

I bought a Red Talbot Solara Minx off my girlfriend's dad. I hadn't passed my test yet, so it was on the road outside my grandma's house and I would periodically drive it up and down. Then they moved and it got carted off to the Bridge by the Taronis. I had to pay them for the privilege as I recall.

 

My first PROPER car was a mk1 Focus 1.8 diesel in red. I got it when I passed my test then binned it on an A road, it was wet, I was leaving what I perceived to be a safe gap, but the car in front stopped dead from 80ish due to a crash on the opposite carriageway which had dumped engine and bumper parts onto our carriageway. I slid past him, somehow managed not to hit him and impacted the median. Was VERY lucky and completely uninjured. Must have taken most of the speed off before the crash. However the travel over the grassy gravelly bit snapped the front suspension, and it was written off.

[MorrisItalSLX]

Currently rotting away before my very eyes:

 

 

33% Lacquer Peel, 33% CB Aerial, 33% Mouldy Velour and just a pinch of Fucked.

[captain_70s]

 

Still alive, back when the MOT location thing worked it suggested it'd now been living in Orkney for a few years...

 

I'm actually quite surprised, I had that thing pinned at 90mph on almost every trip I drove, had it on two wheels after clipping a curb at speed, accidentally "Scandanavian Flicked" it around an S shaped bend and had the digital speedo indicating 101mph at one point...

 

The most reliable car I ever owned, the best value for money and the cheapest to maintain. Shame it was so incredibly slow...

[jonny69]

I inserted mine into the back of a parked Citroen Saxo.

[Bobthebeard]

Mine was a Marina. Bought before I passed my driving test and razzed it about sans license as lived out in the sticks. Killed the gearbox doing reverse gear burnouts. It wouldn't spin the wheels in first.

In my defence I was 17 at the time...

[Sloth in a bowl]

C472ATR, Fiat Uno 45. A freebie from my parents, it was rusty as fuck and though the motor was sweet, everything else was knackered. I used it for a year and replaced the water pump, starter motor and throttle cable in that time. Then drove it to the scrapyard for £25.

[Parky]

EMT113V. Mark one Renault 5. Built in 1979, abused throughout its life, and by the time it got to my sympathetic hands in September 1990 the rust was only held on by the filler. Described by the seller as a “****ing piece of shit, a dirty c***, and utter bollocks I thought I might be able to chip a few quid off the £325 asking price. The language from both him and his missus suggested this suggestion was unwelcome. I should have walked but I wanted a car!

 

Ran it for a year despite complete lack of brakes which I traced to incorrectly adjusted rear shoes a week before I sold it on. Lesson one - just because Dad says he did the shoes properly doesn’t necessarily make it so.

 

Went to an illiterate bloke from a local estate - only discovered while leaving him to fill out the V5 while I cleared my tapes out, he came out, shook hands and drove off. Upon checking the docs he hadn’t completed anything other than scribble an X for a signature.

 

While wondering what to do about that during the evening, I was disturbed by two police officers wanting to know why I hadn’t paid for petrol? This happened more than once. Eventually found him in a flat roofed pub where I persuaded him to give me his name and address and I filled in the V5 myself and posted it off.

 

Last seen in his front garden two years after I sold it to him sans wheels

 

Before this I had owned a Ford Anglia estate, a Marina Coupe, a Renault 12, and a Mini but these were scrappers that I had inherited from family. As I couldn’t drive I generally took them apart, realised I couldn’t reassemble them, and scrapped the bits. What a waste, the Anglia was a death trap though and had hooky MOTs going back at least five years. The Renault was good but my dad lent it to my Uncle who never gave it back and scrapped it when it wouldn’t start one day, the Mini was accident damaged but fixable (not by me though), and the Marina had a shagged clutch and no floor. Any one of those would have been worth reasonable coin now!

[andy18s]

My earliest car that expired umder my watch was an early Cavalier Coupe on a P reg....

Bronze paint with that very red Velour interior when bought,it soon got a full Manta 400 kit on it and finished in red

Had a dick in a Jag go into the back of it at a grasstrack meeting which folded the boot floor up

[fordperv]

My 1st car at 13 was an e21 bmw I sold it to a chap and then it never came back on road after its next m.o.t

 

my 1st road legal car that I could drive was a black sierra hatch, bought it as a non runner, I fixed it at the house of the guy who sold it with him watching me do it, I drove it on L plates with my dad in, I did a lot to that car to get it

Right paint and mechanically wise then stupidly sold it when I decided to buy an orion 1.6i ghia, the guy who bought it ran it into the ground and it got fragged

 

Shortly after this sierra my dad got me my 3 door sierra base thats still with me and hasn't died

[danthecapriman]

My first car didn’t die, it was just reborn... twice!

 

As bought in 2001

 

First restoration

 

Second full on restoration

 

[johngarty]

My first motah was also a van. One of these, same colour, hence the avatar.

Bought for £70 with my first wage packet from my night shift stacking job with Safeway.

It had no ignition lock so had to hotwire it everytime (possibly nicked).

No brake lights, had to turn on the sidelights by hand when stopping.

Flinstone style rust holes in the footwell for added ventilation.

But it got me and the first wife from Kent back home to Wirral pretty faultlessly.

Flogged it to a builder for £100 after a few months sterling service. Loved it.

 

 

[AlabamaShrimp]

First off road was a lovely red 1989 mk2 Fiesta 950. It was made of rust with the exhaust and handbrake held up with sting round the sill and then through a giant hole in the floor.

 

After I'd taught myself to drive it was on to the sunny roads of Huddersfield in another 950. 1986 and blue this time. About 3 weeks later I slid on ice and smashed all the passenger side suspension into the engine hitting the curb.

 

Various stuff in between but my first legal car 2001 (there's a pattern here) 950 Fiesta! Beige, mk1, 1983, still got it.

[Captain Furious]

My first car didn't die, at least not by my hand.  It was a 1986 Fiesta 1.1 Popular Plus.  It had had some sort of chequered past, it was registered abroad for the first 2 years of its life so the date of registration on the V5 was 1988 but it was on a D reg.  The rubber mat in the carpet that's usually on the drivers side for the pedals was on the passenger side, and judging by its leisurely performance and incorrect carburettor I think it was actually a 950 and not a 1.1.  It had also had a shoddy respray which upon close inspection was cracked and crazed to hell but from a distance looked great.

 

Nevertheless this didn't stop me adorning it with huge (for a Mk2 Fiesta, 15in) TSW Stealths, a Janspeed Exhaust, lowered suspension etc etc.  I didn't realise until I put it back to standard to sell it that these 'mods' had completely ruined it, back with its original skinny wheels and suspension it drove a million times nicer.

 

Anyway, other than it going through about 4 gearboxes and a severely whining wheel bearing (which I fixed the day before I sold it after suffering it for 18 months) I had 40,000 happy miles out of it and it was in fairly fine fettle when it left my custody, however DVLA records seem to indicate it didn't last long after that.

 

And that is a bit of a trend with my cars, they seem to end up off the road shortly after I sell them.  I'm not sure why because I've never knowingly sold a dodgy one.

[UltraWomble]

[Rod/b]

My first car was a 1983 MG Metro that used to belong to my Nan. This was in 1996. It was great. It *nearly* died once when I went over a small humpback bridge a bit rapidly and landed hard, with the gearbox / sump pan hitting the road. The bonnet received a nice pokey-up lump where the dashpot lid hit it.

 

Fast forward a bit and it was in a kwikfit-esque place for a new back box. Up went the two post lift with accompanying crunching noises, whilst the car stayed put. It would appear that the sills and floor were a tad rusty.

 

I sold it to our handyman at work who was chief mechanic on our vans. He started cutting the rust out and gave up when he saw the extent of the work. He sold it on to some pikey ne’er-do-well who was last seen driving it round with no floors and a sill missing. Presumed dead shortly thereafter.

[pandamonium]

Changed from 4th to 1st and it went pop.

 

1986 VW Polo. C330RRY.

[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.