I was going to have some uber witty title for my topic but im kinda sleepy and cant be bothered.

Seeing as I (hopefully) will be getting a car soon with biblically little money i wondered what first cars you guys got .

My first car was a Fiat 127...  It cost me £125 with 3 months tax and MOT and £38 to insure

1976 Chrysler Galant looked a lot like this one ... here

Clearly this bloke has spent a few bob on his.

Oh, you're bringing back bitter-sweet memories for me with this topic Happy.

My first love... ummm... I mean car was a '90 Honda Concerto.

Special Edition n all. Great for helping people move, fitting in lots of luggage, and going off road

Seats were comfy enough for a good night's rest too!

Ok you asked for it.......My first car was a 1927 Model T Ford utility. (pickup)

I payed  £20 for it (in 1956) as it had a buggered diff and had been sitting in a farmers hay shed for about 15 years.
We towed it home (about 15 miles) and I had some new thrust washers machined for the diff, then I put a battery and some petrol in it and after a few turns of the crank handle it burst into life.     I was the laughing stock of the town at the time, with my old bomb.  (wish I had it now).

It looked very similar to this, except that mine had wire spoked wheels..

This is a view of the controls..... (pic shows LH drive)... The pedal on the left is your gear pedal,,,,Pressed right in for low gear and right out for top gear (only two gears) neutral is with the pedal in the half way position. When the hand brake lever is pulled on, the gear pedal is pulled intp the neutral position... The centre pedal is the reverse pedal. to get reverse you hold the left (gear) pedal in the neutral position and press the centre pedal in.....  The right hand pedal is the foot brake, which works through the gearbox, but the hand brake worked through the rear brake drums. (only rear wheel brakes on the Model T).........

You're probably wondering where the accelerator pedal is?? well there isn't one!    There was a hand throttle lever on the RH of the steering wheel and a spark advance/retard lever on the LH side.  This may seem difficult to drive, but it really wasn't once you got used to it..

This is what the engine looked like....

The big box on the top of the engine contained the four ignition coils. (one for each cylinder)

The four induction coils each had their own (electro magnetic) buzzers (to make/break the current) and were enclosed in wooden dovetailed jointed boxes, which were then placed inside the larger metal box that you can see in the pic.   There was no high voltage distributor as such, but the buzzers on the coils were earthed out (ign timing) via a commutator on the front of the camshaft........

I hope I haven't bored anyone. (feel free to ask questions)

OH MY!!!

How cool is that!!!

Hands down the coolest first car we have thus far

It brought back memories when I found those old pics.. I was only 16 at the time. (and never been kissed)

Hope you can understand my descriptions, what seems clear to me may not be so for others.

heheh now that you mention it.... I don't quite get how the pedals work... but it's probably due to a lack of imagination on my part, and not your description.

The whole thing is such a foreign concept!

Keep in mind that there's no clutch per se.

The gearbox has epicyclic gears and by depressing the pedals, you tighten a band (covered with brake friction material) around the outer drum of a gear set and by doing so, you direct the drive through the planetry gears (and sun wheels) to the gearbox output shaft and tailshaft.

It's the same principle that is employed in most modern day automatic transmissions, except there is no torque convertor or front pump to provide the energy to the bands/clutches etc, and you use foot pressure instead.    It is a constant mesh gear system, which (in a more sophisticated form) is used in F1 transmissions....

If you dont understand, I will try again....

I don't understand... but don't try again....

I feel  like i should save you the effort

egad! My mum has a concerto!

Ok deezee, it's hard to describe/understand without actually seeing the gear train.

If you have ever seen the planetary gears of a differential, you would have an idea of what epicyclic gears are.

Ok u just said a bunch of stuff I dont know/understand/comprehend xD . Im way off my dream car ...well except for the license part lol.

We all gotta start somewhere, Happy.

And that wasn't my dream car either, I got it because £20 was all the money I had..

Lucky! I have to a-steal mine

Basically Ive got to get from here:

to here:

Id rather not leave the 70's

Stick with the Fiat, it has better looking passengers. (They are passengers aren't they)?

I very nearly owned a Jensen Interceptor once and if I could find a decent one now (for the right price of course) I'd buy one.  I have an Audi A6 Quattro V6 Diesel and it is bland, boring and well, bland.

(Is the bloke in the picture having a piss?)

Well spotted! Well its a wedding car so i guess they have to keep up some levels of presteige!

Only problem with an interceptor is the 3mpg the engine consumes :S .

Happy, your mom has a Concerto!! EEEK!

Is it the special edition one with 'wooden' panels inside?

Mr Dent, you have an A6? Which one? The one with the sexy eyes, or one model older?

Hmmm.... never thought of you as the A6 type...

Actually, now that I think back, I think you might have mentioned it before

What happened to the Saab, Arfur?

My A6 is the version previous to the funny eyes model.  I have it because it was a good price and a diesel (albeit a 250HP V6 or something like that).  The SAAB was getting too high on the mileage and at 20MPG with a 12,000 mile service it was hurting a bit to keep hold of.  Having said that the Audi isn't much better - 35MPG but with the cost of diesel these days...

I actually test drove a Prius a couple of weeks ago.  For £20K you get a brand new car with heaps of toys and the running costs are (compared with what I have now) as near to zero as not to matter.  It does have a million or so drawbacks though.  In particular the steering.  When throwing it round a corner the only feedback is the changing view in the windscreen.  Then there's the acceleration.  0 to 60 in 14 or so seconds (which is less than a modern Landrover but in defence of the Landrover, from about 40mph the aerodynamics start to kick-in) and it sounds like one of those old DAF Variomatics (that's because it has variomatic gearbox).  It is dangerous to pedestrians when driving at 30MPH because you can't hear the electric motors..... and so on until I come to the last drawback - it looks like a sack of shit.

modern Landrover

LOL. Yes. I nearly missed the distinction. The less modern ones do 0 to 60 in the same day.

One of my off road mates has kept his first car for 18 years and counting ... a 76 Nissan Patrol fitted with with a 350 chev V8 in front of its original 3 speed box. It is the most unbreakable things I've ever seen plus it goes hammer and tongs up steep brown trouser ascents. Economy wise it gets about 3 gpm.

Ah, the old G60 Patrol......They were pretty much unbreakable. (apart from the clutch, that is).

You soon learn to double de-clutch to get them into 1st gear. (a-la the early Holden's)

Dek:

Same car, different badge Hers has plastic panels though instead of wood and i think that was the luxury model xD.

Yep Andro ... the G60. I had one briefly. It was parked at the parents place at rainbow beach. Dad used it as his fishing vehicle. 4 litre 6 cylinder petrol engine for memory. Brakes like a land rover. Rust from top to tail. Otherwise more or less a small tank.

Happy - hehehe yeah, mine was the special edition ie the 'luxury' one too... it had air conditioning and power windows!! LOL!