Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Nobody Asked Me

The current rage on the intarweb blogs is the "What was your first car?" meme.

Well, nobody asked me, but I'll answer anyway. I've done this post before, but here it is again:

My first car at age 16 was my dad's hand-me-down. He'd bought it for something like $700 in 1974, put another couple-hundred in parts into it so it would run, and drove it until 1978 when he went down to the Ford dealership and placed an order for his very first brand-new automobile, an F-150 pickup truck.

That was the year I turned 16. Our insurance agent told him, "Don, you have a new driver in the house. The insurance company sees 'new driver' and 'new vehicle' and they put two-and-two together and come up with a 60% increase in your insurance premium. Put the old car in your son's name and insure it for the minimum you can." So he did. Which is how I, out of three children, was the only one who got a car from my parents.

Pissed my brother off.

But the car in question was no particular prize. It was a 1969 Simca 1118:


Only mine didn't look that good. It was originally silver, but the sun had faded that right through to the gray primer underneath. The interior was sun-rotted so the front seatbacks got reupholstered with T-shirts stretched over them. I got some scrap carpet from a friend - brown shag, no less - and carpeted the floor with that. Door panels, too. No radio, so my dad had mounted a 12V-powered AM-FM under the dash and wired it into the harness.

Rear-engine, rear-wheel drive, 1118cc, water-cooled, 56Hp. Zero-to-sixty? Take a lunch and eat it when you get there.

But it was a car, and it took me anywhere I wanted to go.

I always wondered what that car would be like with an engine transplant out of a Honda CBX.

1 comment:

Mark Horning said...

79 Mustang with the incredibly underpowered 2.8 Liter V-6 and the worst carburator ever designed by man, the unlamented Ford Variable Ventouri.

Late 70's Ford yellow. Bought it from my cousin for $2000. My mom warped the heads jump starting her car one morning. Eventually I sold it back for $1000 and a shotgun, and he still owes me the shotgun.

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