I’m redefining the meaning of cool, so watch out!
All kidding aside, my kids think that my past has been littered — I mean blessed — with cool cars. In reality, I think that my experience with vehicles I’ve owned has helped me retain a sense of humility, keeping me in my proper place.
If, someday, it turns out that pride is my downfall … well it surely won’t be because of the automobiles I’ve owned. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Any boy growing up in the Midwest in the 1970’s wanted one of four or five cars. At the top of my wish list was a Pontiac Trans Am, black with a T-bar roof and a gold eagle painted on the hood. I had two friends who each had a car fitting this description. Anyway, other cars high up on the wish list included a Chevy Camaro, Ford Mustang, and Chevy Corvette. Any color would have sufficed.
The problem, of course, with a cool car is the price tag. I wasn’t willing to pay the price to have a cool car. I’m still not willing to fork over the big bucks to be cool.
I ended up buying my first car in 1980, at the tail end of my freshman year at the University of Nebraska, I bought a partially rusted out 1975 gold Dodge Dart. For you auto fans out there, yes, that had the Slant Six engine and a manual transmission, three on the floor. It didn’t look cool, but it was actually a fun car to drive.
My sophomore year during spring break, while my friends went south to Florida (presumably to gather fond memories for future writing material), my dad and I had a lot of fun patching up the holes, removing all the rust spots that hadn’t fallen out yet, and painting the car a bright Cornhusker red. Now that was a cool car. It was still a Dodge Dart, but it had become a Red Dodge Dart.
The teeth on the gears of the speedometer cable kept breaking, and I replaced the cables twice with cables I found in junk yards. Thus, the speedometer reading was about 20% off from reality. That made for very excited passengers, who thought we were going much faster than we actually were.
The passenger door (this was a two door vehicle) would occasionally fly open, even when locked, and I almost lost a date once when I turned a sharp corner. That was our last date.
It seems you had a rough time with your cars, but at least they enhanced your memory of yesteryear , right? 
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