I do have a picture of the back seat of my first car ('74 Honda Civic) with my younger brother sleeping on it. He was 10 years old.
There are a few close up pictures taken from the passenger seat of me cruising in my '68 442 convertible (2nd, car) with the top down.
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Prince Edward Island
'64 Parisienne CS "barn find" - last on the road in '86 ... Owner Protection Plan booklet, original paint, original near-mint aqua interior, original aqua GM floor mats, original 283, factory posi, and original rust.
I don't have pics of my first few old cars. The very first was a 56 Chevy 210 2 dr wagon, 283 4 spd; followed by a 63 Impala SS 2 dr ht; a 58 Ford Country Sedan wagon; and a 63 Pontiac Grand Prix Southern car I bought in Barrie in 1985. Of these the only picture I have is of the 58 Ford being towed on the day I sold it.
My fifth and best old car was a 65 Pontiac Parisienne convt, white on red, 283, PG, PW. I had it for 9 years, and put 30,000 summer miles on it. My son, then 2 and now 26, is in the picture of the car on the day I sold it to a fellow from Ontario, who drove it home.
Around this same time I also had a 68 Impala Custom Coupe, 307,PG,AC and tint. It was butternut yellow from Alabama when I got it in Barrie in 1988. I changed the color twice, first to dark turquoise and then to emerald turquoise before selling it in 1997.
At this time I also had the white 69 Biscayne in the group photo, 327,PG,AC & tint, which came from Arizona via Ontario and Nova Scotia.
The white 63 Impala SS came from California via Barrie in 1993. It is a 327 car, but I also bought another 409 parts car with it. I did a lot of work on it up to 2000, the year my youngest child was born. I never touched it after that and last summer realized I never would so I turned it over to my brother, who is working on it with a view to putting it on the road this summer. After we replaced the gas tank and cleaned the points, it runs like a top, and is pretty much rust free. In fact, until we removed it from 18 years of storage, I had forgotten how good it was and how good the work I had done on it was all those years ago. I will be glad to see it back on the road.
The final picture is the 69 Caprice 4 dr HT, 396,T400, AC, Hideaway car I bought in 1997 when I only had it and the 63 Impala. It came from North Carolina and was my summer driver old car until 2014. I swapped like for like, the rebuilt 396 powertrain in this car for the 350/300 powertain in my 69 Kingswood wagon before I parted with the Caprice. My other brother now has it.
Of course none of these include the many old parts cars and daily driver old cars I had back in the day when they were current models. At last count I had 80 cars and trucks since I turned 17.
-- Edited by gparis7 on Tuesday 31st of March 2020 08:04:42 PM
Appreciate that. It was a great car, totally rust free and only 36,000 miles on it when I got it. I had it painted but it required no interior work, as it had a completely pristine original red interior. I sold it mostly because it wasn't practical at the time with my young family, and in all the years I've owned cars it was the only one that sold for a lot more than I paid for it. At that stage I needed the money so it had to go.
Forgot to mention that I also got my first 2 door post car in the mid eighties when I still had the 56 Chev. It was a Canadian built Bel Air with a 283 PG 12 bolt and tinted glass. It had been rolled over but still ran and drove and I put a couple of summers on it. But eventually I parted it out. I still have anything on it that was any good including the 12 bolt, some body and interior panels, etc. I'm keeping them for spares in the hope that someday I'll get another.
-- Edited by gparis7 on Thursday 2nd of April 2020 11:18:36 AM
Mine would be a classic now, but was only 7 years old when I got it in 1970....My 1st car.
In later years I have had these.
Had a neighbor who had the twin of the Falcon, it was a prize he won from Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
-- Edited by DonSSDD on Thursday 2nd of April 2020 12:00:44 PM
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
My buddy has two 4 cylinder 4 stroke outboards, made from new Crossley blocks, back in the 60's or so? They make those Maybach's too?
When I was 12, we lived on an old farm property, my dad brought home a 56 VW, paid $50 for it. Left it for me and my 2 brothers to drive around on the farm and the neighbor's farm. Starter went after a few months, had to give it a shove to get it going all the time. Holes in the floor where the battery used to float around, every now and then the + post connected with a seat spring and it would start burning. Learned how to siphon gas with this car. It had those hubcap clips like the old Chevies had, knocked those off and put the rims on inside out, rubbed the fenders now and then but looked cool.
No pics of that one, but it looked like this one but a rusty rat rod pale blue.
-- Edited by DonSSDD on Thursday 2nd of April 2020 12:18:22 PM
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
My first vintage car was a 1959 El Camino. I'd never had the space or money for an old car and after my Dad died in 2000, I thought about getting one, decided to maybe get an old pickup, then thought about an El Camino after seeing a 60 2 door post Chevy, loved the fins. In 2002, I had my brother in Seattle go see one for sale, it was a rust bucket. Found another one near Chicago, had an inspection guy look at it, it was a rust bucket too.
I had never seen one in person until I went to the Debert car show in June 2002, saw the one I bought there. It wasn't for sale but I left my name and number with the owner, he called me in August and I bought it. After looking all over for one, I found it in Halifax.
I told my wife I bought a Boat, we lived on the ocean. Wasn't really a lie, it was a big old boat. I drove it home and the first time she and my daughter saw the boat, was me driving it in the driveway. They both just about wet themselves laughing AT my boat.
It was a solid old car, paint was tired, no rust................ Interior was non stock but looked good, 283 was a 2 stroke, burned a liter of oil to 50 liters of gas, it also had an ironglide that leaked a bunch, so did the stock PS off the generator. If you hammered it, the cloud of smoke was a big as the car. It also had a straight dual exhaust out the back, with no mufflers, just 2 resonators up front. My neighbors said it was really noisy.
I had it painted, put 3 pedals and a Saginaw 4 speed in it, rebuilt the 283, rebuilt the PS. I had the 409 in it for 1 year, blew up the open rear end with it. No pics from when I got it but this is the original colour.
This shows how solid she was, these are the factory rubber drains by the back window, plus the smuggler's box the El Camino's had.
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
I saved the original dual exhaust from the 59, its on the 409, but with mufflers. Plus I kept the 12 volt battery I bought in 2002.
-- Edited by DonSSDD on Thursday 2nd of April 2020 12:49:19 PM
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
Once again I have to say that you guys were lucky to have lived in civilized parts of the country that actually had nice cars.
We usually got castoffs of pretty utilitarian vehicles. At least the laws around here were pretty slack and there really wasn't a lot of traffic so you could legally drive a rusty piece of crap until it actually did fall apart. Not sure that's a good thing really but that, along with what was called "occasional driver" insurance allowed you to own a car (actually in your fathers name-if he'd go along with it) and for a very small fee actually get the precious pink card. Technically you were supposed to be only driving it about 1/10 of the time so every once in a while you'd get your dad to take it out just so people saw him in it. It was also a way for the old guy to check to see just how dangerous the car was. This kind of loosy-goosy arrangement made it possible for quite a few 16 year old kids to drive their own cars to school, which was the ultimate status symbol.
Some of the wealthier families actually did buy their sons fairly nice cars to drive, such as my farmer friend who had a quite fast 1974 Duster 360 with a 4 speed. We used to call them "Daddy bought super cars" but still we rode in them whenever we could.
One of my neighbourhood friends was given his first car by his grandparents and it had to be one of the most unique cars I have ever seen, even to this day. Of course we immediately and enthusiastically hacked it into a bush buggy. Brings tears to my eyes just thinking bout it now.
It was a late 1950's Panhard, if you've ever heard of those. This was a quirky little French car with some really cool engineering features such as front wheel drive, a horizontally opposed 2 cylinder with a 4 speed shifter on the column.
There is a fairly good article on Wikipedia on these if you want to know more. See link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panhard_Dyna_Z
Once we had cut the body off behind the front seat (with an axe), taken off the front hood and stuck a couple of tall 15 inch grips on the front wheels (which luckily were that diameter) he had a massively agile off road buggy that left our little Mayrath way back in the dust, or rather the muskeg.
The technique was, if you could get the front end of the vehicle over the top of whatever you wanted to climb, it would drag the remainder of the light body the rest of the way and away you went.
We also lived next to a large lake (still do) so in then winter we'd bomb away out there throwing the car around with total abandon knowing even if you got really out of shape nothing too bad would happen. Really a good way to learn to drive with both the front drive Panhard and the rear drive Mayrath in terms of learning to handle skids with a certain aplomb.
Ran the wheels off that poor thing for a year or too until the night we rolled it. I recall my buddy was feeling more than a bit aggressive that night as we went tooling off into a large open field with him driving, me in the co-pilot seat, my brother and his dog in the back seat.
For some reason on a reverse slope in the field he decided to crank it all the way to the right while he said merrily , "Watch this!" What he had forgotten was that dirt has a lot more traction than ice so at about 30 miles per hour the wheel caught and over we went onto the roof. I'm not sure if we rolled just once but we ended up upside down. I still remember the loud "OOF" his dog made as he hit the ground.
It was all quiet for a moment. I was all tangled up in the seat along with him but my brother had just gotten dumped out unto the ground along with the dog so he was up right away trying to see if we were all right. I had my glasses hanging from one ear so I couldn't actually see much but once we got unentangled we got out of there and surveyed the damage.
The partial cab had bent over to one side but had not caved in too badly, the windshield had popped out, the hokey headlights we had mounted were bent at odd angles and the battery had fallen out but everything else and everybody seemed to be ok,even the dog.
We shrugged as teenagers do, pushed it back over, put the battery back in, threw the windshield in the trunk and started right back up.
Headlights pointing to the sky in two different directions, away we went for another rip!
However if was never quite the same machine after that and maybe it was the arrival of dirt bikes in the neighbourhood or real cars we could actually drive on the road but I think it pretty much just sat after that.
What a waste of a really neat little car that we just didn't appreciate at the time.
I hate to say it but that wasn't the only car we trashed. The list includes; 1957 Chevy 2 door hardtop Belair (too rusty by the standard of the day,) a solid 1955 chevy four door (because it was a four door) and a rust free 1966 Grande Parisienne 2 door with 327 and four speed (ya know for the drivetrain.) OY!
-- Edited by 66 Grande guy on Thursday 2nd of April 2020 01:56:53 PM
Once again I have to say that you guys were lucky to have lived in civilized parts of the country that actually had nice cars.
We usually got castoffs of pretty utilitarian vehicles.
and a rust free 1966 Grande Parisienne 2 door with 327 and four speed (ya know for the drivetrain.) OY!
Says the guy who bought one of what, 25 factory air 1966 Pontiacs, AND it is a 396 car? Yeah, pretty utilitarian Ken......
Oh, and a big thanks for reminding me once again that you destroyed a 327 4 speed 66 as well. Worst I ever did was part out about a dozen or so big block B bodies. NONE of them 4 speed cars...
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
When I was 17 and knew nothing, I passed on a 63 Strato Chief 2 dr sedan because it had a little rust in the lower rear quarters. I thought at the time that it was too much for me to repair. It was an ex-military base car and was dirt cheap. I always kicked my self for letting that one go.
Before the day of self serve......I had to show many an attendant where the cap was. 
