This was my first car, purchased from my father while I was in high school.  Needless to say, it was unique among my high school's cars.  My dad had wrecked the car in an accident with a motorcycle and let me have it under the condition that I repair the car, bringing it back to original condition.  This land yacht ran like a bat of of hell, and had about the most luxurious ride you could imagine.  While it was, and is, an odd looking vehicle, I wish I still had it - it was probably one of the best cars I have ever owned.

My second car, got it while I was still in high school (bringing me, more or less, into the norm with my peers...).  I got this car, again from my dad, when he talked me into giving him the '63 Imperial so he could trade it for a '67 Imperial he had found.  At the time, I thought it was a good idea, as the car was more mainstream and was newer - I was, basically, an idiot.  The car wasn't nearly as nice as the Imperial and blew up one day when I started it after school (no, I wasn't racing it - it blew three pistons all at once, puncturing one of the cylinders in the process).  Can't say I really miss this thing - I'd have to rate it near the bottom of all the cars I've had.

The main thing I remember about this car was lifting it up at our gas station on the hoist with the door still open!  Major OOPS!  The door hit the tire rack and was "customized" instantly.  I was able to restore it back to near-original condition, though.  These cars looked a lot smaller than they were, due to the styling, but that was the apparent intent of the stylists, as smaller cars were becoming more in vogue.  Not a bad car, but the Imperial was worlds better all around...

A rather pedestrian car, but a good one - it always started and ran like a top.  Chrysler engines were always great, and while the 318 certainly wasn't a hot-rod engine, it was a dependable workhorse.  This car was in pretty good shape and stayed so for "the duration".

Obviously, that ain't the car that I had, as mine was fire engine red (or, as popularly called. "Ticket Me Red").  When I bought this car it was damn near perfect, with one cigarette burn in the front sear being the only damage I can recall.  The paint looked as though it had just come out of the factory - I guess the only thing you could say that was wrong with it was that it was a 4-door sedan.  Of course, I took care of that - rolled the poor thing in a ditch out in the middle of nowhere - the only thing that wasn't damaged after the accident was the deck lid.  It even caught fire, although I got that put out.  Me?  I split my scalp open, requiring some stitches, but I was lucky I didn't do worse...  This was a nice little car.

Paid a whopping $50 for my Custom, which was sitting in a field on an old farm.  It had no interior to speak of, there was cancer on the body, and it hadn't been driven, or even started in over five years.  I bought a battery, plugs, wires, points, etc., then dropped them in and put some gas in the tank and it started right up!  Ran like a sewing machine...  Drove it for a while, then, I'm ashamed to say, left it to rot after I went in the Air Force - I actually have no idea what ever happened to this car, although it probably just rusted away.  My total investment in this car, excluding gas, was probably about $150, so I guess I got my money's worth (truth be told, it was probably too far gone to restore anyway - but maybe I'm just trying to rationalize my abandonment of the poor thing....).

My Starsky and Hutch-mobile (which is what everybody called it, although the car in the series was a '73, with those big, ugly bumpers that thoroughly ruined the look of the car).  I bought this while I was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi, 'cause I needed a car.  Little was I to know that I was going to be sent off to Japan!  Drove it for a few months, went overseas, then came back and drove it until I traded it for another car.  The guy I traded it to never bothered paying it off, so I got nailed for it - I then paid it off and picked it up at a salvage yard!  The idiot had torched it for some reason or another.  I tried fixing it back up for a while, lost interest and junked it.  Damned thing was a dog - ran like a slug (which was embarrassing, considering the way it looked...), and was extremely dangerous at speed.  Had it up to about 85MPH once, and the front end started lifting off the ground.  Not one of my favorites...

I'm still looking for a picture of this car - it actually looked pretty good!  Purchased in the suburbs of Tokyo, I don't think these were ever offered in the states, although they might have sold pretty well - the 2-door wagon looked good for a little car.  I paid $97US for it, and while it was gutless, it got good mileage and was relatively comfortable for my 6'2" frame.  Should have brought it home with me - in spite of the low price, the car was cherry... 

Really sexy looking car for a land yacht, this was my second Imperial - ran really well until the carburetor acted up, so I rebuilt it...unfortunately, I forgot to replace the spacer before I took it for a test drive.  Have you ever driven a two-and-a-half ton vehicle through a downtown area at 70MPH?  I did - when I put the pedal to the floor to test the kick-down, the throttle jammed against the manifold - OOPS!  Obviously, I didn't get killed, nor did I kill anybody else or damage the car; I just shut it off, coasted to a stop, unjammed the linkage and gingerly drove back home and installed the spacer...live and learn.  Nice car, although not one of my favorite Imperials.

I'll get a picture of the real thing up eventually...

Another nice looking car with no guts.  Transmission went out and I had it rebuilt for about $300, but that's about the only real problem I ever had with it...

The guy I bought this from closed up shop and disappeared before I had fully paid him off, with me owing around $300.  He showed up one day at my college while I was in class and towed the car off for non-payment - no notice or anything.  The police didn't care and backed him up; to this day I still consider it Grand Theft Auto, but I was just a college guy and he was a "businessman", so I wound up getting screwed.  I was never reimbursed for the difference of what I owed and what he sold it for, which is also illegal.  Oh, well...

Great looking car (at the time) that couldn't get out of it's own way.  The shifter also had a rather annoying habit of getting stuck between gears, which nearly cost me and a couple of friends our butts.  I was, uh, yeah, racing one night and had just gotten destroyed by a '68 Torino - I went to turn around with a three-point turn when, in the middle of the road, the shifter stuck.  Unfortunately, another race was already underway and both cars were rapidly approaching with me stuck in the road.  I got hit and we were all killed...OK, actually, I managed to get it in gear and out of the way with maybe a second to spare.  I don't miss this car...although the stereo sounded great with that fastback design!

Honestly, I never drove this much.  I got it for next to nothing and it was worth every penny...it was in pretty ratty shape and needed a lot of work.  A nice looking car, although not as nice, in my opinion, as the debut year '67.  I wound up giving the car away - wonder what it would be worth today...nah, I would have needed to put a bunch of bucks into it to make it worth anything...

What a workhorse!  I drove this thing all over the place, putting tons of miles on it - and it never gave me any real problems until it just plain wore out.  Amazingly, it didn't rattle or squeak, or make any of the other noises normally attributed to station wagons.  Plus, it wasn't a bad looking car, either.  Unfortunately, I hove no pictures of it, and old station wagon pictures are hard to come by...

EEEK!  What an ugly thing this was!  I bought it for about $500 and hardly ever drove it, since I wound up not being able to get a clear title for it.  I wound up suing the former owner in small claims court to get my money back and actually won!  It would have been perfect for what I needed, but the poor thing never got the chance.

I actually think this was one of the more regal-looking of the Imperials, but it was also one of the last of the Imperial land yachts.  The gold color was very attractive, and the interior was unbelievably plush.  It also got terrible gas mileage, but who cares?  This car had every conceivable option on it, rode like a dream, and actually ran pretty well for a car its size.  I really like this one, but it started wearing out prematurely, starting with the upholstery, which was a very nice velour corduroy.  Once it started getting a bit past its prime, I took the front clip off of it and installed it on my...

...new, blue New Yorker Brougham.  This was another car that I rescued from the junk heap.  A friend owned it and had a rather severe accident in it, which basically destroyed the entire front end.  After getting the frame straightened, I put the Imperial's front clip on.  While the front ends were slightly different in styling, they meshed well enough.  The New Yorker had a beautiful blue leather interior that was in much better shape than the Imperial's, and it was a couple of years newer.  I had this for a couple of years, then, when I couldn't afford its 5MPG anymore, I traded it in on...

...a new Turismo.  Talk about culture shock!  This was my first new car, but that's about all it had going for it.  Actually, this was a good little car (emphasis on little!).  The tiny Peugeot engine, while anemic, got great mileage, which was what I needed for a commuter car (no, that's not it at left - mine wasn't all gussied up like that...).  I took a long trip in this once and actually averaged about 50MPG.  No air, no power, no nothing.  This one got wrecked when a drunk hit me in an intersection after he had run a red light - it was 7:00 a.m. and I was on my way to work!  The guy got arrested at the scene when the cop found a knife on him; I guess it could have been worse, huh?  After getting the car repaired, I traded it for a...

...good, little car - larger than the Turismo.  This one was a top-of-the-line Sundance (if there was such a thing...).  Actually had air and power stuff!  This car, even though it had a little engine, ran pretty darn well.  Unfortunately, I wound up having to replace the motor after it suddenly dropped all its oil out n the middle of nowhere (still don't know how or where it went...).  All in all, not a bad car for an econobox.

This little car was my wife's first - I taught her how to drive using it.  Not much to look at, and the Volkswagen engine was no drag racer, but she fell in love with it.  It was dependable and got her where she wanted to go.  After driving it into the ground, we wound up replacing it with a...

...which she liked because it was basically a newer version of her first car.  This was actually a lot better car than the Horizon, with the much better Chrysler 2.2L instead of that little VW engine.  She drove this for quite a while, until I got my next car, at which time she took possession of the '88 Sundance.

Got a great deal on this, as it was a company car from where my wife works.  It was rather plain, though, with very little chrome for a "full-size" car (any of my Imperials would dwarf these things...).  It did have a lot of goodies, though, as all of these came standard with all the power junk you can think of.  Wound up having to rebuild the tranny, though, which wasn't cheap, then all the cute little warning lights started coming on - Check Engine, Air Bag, etc.  Nobody was able to figure out why all these things started lighting up the interior of the car (although several told me to just unplug them!??!).  Got my money's worth though, selling it and buying a...

...which was, again, a company car.  This is what I'm currently driving, and it's a lot nicer than the '92 was.  I've got my fingers crossed that Ford figured out how to keep all the things that went wrong with the previous Crown Vic from happening.  To be honest, I wouldn't have bought another, but the price was just too good to pass up.  Still, this car is normally only driven by cops (which a lot of people think I am when I drive it - which can, itself, be fun...) or by retirees.  Hey, it works!

This is the car I bought to replace the '88 my wife had been driving (and that we had owned for 11 years).  She doesn't seem to like it as much, although I think it runs much better.  Unfortunately, the paint is coming off in large chucks and flakes from the hood and deck, plus the roof is starting too.  This seems to have been a problem with these, and I'll just take it in a get it painted once it warms up outside.  I still think these are good little cars...