My very first car of my own was a 1972 Chevy Nova with a 350 V8 and automatic transmission. I was almost sixteen years old and it was obvious to me that I'd be buying my own car unless I wanted to wait until I was eighteen. After school I had a job at a burger joint and was saving my money for a car.

It sort of sucked because I really could have used a car to get to the job to pay for the car. Anyway, at school I had been selected as the shop foreman of the auto-shop program. I asked the instructor if he had any good leads on a vehicle for me. I asked about a couple of the donated cars we had in the lot. He told me those were all junk but took me to the back corner of the yard and pulled a cover from this old Nova. It had been donated to the school by an old lady who could no longer drive. It had always been garaged and had few miles. Our teacher told me it was the best deal he had. He would sell it to me for $200 down and $50 a week until I had paid the agreed upon $600 price. A very cool bonus was that he let me work on it while I was still paying for it, and since I was the foreman of the auto-shop I could put all the other students to work on it if I bought the parts. We re-did the suspension, rebuilt the carburator, flushed everything, lubed it all up, and tuned it where it was running like new. I wasn't allowed to drive my car because I was not yet sixteen, I also needed to complete a driver's education class at school which wouldn't be completed for several additional months. Lucky for me I was left unattended a lot and drove my car anyway. A teenager can't have a car and not drive it, right?? My older brother needed a car for his new job and begged me to sell it to him on payments. Eventually, I transferred his debt to cover a debt of my own and never really got to have it as my car.