How old were you when you got your first car?

[PHLBOS]

I was 16-1/2  when I bought my first car (a '69 Ford LTD sedan) in May of 1982 for $300 shortly after I took (& passed) my driver's test in my mother's '77 LTD II 4-door. 

Not mine (the body color of mine was gold) but one like it:


However, my car (the '69 LTD) wouldn't be officially registered to drive out on the roads until that October (when I turned 17).

[triplemultiplex]

16 - Subaru Legacy wagon - First car that I drove with any regularity–my dad's winter car that became "mine"  over the summer. When anyone asks about first car experiences, this is the vehicle that comes to my mind.

My man.
Same here.  The family upgraded one of the cars and the old 1988 Subaru Legacy wagon became "mine".  When my brother turned 16 the next year, it became "ours".  Then it died.
Interesting vehicle because it had push-button four-wheel drive situated in the manual transmission stick, thus giving it a vague resemblance to a joystick for a video game.

[kphoger]

17 years old, senior in high school.

1995 Toyota Corolla, sold to us by my sister.  Actually, my parents owned the car, but I took it with me to college.  Then I let a friend borrow it to drive to Wisconsin, and he wrecked it, never saw it again.  I lived the next 6½ years without a car (at which I point I married into one), except for a brief period when I bought a 1987 Corolla hatchback from a friend for $50.  I couldn't afford to repair that car enough to pass the next smoke test, so I sold it shortly thereafter.

[cjk374]

18. I bought a 1980 Chevy Citation at a church garage sale for $400. After 2 years and almost 70K miles, I was rear ended and the car totaled. The insurance company paid me $950 for the car.

[kphoger]

19. Freshmen couldn't have cars on campus anyway, so it would have been pointless before that.

When I went to college, there wasn't enough parking for freshmen to have cars either.  However, there was a lottery system by which you could explain why you needed to have a car, and a certain number of entering freshmen were allowed to bring a car.  So I wrote that my hometown was 800 miles away, 200 miles from the nearest major airport, 50 miles from the nearest train station, and 30 miles from the nearest bus stop, so I needed a car in order to visit family.  It worked, and I got to bring a car.  Then, two months later, my friend totaled it.  I never did even get to drive it back home to visit family, but rather used Amtrak instead; my parents would leave one of their cars at the station with the key under the tire (scheduled arrival time was between 3 and 4 AM).

[cl94]

Very few colleges allow freshmen to have cars on campus. Those that do are generally new suburban campuses with sprawling parking lots. SUNY Buffalo (my alma mater for undergrad) is one of the few that allows freshmen to bring cars, as long as they stay in the dorm lots. Permits are free for students and very cheap for staff. In fact, UB is one of the few schools that has any significant amount of completely unrestricted parking (there's a free, no permit lot on the south side of campus if you're willing to take a shuttle or walk 10 minutes). RPI, on the other hand, does not allow freshmen to have cars and parking is very limited. In fact, many upperclassmen don't even have cars because a permit is $135/year for students and staff (and higher if you want a prime location). I do shell out $135/year for a permit.

[corco]

Maybe in New York - out here I can't name a school that doesn't let freshmen have cars.

For a semester, while I lived in the dorms at Puget Sound, I actually had two cars after I got my Jeep Liberty while I still had the Colt. This was fall '08 when gas was $4/gallon, so while i was happy to have inherited the Jeep after my uncle died I still wanted the Colt. Puget Sound didn't charge for either parking permit, which was great. When they issued the second permit their assumption was that I wouldn't have both cars on campus simultaneously, but they had no way to track that.

It was great when people would ask to borrow my car - they'd think they were getting the 2002 Jeep (because that's what I'd drive people around in) and then get very confused when I confirmed they could drive a stick and gave them the keys to a beater 1990 Dodge.

[Beltway]

18 - my mother sold me her 3 year old Volkswagen Beetle.

A Volkswagen Beetle!  Wow were you fortunate.  Because my answer is:
19 - my mother sold me her 2 year old AMC Spirit.

There were millions of Volkswagen Beetles on the road back then, no big deal, and the model got a substantial of ribbing and teasing from many people.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed it for the high gas mileage it got, and had it from about 50,000 miles to 205,000 miles before trading.  Popular model.

[HazMatt]

Appalachian State allowed freshman parking, but only at the lot 2 miles away from campus.  I used to make a few bucks transporting people after the buses stopped.

Parking is very limited at a lot of campuses.  Freshmen already have to live on campus in most cases, so it makes sense to prioritize upperclassmen.  It just sucks when you're a freshman.

[briantroutman]

A Volkswagen Beetle!

There were millions of Volkswagen Beetles on the road back then, no big deal...

I'll venture a guess that for people born roughly 1945-1960, the Volkswagen Beetle may have been the single most common make/model of first car. American makes were probably more numerous in absolute terms but divided between models (Corvairs vs. Novas vs. Biscaynes... Falcons vs. Fairlanes vs. Galaxies...)

Forbidden from driving during his high school years, my father got his first car during his USAF service in Okinawa in 1968: a 1956 Volkswagen–in what must have been the most deluxe export trim that VW offered. It had a large canvas sunroof that spanned almost the entire passenger compartment. And the pre-'58 oval rear window, of course. Of all the cars he ever owned, this is one I wish he would have kept (so that I could eventually inherit it).

That's not my dad, by the way–just someone he knew in Okinawa and now can't remember.

[cpzilliacus]

Maybe in New York - out here I can't name a school that doesn't let freshmen have cars.

University of Maryland at College Park forbids freshman and sophomores that live on-campus from having cars.  Been the rule for many years (but remember that this is a large suburban campus, very unlike many large state universities.

Juniors, seniors and graduate students may have cars.

[gonealookin]

18 - my mother sold me her 3 year old Volkswagen Beetle.

A Volkswagen Beetle!  Wow were you fortunate.  Because my answer is:
19 - my mother sold me her 2 year old AMC Spirit.

There were millions of Volkswagen Beetles on the road back then, no big deal, and the model got a substantial of ribbing and teasing from many people.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed it for the high gas mileage it got, and had it from about 50,000 miles to 205,000 miles before trading.  Popular model.

I'm making fun of the AMC Spirit, which was the successor model to the Gremlin.  "My mother sold it to me" is generous; more like "my mother hated it so she dumped it on me and took some of my earned money in the process".  It was a 4-cylinder automatic, woefully underpowered and just an all-around POS.  It got me through the rest of my college years and my first 1-1/2 years or so of fulltime work, but at about 80K miles I realized my employer expected me to be on time rather than calling in from the shop saying I'd have to take the bus the rest of the way to work, and at age 24 I had enough money to replace it with a Honda Civic CRX which was an enormous improvement.

[slorydn1]

16-Was the primary driver of the 74 VW Microbus that was technically my moms. When my dad decided to give that to my oldest brother who was married but had a 3rd child on the way (so a van was needed to move all the kids around) I inherited the primary usership of my mom's 78 Ford Granada.

18-Bought my first car, a used Plymouth Sapporo which my girlfriend preceeded to wreck just 3 days later while I was teaching her how to drive a manual transmission car. My dad helped me get the replacement, a 1980 Dodge Omni O24 a few days later. I was supposed to have to pay him back, but my mom felt bad for my situation and ended up just telling dad that I made the payments. Many,many years later long after I was married and had kids of my own I gave my parents a $2500 gift to make up for it. My mom figured that out almost instantly, my dad never could grasp why my cheap self all of a sudden became generous for a moment, lol.

[allniter89]

15. 1961 Ford Falcon. My dad guided me thru buying and working on it until it was drivable. 

17yo. My grandfather "sold" me his 64 Falcon for my 17th birthday. The selling dialog went something like this...Gramps-"How much money do u have on u, Mike?"  Me-(checking my wallet & pockets) "$4.20". Gramps". U jjus bought yourself a 1964 Falcon w/ "3 on the tree, happy birthday & congratulations".

[jwolfer]

17 It was 1987 my great aunt gave me and my brother, who is 14 months younger, a 1971 Ford Mustang that she bought brand new( not a performance car, the commuter version) she lived in NYC and kept the car at my great Grandparents house in NJ, it only had 20k miles.

I was thankful, but I never liked the car.. never told her that.. I didn't want to be a little thankless brat.. in NJ you didn't get DL til 17 so I had a year of it being my car, once he stated driving lots of arguments...

So I bought a  1981 Datsun 310 from a friend who worked with me for $600 .. she was only gonna get $500 trade for a Jeep Wrangler... I loved the Datsun.. it was a 4 speed and mine!

Z981

[sparker]

16 when I got to use the family car for high school (my dad had his company car & my mom didn't drive then).  18 when I got my first car (a 2-tone [brown] '61 Chevy Bel Air sedan that was formerly a fleet car for my dad's firm).  19 when I blew up the engine (on a ski trip up to Tahoe at the end of '68); subsequently replaced the old 283 with a 327 and upgraded tranny and triple Webers.  Still looked like a POS on the outside but could do 140 with ease!  Cool when you're 19; not so much in retrospect!

[LM117]

I was 17 and near the end of my senior year in high school. In April 2007, I got a 1999 Jeep Cherokee that had 80,000 miles at the time from Adamsville Auto Sales in Goldsboro NC, which I later found out is nothing more than a glorified junkyard. I still drive it today and it now has 221,000 miles. Nearly everything on it is fucked except the transmission and the bulletproof 4.0L engine. Hell, I have no heat because the heater core dropped a deuce and the A/C compressor is shot, which means no defroster and no cool air in the summer time. The struggle is real, folks.

Before April 2007, I was borrowing a 2005 Dodge Stratus SXT.

[1995hoo]

Regarding bringing a car to college, when I was at UVA the restriction was that undergraduate students in the first semester of their first year could not operate a motor vehicle anywhere within Charlottesville or Albemarle County (the way it was worded was intended to mean you weren't allowed to bring a car and park it somewhere away from Grounds). I think the rule has since been changed to the entire first year.

My brother went to William & Mary and they prohibited cars for the whole first year, but with a twist that I thought made a lot of sense: You were allowed to bring a car back from Thanksgiving through to the end of fall semester exams, and you were allowed to bring one again at the end of the spring semester (I do not recall what the cutoff date was there), in both cases to facilitate travel home.

[7/8]

I had no idea so many campuses prohibit parking for first-years (you learn something new everyday). My campus does have lots of parking available, but it's surprisingly hard to get an off-campus student parking pass. By the time I called around New Years, there were already 500 students on the waiting list . The pass costs $150/term (4 months), but I decided I would just pay the $5/day parking fee for the convenience (it's more than twice as fast as taking the bus from my house).

As for the actual topic, my first car (de facto) is the 2010 Dodge Caliber. In second-year, when I was 19, it became my car for driving to school. I don't think it's under my name, but if I moved out, I would be taking it with me

[1995hoo]

I had no idea so many campuses prohibit parking for first-years (you learn something new everyday). ....

In most cases when there's a restriction in the US it's because of there not being enough parking available, although UVA's restriction was also purportedly premised on the idea that the Board of Visitors wanted it to be harder for first-years to get around because they said you have enough of an adjustment to make when starting college without having the additional distraction and expense of a car. Not sure I totally buy that argument, but either way, looking back I'm glad I only had to deal with the "fall semester" restriction and not with the current version.

Looking back now, I wonder whether part of the reason for the "first semester" restriction in my era was to ensure the first-years got stuck with the crappiest parking option. All the closer lots were sold out by January, so the only permit you could get was for the lot across from what is now the old basketball arena (this lot no longer exists since they built a new arena), and that lot was about a 20-minute walk from most of the first-year dorms.

[PHLBOS]

My college alma-matter allowed freshmen to have cars but they could not park them on campus during weekday hours (such would be towed if found on campus during said-period).  The freshmen shared a more remote lot with the commuter students; that was a short walk to campus & most of the academic buildings.

[Henry]

When I was 17, I got my learner's permit; and when I got my first license later on that summer, I often borrowed my dad's Cutlass convertible. A year later, when I graduated, he bought me a new, fresh-from-the-lot Calais as a gift (and back then, Oldsmobile was our #1 make, as around that time, my mother would be driving an '86 Delta 88 which I never got to drive at all). I loved that Calais, and it was a great companion for my first major roadtrip, which involved going down any remaining segments of Route 66 that were still open to cars and retracing the vacations of my childhood, eventually taking me to UCLA.

[cl94]

I had no idea so many campuses prohibit parking for first-years (you learn something new everyday).

I don't think it would be a stretch to say that most campuses in the northeast US prohibit or heavily restrict freshman parking. Only school I visited that allowed freshmen to have cars (probably visited close to 20) was Buffalo. Several schools don't even let sophomores have cars. A couple schools I visited don't have easy parking for ANYONE (but these were in large cities). Remember, most schools in the northeast predate the automobile by quite a bit, so parking wasn't a consideration. RPI's "new" campus, for example, was built in the early 1900s, when only the extremely wealthy had cars.

[Eth]

I had no idea so many campuses prohibit parking for first-years (you learn something new everyday). ....

In most cases when there's a restriction in the US it's because of there not being enough parking available, although UVA's restriction was also purportedly premised on the idea that the Board of Visitors wanted it to be harder for first-years to get around because they said you have enough of an adjustment to make when starting college without having the additional distraction and expense of a car. Not sure I totally buy that argument, but either way, looking back I'm glad I only had to deal with the "fall semester" restriction and not with the current version.

I can't recall what the stated reason was for us (or, indeed, if there even was one apart from "life sucks, get used to it"). A good chunk of the parking that was available seems to have been fashioned out of what were once regular city streets before various mid-20th century campus expansions.

[index]

I obviously do not have a car, but I will likely be getting one after I finish the driving portion of driver's education, if my father follows through, which won't be coming for a while I'd have to say. I'm on a lengthy waiting list that starts with oldest students first.