This post will likely be nominated for the shitbox hall of fame.
One note to whoever it was who mentioned wanting a Dart - my father owned one of those abominations. The hype about the slant six is correct, there is no way to destroy that engine. The car did provide one of the funniest car-related incidents of my life, when my father and I were driving back from the lumber yard with 2x10s sticking out my window. I was worried about impaling something the entire trip, but the real fun came when we were approaching the busiest traffic light in town and the entire front right wheel fell off and rolled into the intersection. No idea how that happened. Tire, rim, brakes, drum - whole fucking thing snapped off. In the end, yet another Dart in the junk yard with a perfectly running engine.
Not counting the '76 Dodge Colt I owned and tore apart in my mid-teens, this brown motherfucker was my first car. Aside from mine having faded paint in spots and some missing molding, this beast looks just like it. Saved up $1200 working in a grocery store to buy that bucket. Thought I looked cool as shit rocking the Camaro coupe into the high school parking lot. Didn't take long to get the feeling this was a girls car, though. The engine had a fouled cylinder, so I was less than impressed with Chevy's legendarily reliable 305. I had to buy a new extra hot spark plug for the thing every other month. Even when it was running clean, the thing had no balls. My first trip home from working a night shift where it snowed all night had me spin into a 720 while it stayed dead in the middle of the road. Thing was a toboggan in the winter. Wound up selling it to a friend for $800 after a year and I think the engine totally shit the bed on him in a matter on months.
This picture is like an artist's representation of my 280. Same color, but the non-rusted parts of mine were held together with bondo. The tires were basically baloney skins. Rims might've been brushed aluminum, if I remember correctly. I believe there were a pair of confusing hoops on the hood that no one could figure any sane reason for. I do remember the floors were completely rotted to shit and with it being so low, there was always the concern of losing a foot. A friend of mine gave it to me or traded it for putting in carpet in his mom's room. I forget. Not sure I ever registered this car and only drove it about 8 times. The greatest trip in it was the friend who gave it to me and I driving to breakfast after drinking all night. Almost side-swiped a local cop, who chased us just to yell at us for almost killing him. Many laughs were had at breakfast.
I think I bought a '78 Celica after I came back East and needed a car to get to work. Rusty, gas sippers, reliable - that's a fucking Celica, right? This piece of shit nearly killed me innumerable times. The first problem was the stench of fuel inside. Nobody could find the source. I smoked cigarettes, so there was no way this fucker was going to get me to quit. Drove it for about six fuel hazed months wondering if the next Marlboro Light was going to be the one to set me on fire. That was low priority stuff, though. The real problem was that whenever you turned even ever so slightly right while moving at over 45 mph, the entire front end would shimmy and shake like the who shebang was going to tear apart. It also didn't like to increase your turn radius once it started having epileptic fits, making keeping the car from either ditching or ramming into something somewhat of a concern. Working 25 miles away down the highway, I had two bends in the highway and one offramp to navigate where the car was sure to do its best to murder me. This was the car that cemented buying new into my mind, something I kept at for a long time.
