I was reminiscing about the cars that I have owned over the years last night, and decided that it would be fun to create a biography of cars that I have had.

Price: FREE
Drove: Age 15-17
R.I.P.: Sold to salvage for $50
Home: Las Vegas, NV

You always remember your FIRST car... mine was a hand-me-down from my mother... her '67 Park Lane. This car was a BEAST... a TANK... a BOAT! Big and green like the Hulk. The hood was about 4 foot in length, as well as the trunk. You could easily fit 4 to 6 people in the trunk... great for sneaking people into drive-ins. :)

This hoss had an enormous engine... the Mercury 410 Intercept. It was fast! It got it's police intercept rating from it's high compression ratio, 13:1 (most cars are 6-9:1). It also really pumped gas into it... it had a Holly 650 4-barrel dual-pump carb. It basically poured gas into the engine :). If I didn't use high-octane gasoline the engine would really pop... so high-grade leaded gas it was!

I think that when this car was made it was a very high end luxury car... it had everything... 4 power windows, wing-wings, bench seats with 6 way power, power steering, power brakes, pleather interior, and air conditioning. Doesn't seem like much to today's standards, but I have never seen another car that old that had all of those amenities.

Anyway, by the time I got it, it wasn't a luxury car anymore (UNDERSTATEMENT!). The once emerald green paint was now puke green, mixed with a few spots of red oxidation. It also had a white film on it that wouldn't rinse off... oxidation I guess. All four corners were dented... some worse than others but all four had some type of damage (none of which were inflicted during my ownership of the car!). The padded vinyl top was gone. Just remnants of glue that once held it on and a few spots of "fuzz". Also... the most annoying thing was the headliner was sagging. I got pissed one day from it falling on my head all of the time and just ripped it all out.

I would take this car everywhere... I used to take it out to the desert and lake Mead and use it as if it were a 4x4. Me and a bunch of friends would pile in, throw some wood pallets into the trunk and find some secluded spot to have a bonfire party. I think I took it some places that were never seen by man before ;)

And the speed was unbelievable! This 2 ton machine would get up and go! I gave many a person a headache by whipping their head back against the rear deck. It did great both from the line and once you got really movin'. During normal use, the Holly carb would only use two barrels, but when you hit 60-80 MPH with the pedal down, the 2 additional barrels would open up. The engine would suddenly go quiet, and the car felt like you were off of the ground. It was a real surreal feeling... most car engines would be roaring loudly... but for some reason at high speeds this one would get silent. The speedometer went up to 120MPH... it would stop then. I think I got it up to about 140. This was definitely the fastest car that I ever owned.

I was well known for racing this car with newer cars notorious for speed, Mustangs, Camaros, etc. I stumped quite a few people with my Hooptie.

While looking for photos of this car on the net... I found out that the Park Lane was the car used by Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five O. Click here to read a story about a guy who actually found and restored the Mercury used on the show!

The car finally gave up after the water pump failed. I also failed to stop it immediately… I drove it home to fix it there… by that time it was too late. The damage to the engine was too great, and in 1988 the parts for it were getting hard to come by for the 22 year old car. I called a wrecker; they picked it up, and gave me $50 for it.

Price: $500
Drove: Age 18
R.I.P.: Sold to co-worker for $300
Home: Las Vegas, NV

My dad is a mechanic. He came across this car from an old lady who only drove it on Sundays. (Doesn’t that sound SO cheesy!) It was 1989 and this car only had 30,000 miles on it. It was a little white four door Comet. The Comet looks just like the Ford Maverick… so definitely not a hip car… but it got you from A to B.

I don’t have too many memories of this car. I threw in a swap meet stereo system with Pyramid Phase III 15" subwoofers in the truck. It was loud, but not good sounding at all. The whole car rattled. Oh well… I was poor! It had a strange problem when the automatic transmission was cold, it wouldn’t go into any gears until it warmed up. I would be revving the engine in the early morning just to get it warm enough to go to school. I later found out that all it needed was the transmission filter and fluid changed.

I sold this car for $300 to a guy that I worked with at the movie theatre. I was going to basic training for the Army and just wanted to get rid of it quick. I took the $300 and took a few friends out on a limo ride for a few hours all around Vegas and the Strip. I found out later that my dad was pretty pissed that I sold it for so cheap… he would have paid more for it he said. Oh well, chalk one up for experience!

Price: $5,500
Drove: Age 20-21
R.I.P.: Left on the side of the road
Home: Wahiawa, HI

This was my first car that I paid for myself… I bought it from an individual on Oahu while stationed at Schofield Barracks. I did not have a car during basic training and AIT, so I was happy to be on the road again! I paid the guy $2,500 up front and paid the rest over another year.

The black paint was fading on it… so I wanted to get a custom paint job on it. I found a guy that did some other cars that looked really good from some of the local car stereo clubs. I designed a purple fade from the bottom into black, with a neon blue heartbeat across the side. It was very 80’s! What can I say… I’m pure MTV and Gen-X all in one. Any way, the guy screwed the paint job up… I ended up suing him in small claims and won!

I had a really nice system in this car… Alpine deck, MB Quart highs, Orion DVC 12" subs, audio control signal processors, and Orion HCCA high current amps.

The car stopped one day in Pearl City. At first it could still go in reverse… I drove the thing in reverse trying to get to a Dodge repair shop that I knew of. But after about two miles, reverse stopped working too. It felt like all of the gears in the transmission just fell to the bottom. I kicked the thing and cussed it out, and then abandoned it right where it stopped. I walked a half a block down the road to the Dodge dealership.

I had that Easy E / NWA song in my head… "Cruisin’ down the street in my ‘64" (I sang 8-4) "… blah blah blah wrapped it ‘round a telephone pole, threw it in the gutter, I’ll go buy anudah!"