A drive down memory lane for some of them sweet, sweet first car feels

There are some things in life one never forgets. First love, first job, first child – if that’s the path you went down. Nestled among them is that freedom machine: the first car.

More often than not it was a lemon, a bucket of bolts, the only clunker a youngster could afford on their meagre wage – but it was a taste of independence like no other and in that way, worth its weight in gold.

Ask anybody about their first car and watch the misty-eyed nostalgia wash over them as they tell you the quirky, hilarious, sweet, touching or terrifying anecdotes they hold close to their hearts, almost invariably finishing with some variation of, “Man, I loved that car”.

We collected a few of them from Region Illawarra. From wreckage on Lawrence Hargrave Drive to a seriously sexy (but terribly inconvenient) Torana, we hope they fuel some fond memories of your own.

Kellie O’Brien

My first car was a 1979 VB Holden Commodore — a true fuel-guzzling beast that announced its presence by giving off a glorious, unintentional screech whenever I turned a corner with the air conditioning on. It scored me a few nods of approval from the carpark rev-heads at college, but my “cool factor” took a nosedive thanks to my stature. Barely hitting five feet, I had to rely on a not-so-chic nanna cushion just to see over the steering wheel. Its real charm, though, was the windscreen wipers. Forget modern three-speed options — this Commodore had a dial that allowed for any wiper speed in any weather, putting me in total control of orchestrating a wiper ballet with all the finesse of a maestro.

Keelie Royle

My first car was a little secondhand manual Toyota Echo. I was taught to drive on an even smaller Toyota Starlet, so not only could I really only drive little cars (or as this story will reveal could drive no cars at all), it had proved that the Echo would likely survive a very long time, racking up hundreds of kilometres like its predecessor.

But by no fault of the car itself, it did not last long at all.

With quite a few bumps from hitting various poles and fences already, at 18 years old I totalled it during an accident on Lawrence Hargrave Drive. There were no other cars involved; I just went face first into a guardrail a bit north of Austi Beach during some slight rain (fun fact – a very short time after this accident they reinforced the guardrail across this whole strip!). It was at this time that we discovered that the car had no airbags. Thankfully I was fine, but the car was not.

Andrew Sutton

All the rookie errors – such as trying to defog Mum’s Honda Civic after soccer training without turning the air-conditioner on (don’t use a footy sock, kids!) or correcting the understeer in the (always unloaded) ute I was given at my first job out of uni – were made well before I bought a white 1999 AU Ford Falcon at auction in my mid-20s. Tinting the windows on that fridge on wheels didn’t lift its designed-by-committee looks, but at least no-one saw me trying to match Silverchair’s Daniel Johns on Without You. Good times.

Dione David

My first car was a rust bucket ’79 Corolla that a family friend rescued from the wreckers and lovingly restored. He literally cut out rust from the chassis, welded replacement metal in place and even found a near perfect paint match for the mustard chassis. My peers mightn’t have considered it chic, but to a 17-year-old with a shiny new licence, the whole world lay at its pedals. I will never forget the dizzying freedom that accompanied that first solo drive from the learner testing facility where I graduated from the L to the P plate.

At the time I was reading Matthew Flinders’ Cat by Bryce Courtenay, and so the car was named Trim. Trim ran on the smell of an oily rag for years before meeting his untimely end on the scrap heap. It was a slow death on cheap fuel and minimal oil changes. I regret that. But despite my neglect, I did love him. I reckon he’ll be one of those memories I take to the grave.

Jen White

I’d not long started working when I bought my first car – a red, sporty, two-door 1970-something Torana. Don’t ask me which model ’cause I have no clue (probably one that’s worth a motza these days). All that mattered was that I could afford the $1500 to buy it. It was stretching the friendship though when I had to ask Dad for a loan to pay rego and insurance – I think it was the first and only time I asked. It had “three on the tree” and no sync into first (the gear lever – three speeds and reverse – was on the steering column and you had to come to a complete stop before you could change down to first gear). The fat tyres that came on the car were actually a bit too fat and would rub on the wheel arch, but man, did that car look hot!

Zoe Cartwright

My first car was a 1991 Nissan Pulsar, purchased for about $1000, a generous gift from Mum which I proceeded to write off not once but twice. The trusty Pulsar could fit two surfboards and a passenger in it – when kitted out with a $100 headset (that could play mp3s), it was everything a gal in the early 2010s could ask for. It taught me a lot about cars – things like checking the oil and water, not leaving your headlights on, and how to do a jump-start. My brother and I once pushed it a kilometre with a dead battery before we realised you couldn’t push start an automatic.

It gave me my first taste of freedom and was virtually indestructible. The Pulsar’s first taste of mortality was when we had it out bush bashing and I drove it into a pothole about as deep as I am tall. The Pulsar valiantly rose to my attempts to reverse it out and drive it home, but despite Dad’s bush mechanic skills it retained an unfortunate habit of slipping from drive into neutral at unfortunate times. That was the cause of its final death knell. Wet weather, a hill and a corner combined with my desperate attempts to regain some forward momentum after a spontaneous transition out of drive ended with the Pulsar’s ignominious collision with a guardrail. The police, who were notified by the tow truck company, wrote me a $300 ticket, bringing my total loss for the day (including a full tank of petrol) to just shy of $1500. Another lesson from my dear old Pulsar – cars will always cost you more than you think. The memories, though, were worth it.