What’s the story behind your first car? How did you get it? How long did you have it? When did you part ways with it? Why? We can all probably answer these questions with clarity. As we recall the past, we remember the highs and the lows and all the fun times in between with our first car.
Everyone has a story. Here’s mine, about my first vehicle ever, a 1979 Ford F250.
The F250 didn’t start out as mine. In fact, my father bought this truck new for his construction business, and it served as his daily driver until 1984. The truck came stock with a 400 CI engine and a 4-speed transmission, manual windows, and no air conditioning. Beyond its work duties, it also carted my family around town, at times up to seven of us.
After five years as my father’s daily driver, he sold the F250 to the other company he owned. Still, it remained “in the family.” Many of my siblings and I worked at this company during our high school years. While the truck was used for the business, it also served as our transportation to and from school. A fixture in our daily lives, the truck did not make it through our high school years unscathed, as my sister wrecked it, the front end enduring most of the damage. To fix it, we pulled the frame and most of the front end was changed.
When the business closed, I bought the F250 for $800. I was 18 years old and used it as MY daily driver for several years. Slowly, I started to modify the truck. Aside from having done some light bodywork, painting, and mechanical work on a few other vehicles before, I consider working on that truck to be my first experience of really working on a vehicle, modifying it and making it my own. First, it was the small things. I put an exhaust system on it. I tinted the windows myself and did some bodywork. To finish up the paint and bodywork, I hired my friend’s dad. But I learned a lot from that truck.
After completing the small projects on the F250, I continued to drive it for a little while longer. When I started college in Arizona, I decided to sell the truck for a more economical car. In many ways, I feel I went BACKWARDS, as I ended up with a Chrysler LeBaron 4-door, but the car got good gas mileage and had air conditioning for the hot desert, both of which were wins, so really, the LeBaron was a step sideways maybe.
Thinking about that truck, I miss it. To me, the regret mainly comes on two levels: one, I always thought it was the best-looking body style of the Ford pickups; and two, I have fond memories of growing up around that truck. It was my first vehicle right after high school and memories of four-wheeling and ice racing with it are still vivid.
I always regretted selling it.
By Jim Ochs
