What Was Your First Car? Mine – A 1994 Suzuki Swift

It was on this day or very close to this day in mid-April  back in 1997 that I bought my first car. It was a 1994 Suzuki Swift. The car, named “Betty Lou”, was a white three-cylinder four-door sedan. Not a muscle car by any stretch of the imagination, but it did get me from place to place. Bought it with 60 some odd thousand miles on it and junked it at about 134K.

It went to Halifax three times I think and Maryland once. It went on many trips to Rhode Island and back and countless trips from Augusta to Auburn and was well-driven throughout Maine on joy rides. I think it cost $6,500, tt was 16 years ago, so its hard to remember. It was driven pretty hard from 1997-2000, but in 2000, it needed work and money was tighter then than now, so it sat at my mother in-laws for about a year. I ended up actually getting it back on the road for another year or maybe two in 2001. It needed a new alternator and a back light casing, which cost me a few hundredm but after the repairs it was able to get an inspection sticker.

That car had so many had so many little issues. For example, the driver’s side window would roll down slanted and at times almost fall down in the window. In the car’s last days, the inside door handle didn’t work. You had to roll down the window or crawl over to the passenger side to get out. I still have the plates and and rubber floor mats which Lynn uses in the Saab today. Now I just need a garage to hang those original lobster plates, 162 DK!

Oh the stories that car could tell, but “Betty Lou” has passed on. I won’t go into the details as this is a family read. That car saw a lot of drama and secrets from my youth. Its last drive was back in 2006, I finally junked it for $200.

What was your first car? How much did you pay? Do you have any memories?