‘Throwback Thursday’ – Greg Michaels’ First Car

It’s Thursday, you know what that means? It’s time for a story from the years gone by. It’s ‘Throwback Thursday’!

Let me start by saying I just paid off the Fusion I bought earlier this year. It feels nice to have a good car without a car payment.

All of this got me thinking of my first car that I held title to when it was paid for, and that was my white 1994 Suzuki Swift! I bought it in the spring of 1997 with about 65,000 miles and junked at about 140,000 miles back in the early 2000s.

The car was a three cylinder, four-door automatic, had roll down windows and no air conditioning.

The car ran well for the year or two but after that, one little annoyance and after another would pop up. The driver’s side window roller in the door stopped working, so you couldn’t really open the window because rolling it up was properly was nearly impossible. On that same door the inside door handle fell apart. You could wedge the handle in the door and make it work and then in the last year I owned it you couldn’t open the driver’s side door at all from the outside.

Now for the positives about that car, at the time I could fill it and go 300 miles for $8! It went to Halifax and back three or four times. (1000 miles round trip) It went to Washington DC, Rhode Island a few times and took me back and forth to work everyday for about two years. It was my only transportation from 1997-1999.

In 1999 I leased a Cavalier and parked the Swift because it just was too much of a headache to drive because of the issues written about above and the Swift needing an alternator. In 2002 after getting an alternator I was inspired to get the Swift back on the road. After getting the minor stuff done I took it in for inspection and after some additional work it passed.

I remember taking the car to work and back for awhile (Auburn-Augusta). The damp basement type smell, mixed with stale smoke and that smell of burning oil, you have to love it, there's nothing like it. The nostalgic joy didn’t last very long, soon other things started going wrong so eventually the car became our storage shed in the driveway until I junked it for $200.

If that car could talk, man the stories it could tell. This was also the car that I used to take Lynn out on our first date. (Story from 6/18/14 here).

What was your first car? Are there any memories you want to share?