Or the one off, hand built AMX 1 prototype built in Italy in 68 days, back in 1966. Currently lodged locally in the Phillips collection. Complete with the “Ramble seat” that pops up when you open the rear window.

 

Watch out for those late 1970s/early 1980s Jeep CJ 7s with the AMC 304 and even 360 V8s! Avoid tangling with them.

Back in my younger days in banking, I repo'ed a few of them. Little land rockets, they were.

 

When I was a youngster maybe seven or so , my dad bought a very nice like new 54 Ford sedan with a brand new paint job at a very low price, so cheap he didn't even take more than a glance under the hood and the trunk was stuck and wouldn't open at all.
He noticed that it was hard to keep the car from burning rubber when he drove it. Figured the throttle linkage needed adjusting.
He took it to his cousin's garage to have him look at it.
They looked under the hood and found it had a full house racing type engine with three deuces and exhaust cut outs. They got the trunk open and found that there was a huge copper Moonshine runner tank inside.
When reading up on the film "Thunder Road" I found that most specialized moonshine runner cars were built here in my town by local stock car racers.
I suspect the car had been spotted by the Feds after one run too many and repainted and sold off cheap to get rid of it. Dad's cousin removed and sold the moonshine tank for him for almost as much as he paid for the car.

Found a photo. Even the same color I believe.

 

Great wee car but always a problem at MOT time, just let's say the brakes were not quite up to modern standards but it did make for safer driving.

 

Loved my Reliant Scimitar,


Lotus was a really great driving car but I always carried a pretty good tool kit

 

Seeing @professor’s post re: the hot rod 1954 reminded me of a car my late father owned. He was always a Ford guy. He had a 1958 Ford fordoor with a 312 c i V-8 with a 4-barrel carburetor on it. A bunch of us were at a drive-in theatre one Saturday night. As we drove away, there was a motorcycle cop at the exit. He had made a traffic stop. I knew he’d be busy for a while, so I goosed the Ford, and took off. Several miles later, I was driving at the legal speed limit, and he caught up to me and pulled me over. He didn’t issue a summons as he didn’t know my speed. But I was severely reprimanded for “stunting”, as he called it. It was 1958 at a drive in theatre, in that car, that I kissed a girl for the first time! Woo hoo! View attachment 954115

 

So many memories (some fond) of all the hours spent maintaining, restoring, doodling, modding, building, racing, crashing, re-building etc, but probably the best was as a young teenager waiting to be picked up from school and expecting my Dad to turn up in his usual asthmatic 4-cylinder boxy old Volvo; but what actually arrived was a stunning Alpine white 528i E28 BMW.

Apparently he had trashed his Volvo a few days earlier by T-boning of all things a white BMW that pulled out in front of him without seeing him coming.

 

Cool thread.
Out of all the cars I've owned I'd say this one. One of my best friends tipped me off to an ebay auction as he knew I was looking for a pre 1965 car to get around CA smog laws at the time. Won the bid at $3550 and booked a ticket to Oregon to go get it. My father and I arrived, did the deal and started the drive from Portland to SF. Around 2 hours in, all lights with the exception of the headlights go out. We stop and buy flashlights and red plastic bags for makeshift tail lights out the back window and complete the nerve wracking drive. During the time I had it we rebuilt the front suspension, replaced body bushings, added new brake system w/ disc brakes, swapped engine and trans, completely replaced interior, and various other things. Really happy father and son memories.
I sold it prior to moving out of the country, back to ebay it went. The winner bidder was AWOL for a few days after the auction close and then suddenly called me up drunk from Mexico, he insisted on paying in cash and sent 14K to me via FedEx, lol.

 

I grew up loving cars but it wasn't until my dad brought home an early 2000's 540i with the M package that I learned how enjoyable a nighttime drive to nowhere can be. For all of high school, I would beg my dad to take this around the block for 10 minutes after dinner, doing a couple mile loop on streets with 45mph speed limits and just flooring it from a standstill. The M3/M5 from this era are some of the best ever made, but I'll never forget all the moments behind the wheel of this. The 4.4l V8 put you back in your seat and the steering was perfectly connected to the road.

I also can't help but think the interiors in this era of BMW were the pinnacle. pre-iDrive nonsense, control stack slightly angled toward the driver, and slim horizontal buttons for everything that were wonderfully uniform in appearance.

(the car below isn't my dad's actual car but same color / config)

 

I've had my MGA more than half my life now. I've fully restored it once, about 11 years ago. For over a decade it was my primary vehicle. I know this car like it was a part of me.

What strikes me about the MGA, and small British cars in general, is they are not terribly fast but 75 mph in them feels a lot faster. I grin like a kid who just got his license every time I drive the thing. Sometimes on a warm spring or fall evening, out on a country road, winding the "A" through her gears I feel like the song Red Barchetta was written specifically for me.

That's what a car should be...

 

Yep...it's one of the greats!!

 

Yes - E39 5 series...mine was a 1998...



I really wanted a manual transmission, but they were difficult to find at the time, so this one was an auto.

First car I ever owned with Xenon headlights - they did that cool little start-up and levelling routine and were truly so much better at night. It was also the first ever with a heated steering wheel for me (now almost every car has them). Performance and handling were very good.

This is the only BMW out of the 10 my wife and I have had between us that gave us major problems. The camshaft position sensor failed twice (only time a BMW has ever left me on the side of the road with one of those instances), the light control module was replaced several times as it kept saying that a light was out when all of them were working fine. Had to have the entire gauge cluster replaced (can't recall the specific reason for that), and the yaw sensors failed a couple of times affecting the traction control system.

Still, it was a great car to drive, and thankfully we had a warranty so we paid almost nothing for all the problems that car had. Once the warranty was up, it was gone though!

 

As a young man I had some sports cars
1958 cream MG-A convertible, 1979 Porsche 911-SC Targa, 1990 Porsche 911 Carrera IV but since I married it has been Mercedes for last 30 years
And the fondest memories are about trouble-free cruising the Spanish highways & the Italian riviera with a reliable German auto

 

That's pretty hot looking. Funny what comes around in design. Great thread/contributions!



Speaking of Flat-X German motors, the most memorable car for me was the first. A 1973 (?) lime green bug convertible. Nothing but motorcycles up until then so a real luxury to have a cage for cold/rainy days.

Bought in Texas with this little cord hanging out the front. Young/stupid so thought nothing of it. Turns out the car was born in Canada, thus the block heater, and eventual horrific floorpan rust from earlier salted roads (no offense to Canadians). Well, the rust became so bad the front seat was running on rear rail mounts only as front riser had rusted away from floor pan. To avoid tipping over backwards, I'd hold the seat down when pulling away from a stop by keeping a firm grip on the wheel. Last straw: a rotted/dangling rear floorpan section scooped up a gallon or so of water in a puddle, deflected the load off rear seat kickplate, up over the drivers seat, and into my 3-piece-suit-clad lap. Good times. A series of rust-free Hondas and BMWs have followed; all fine cars but with fewer dumbass stories to accompany.

 

yup these are great. I almost traded my M for one of the last batch 2003 540i m sport cars. Truly a great car. For a decently sized v8 I was surprised by how well it revved. TBH the m5 is not a drastically better car, and for the money the 540 sport package is probably the best bet esp with service costs on the engines.

 

AMC could have scooped the pony car market back in the mid 1960s. The Budd company of Milwaukee built the bodies for AMC, loaded them onto Nash trucks which had about 4 million miles on them (AMC kept rebuilding them), and shipped them to Kenosha. Budd recognized there might be a market for a small, sporty car, possibly because they’d heard Ford was working on something. They cobbled together this effort which was on Ambassador underpinnings. It is fully driveable. They tried to sell the idea to AMC, but the company couldn’t see the merit of the idea. The car could have been in AMC dealerships six months before the Mustang came to market. AMC were not financially in a position to take it on. The car still exists. It is in the Henry Ford museum. Known as the X R Budd.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budd_XR-400

 

Amazing how a thread can just take off

 

And keep on going

Always a soft spot for the MGB, the overdrive at that time was quite special although there was another more special item

 

Of course besides my Valiant pictured earlier, I drove this in Fla recently for over a month. I wept openly and without shame when I gave it back to Budget! Of course utterly useless where I live but ....