The first 3 are my early in life cars that I wish I still had. First car was a '72 Olds Cutlass convertible bought in in '82 when I turned 16 and threw newspapers and mowed grass to pay for it. During college, I drove an '86 Grand National while bartending and waiting tables (after 3 years of bliss, I totaled it with a bad accident). During grad school, I drove an '88 Nissan 300zx which I consider to the most fun car I ever drove--I put a quarter million miles on it. Should have never sold it but kids arrived and it only had 2 seats. After selling the 300zx, I drove a '95 Lexus GS300 for 10 years until upgrading to the '04 GS430 that i bought in 2005, which is my current car when I am not driving my 2001 Tahoe for work. I also drove an '85 Mazda RX-7 for a year during college until I wrapped it around a tree and went flying through the windshield (the mid to late 80's were a pretty wild time for me!). The 2001 Tahoe that I bought for my wife is the only vehicle that I ever bought brand new--and it's been a great work truck for the 4 1/2 years I have been in pressure washing.
Wow, you had all good stuff.
I had an older 280z I forgot about that I only had for a few weeks. It had a V8 American car engine in it and handled like crap. I always wanted one like yours.
From 1997-2006 we drove nothing but work vehicles.
1995 Ford E350 Van - It was a blue hair las vegas express van that brought in old people from nearby cities to gamble. It had 395k on it when I bought it and 465k when I sold it and was still running fine.
1998-2003 Chevy 1500 Vans - Had a bunch of these for dry clean delivery. They all got about 12 mpg delivering. One was all fixed up with a Regency kit and we doubled that one as our personal vehicle.
1996-2002 Dodge and Chrysler minivans- had a variety of these from the short ones to the long ones, from stripped down to loaded up and leather. They were a big mistake for commercial delivery. I was replacing brakes on them every 10k miles (that meant on some of them as often as every two months!!!! Things broke all time. Problems with radiators and fans. Just all kinds of things. Glad I don't have them anymore.
1990-1999 Suzuki Sidekicks and Geo Trackers - had a few of these for short routes. They were great. They were reliable and got about 18mpg. We also used these for our own personal four wheeling adventures and ended up letting Chris earn one that he ended up keeping till someone ran into him and destroyed it.
Here is one next to one of our crappy minivans:
This is one of our desert mountain runs. Shelly is pregnant with Fayth on this trip but didn't know it.
This is the one we gave Chris. We are lucky to still have it. The day this picture was taken we got stuck in the mountains after two deep (30+ft) gulleys and had to hire the guys in the second picture to get us out. They both got stuck too. It took both of them in tandem with the winches to get us out. It took them 8 hrs and they charged me a thousand bucks.
During those years we worked hard. We lived our work. We went a full 8 years without a real vacation. I only had one little hobby. I restored a 1983 Jaguar to perfection. It was fun. Unfortunately I don't have any before pictures because I never intended to do that much with it. It just became a hobby.
Throughout all this I still hadn't discovered the best car in the world. ........ Stay tuned, it's coming up later.
