We lived about three miles away from the town of Sunapee and so a yellow 100cc Kawasaki motorcycle replaced a 10-speed bike during my first year on the road. That seemed much better than pedalling even if it meant suiting up in snowmobile attire on cold November mornings. This worked out okay until, at least, the snow actually started flying.
Eventually, my father gave me a junk car. Now, I'm sort of proud to claim that I once drove an early-70's Ford Pinto. It was rather smart of him to give me an underpowered crap car. I see teenaged drivers wrap their pricey, new rice rockets around trees nowadays killing them and their friends. My Pinto had a replacement 1600cc engine we installed during high school shop class. It couldn't make it up the tiniest of hills in fourth gear; consequently, I quickly learned now handle a manual transmission. At 40 mph a car is dangerous but a little less lethal than one travelling at 80. In retrospect, however, Pintos did become rather infamous for blowing up in rear-end collisions.
I don't think I have a single picture of my first car. I guess I didn't take photos in those days. These two pictures were copied from the Internet. See, the Net is useful for more than distribution of porn, isn't it?
The colour of these two different cars even matched my Pinto's. That obviously was a popular 1970s tint. It does, in a way, go right along with kitchen decor from That 70's Show, or perhaps they had avacado. I believe this particular Ford hue was called Freudian Gilt as Good Clean Fawn was a little grayer. Oh yeah, I also painted black racing stripes that curled up behind the rear windows. That must've given me at least a 2 mph boost!
As silly teenagers, a group of us still managed to flip it over a stone wall and have it land on it on its roof in the woods. I swear, I wasn't driving but did help to throw all the unopened beer cans from its little trunk far out into the bushes before the police showed up. No one was hurt. Unfortunately, the accident left me without a car during most of my freshman year in college.