I wanted to get a timeline going here also, for all the cars I've owned up to my current ride. I'm missing a few pictures of the cars here and there, also the shared cars with my wife. Looking over the list there's nothing wild or exotic, it's just a window into an average gearheads garage.
So lets start this off with the first car I ever owned, a 1987 Nissan Maxima GXE. It died a most untimely death of transmission failure on a road trip to Valdosta Georgia at a little over 250k miles. I will one day buy one of these and restore it to how I wanted this car to look.
That was replaced with a 1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass SL. Nice car, great for cruising long trips. Not too sporty though. It was destroyed by a semi-truck when a bad ABS sensor caused a rear wheel to lock up and pitch the car sideways on the interstate. I still think it's one of the nicer looking cars from this era, I have plans to make a mid engine version of this car one day, I think a 3.5L ShortStar motor would fit the bill.
At the same time I owned this car the desire to own a RWD car became too great and I purchased this 1991 Nissan 240SX SE. I miss this car so much, I had spent a lot of money and time on it and I'm embarrassed to say it was wrecked due to my impatience trying to pass a tractor on a back road.
Once the 240SX was destroyed it marked a low point in my car selection since I had just gotten married and my ex-wife only wanted tall vehicles, we both drove her Ford Explorer SportTrac. What a gas guzzling piece of junk. This was followed by a Honda CRV to curb the gas usage and keep the ride height up in the sky to satisfy the ex.
I need to point out that I at least had some two wheel distractions to keep me occupied while we owned those monsters of bland and bad motoring. After those were sold and the wife made into an ex-wife I got a little something for myself. A 1991 Nissan 300ZX. This car handled like nothing I have ever driven before or since. The goofy Supra style spoiler was on the car when I bought it. I was going to remove it but sold the car before that happened.
After that was sold I needed a car with more space since my son was getting bigger. I opted to go a completely different direction and purchased a 1996 SAAB 9000 CSE. I liked this car more than I ever thought I would. It had so much room inside if you let the seats down, it was like a little truck. The turbo was a blast and made some awesome power and sound effects. It sadly was killed when a tree fell in front of the car and I swerved to miss it. Here it is hooning around the Dragons Tail in east Tennessee
Now it was time to indulge my car lust again and get something I had wanted since I saw the review for it's sister car on Top Gear. The '04 Pontiac GTO. You can read about this car more in my previous post, along with the '91 Camaro Project I'm still working on. I sold the GTO after 2 years, great car, never had anything go wrong with it. I just felt bad daily driving something with power that I couldn't really use on the streets without getting into trouble with the lawman, and the gas mileage wasn't that great on short trips, so it was time to move to something more pedestrian for daily driving.
So my current car is a 1997 Toyota Celica ST. I kinda fell for this car after playing too much GranTurismo as a kid. The cars Coke bottle curves and bug eye quad headlights scream of late 90's styling and I love that. The mileage I'm getting is hovering around 33MPG with mixed driving. So that's it, my car history on one page, there are some trucks that didn't make this page along with my wife's cars, I'll list those below.
- 1985 Nissan 720 Ext. Cab Pickup
- 1994 Chevy 1500 Ext. Cab 6.5L Turbo Diesel
- 2007 Mini Cooper S (Turbo)
- 2012 Mazda3 Skyactive.
