I tease my husband that one of the reasons I started dating him was that he was driving an old '64 Ford pickup at the time. When it died, his Dad gave him a '71 Maverick with a 302 V-8 engine for his birthday. The engine was almost too large to fit, and you literally had to loosen the motor mounts and tilt the motor a bit to change the spark plugs! It was a gold and white color, and since it was a birthday gift, it was only natural to dub it "The Precious."
First car we bought together was a white '71 Volvo station wagon we called "Vincent van Volvo," or "Vinnie" for short. Prior owner was the New Mexico Boys Ranch. It lasted us a couple good years, always starting even when half the engine sensors weren't working. It's also one of the reasons why you'll now see Volvos and similar "foreign" cars in Big Spring, that bastion of US-brand-only vehicles, dealers and garages. We jump-started so many Buicks, Cadillacs and such in the mall parking lot during the winter storms in '81-'82 that folks started noticing.
Traded the Maverick and the Volvo in on a newer Dodge station wagon in 1984. Worst decision we ever made, and I'll leave it at that.
Trust me, you DON'T want to know what we called it.1986 Chevy Sprint - remember those? They were little more than skateboards with bucket seats and air conditioning. We bought ours brand new and got 100,000 miles out of it at 50mpg before getting it's first real tune-up and second set of tires. About 50k miles later we sold it to our neighbors who needed cheap/reliable transportation.
We went through 2 1991 Saturn SL's (his and hers
we called them Beast and Beauty) with manual transmissions and literally ran the wheels off them. My husband's current car is a 2002 SL which is still giving him consistently good mileage & handling.I drove a Plymouth Voyager (auto tranny) when I was involved in small animal rescue, as it had great cargo space for cages and carriers. Never named it.
Finally, Valentine's Day 2005, I got my pick-em-up truck. 1997 Ford Ranger, 5-speed, with a 4-cyl 2.5L engine which I absolutely loved. I took off the 14" rims with the street-only tires and got 15" rims with tires with more aggressive tread. "Li'l Red" saw me through over 50k miles, and a couple of hurricane deployments, before I lost it to an engine fire
due to debris getting lodged under the hood Thanksgiving Day 2009.Today, I'm driving Li'l Red's successor, a white 1998 Ford Ranger with a 4L V-6 engine and 4wd. Also a 5-speed manual. This one is called "The Infidel." Infidel came with 16" rims, and I bought tires that have 10-ply rated sidewalls. I've been running these tires for a year now and the tread still looks almost new.
Along with Infidel, I also now have "Bella Rose" - a 2006 Yamaha V-Star 650
and an unnamed-as-yet 1982 Honda GL1100I that needs a lot of work to be rideable. But as was mentioned before, that's a topic for a different thread.