My First Great Car

I was 20 years old and it was 1968. I had already had two cars by this point in my life. After getting my driver's license the day I turned 16 I bought my first car, a 1956 Ford Stationwagon that I called my "surf wagon" because it is what I used to haul my buddies and our surfboards to the ocean. I surfed Malibu and Huntington Beach back then between 1962 and 1969. At 18 when I started going to college my parents got me to sell my stationwagon and bought me a 1965 VW beetle(bug). I drove that while in College but then decided to work a couple of years after my first year in college. At 20 I was ready for my first "great car". At first I wanted a Porche until I sat in one and realized I was too tall to be comfortable in one. Next, I sat in a new 1968 Mustang fastback and realized I was too tall for that one too. However, a 1968 Camaro had just the right head room and leg room so I settled on buying a Camaro because it had both looks and power and already was known as "the poor man's Corvette". Though I wasn't poor I was 20 which for most people is being poor. My father had me look at first at a 6 cylinder 1967 Gold Camaro. However, I wanted a 327 8 cylindar engine. So, the next day I went shopping for a Camaro with my Mom(I needed her to cosign a car loan for me).
I bought a brand new 1968 Metallic blue 327 cubic inch 8 cylinder Camaro which was along with my cousins XKE Jaguar the fastest things I had ever driven between the speeds of 20 and 70 miles per hour. Both could make the trip from 20 to 70 miles per hour in about 2 or 3 seconds or less. I loved the feel of being pasted back into my seat like an astronaut taking off into space while doing a controlled acceleration in a muscle car. I liked the handling of a Camaro too. Though some people might consider the ride of a 1968 Camaro a little stiff it was designed for racing and cornering at high speeds without crashing. This feature saved my life many times on the freeways. Less speedy and less maneuverable cars than mine in the hands of drivers not as skilled as I often crashed in those days on the freeway. Today more cars on the road handle like sports cars and so everyone is safer, especially with disc brakes,radial tires, and ABS braking systems etc. Back then none of these were standard and even radial tires were relatively new and not standard yet. So freeway accidents then sometimes were pretty awful in Los Angeles, California.

In the deserts near Pearblossom, California within 100 miles of Los Angeles, I can remember once passing 25 cars at once on a two lane highway. This would not have been possible with any other car that I have driven that didn't have the instant repsonsiveness of my new Camaro. However, that is something I wouldn't have done if I hadn't been 20 either. By 21 I had gained a lot of maturity. Now I have driven about 1 to 2 million miles since I was 12.