i look back on my childhood (1980's) and remember the cars and smile. my mom never had a wagon...single mom and im an only child so she had a dodge daytona turbo z then a buick skyhawk. but! moms best friend had kids my age and a gen 1 taurus wagon! ill never forget riding in the cargo area (that one didnt have a tailgunner seat) and all the fun when debbie did donuts in the parking lot and we were flung all over the place laughing our arses off! part 2 apart from good wagon memories i had a sad one or two. when i was 16 a guy down the street (who pretty much taught me all i know about chevy) had a 1964 bel air 350 hot rod. he blew the motor one day and got a donor car. a beutiful rust free 64 bel air wagon. it was a 4 speed car too. i was bummed to see the motor get yanked, seeing this tim told me to ask my mom and he would sell me the rest of the car for $100 i couldnt wait till mom got home! surely she would let me get it! ( to know my mom is to know that she thinks that no 16yr old should own a car) i figured .. it had no motor and it would take me at least a year to get it back on the road ...surely she would see that! well the answer was no. no. and no, again! i slunked back to tims house and told him the answer. he just looked at me and said "sorry kid". the next week he cut the car to peices for scrap.
Mine's not as sad, but equally frustrating (maybe more). My dad was a manager for big scrap metal company in Southern Ontario, Canada. He loved big mopars, so he bought 2 1958 Imperials. We had a 1953 Chevy Sedan delivery junker that we loaded up with old lathe and plaster for the dump, and dad had a new 1966 Impala besides. I was 16 too. Well, he asked me if I'd be interested in a car of my own to work on! Does a chicken have lips? Do bears crap in the woods? SURE!!!, I said. What's the BUT?!?! (I think your mom and my dad were related. :banghead3 The BUT was that I couldn't drive it until I was 18, AND, after I took the Driver's Ed course at highschool. The car was a 1960 Mini Minor Cooper S. I paid $10.00 (Ten dollars) for it! Rusty, rotten, but MINE! Well, I fixed it up, as hopeless as it was. And dad took pity on me, and got me another rust bucket, basket case - a 1956 Porsche 356B for $50. You can imagine how the body was in our rust belt. I moan and groan about it, but he did the right thing. Later I got my racing license, and we partnered up in our own Junkyard business and racing. My mother was the wagon lover. A new 1963 Corvair wagon that she smashed up on an icey road - not her fault and only our car was involved. Seems the transaxle jammed up between icey patches. We walked away. Then a new 1964 Studebaker Lark wagon. She loved that car. Nobody but her washed that car! She was no slouch either. Heavy foot! Hotrod mama!
A1, is that big, long scrap company still around near the Skukhill espressway off the main freeway south to Florida? I remember driving past that yard on a trip to Florida when Disney opened their Orlando park. It took a good 5 minutes to pass by. Monster yard. Cars up and down the hills.
i actually dont live on that sideof the state. im next to ohio. (13 miles away to be exact) the person to ask that question would be stickman. he lives out that way
Ha, my mom was telling me a story the other day that when we were kids. I'm 2 1/2 years older than my brother and sister (twins) and we were all in car seats at the time (back when you could get 3 battle tank car seats across one seat) in our 2 row seat 77 LTD wagon. Well, my baby sister had managed to unbuckle herself from the car seat and climb to the cargo area and had climbed to the rear window, which was rolled down due to the hot weather. Luckily mom's brother was driving behind us and grabbed mom's attention before my sister Dixie jumped out the back window!
Oh boy a young one going out the back window would have been catastrophic........shiver shiver me whole body on that one....
In 1964 my dad's 1963 Nova hardtop was stolen. (If was his very first NEW CAR.) He waited the requisite 30 days to get the insurance settlement, Then, since he LOVED the '63 Nova, he bought a 1965 Nova wagon with the 283 V8. ( We needed a wagon now, since were a 'blended' family - more kids. ) The '65 worked OK, but I don't think dad was as happy driving the '65 Nova as he was with the '63. We had only had it a year or so when he had to buy new tires for it. Not much money then, so he bought retreads. Not long after that, the family made a trip to Disneyland. I was in the 'way-back' with my step brother. Picture this - 6-passenger wagon, no A/C, hot summer day in Southern California. Two teenage boys bouncing around in the cargo area. Anyway, the car was a bit overloaded. Running in the fast lane down the Santa Ana(?) freeway, one of the retreads blows at 60mph. I don't know how, but my dad was able to get control of the Nova without a problem. After that, I think my step-mom thought the car was jinxed, and a short time later a '66 Caprice wagon was in the driveway.
I only remember us having three wagons when I was a kid. I dont remember this one, but when I was a very small child (in the late 70s), my parents had a 1967 Impala station wagon! I have only seen it in photos. Then another wagon was a 1977 Mercury Bobcat Villager (dark green with woodgrain!) in the late 1980s. My dad traded my grandmothers old 1971 Lincoln Continental for it! Then in the early 90s, they had a 1977 Plymouth Volare Premier wagon (black with woodgrain).
1966 was the first year that GM "brought the wood back". I believe that the Caprice and the Olds / Buick VistaCruisers were the only ones available with it. Anyway, I've always thought the wood on the '66 Caprice was ugly - particularly the fender area. In my opinion, the '67 Caprice looked much 'cleaner', with the metal moldings around it. Dad's '66 was ("Butternut"?) yellow with a black vinyl interior; 2 barrel 327 with powerglide (you could get the 3-speed auto only with the 396 I think); AM radio, and NO A/C!. Dad didn't get A/C in a car until '74. It was lucky we lived only a couple miles from the ocean, otherwise we would have really roasted.
Yeah, I have a soft spot for them, because it was my dad's first car, my grandpa bought it in 1967, my dad bought it from him when he turned 16 in 1976, and sold it to his brother in the early 80s. It had the 396 with the TH400, brown with the woodgrain. My uncle blew the doors of a brand new 1980 Mustang with it once. He went and put a Holley Dominator carb on it one day, punched it, was a little much for the car, and totalled it out by hitting a chain-link fence. I have tons of stories about that old wagon.
Wagons I have Owned After joining the forum, got to thinking about the wagons i ahve owned. First was a '58 Ford, then a '67 Chevelle, after that '72 Pinto, a '75 Pinto and now my '82 Eagle, have enjoyed all of them. Eddie
