Chrysler’s 1960 Valiant, which was not a Plymouth that first year.
What’s with the fondness we have for our first cars, and how many of us still have them? I admit to being a total dork in my adolescence – glasses and really bad hair – was drawn to dork things – like dorky cars. Where most guys my age loved muscle cars like Chevelles, GTOs, and Roadrunners, I gravitated to dork cars.
In April of 1964, my dad pulled up in front of our apartment house in Laurel, Maryland with a really bizarre-looking finned, black four-door sedan. I had seen them before when we lived in Hawaii when my dad was stationed to Oahu. One of the colonels he worked with had one, a pastel green 1960 Valiant. They were all over Oahu – these wonderfully ugly finned Valiants and Lancers.
All I knew at age 6 was – I liked them…a lot.
When my dad arrived home in Laurel, Maryland a world away from Hawaii in a 1961 Valiant V100 base sticker priced ride with no radio and a three on the floor, I was euphoric. I loved that car. A dork car!!!
Do you remember your first car?
I do…
That black Valiant became old and decayed, rusted out in the harsh Maryland salty air maritime climate. I wanted that car – the very car I grew up in. The floors were falling out of it. It had become our second car. My mother, suffering from arthritis, couldn’t drive a stick anymore. My dad elected to trade it in on another used car – a ’64 Buick Special sedan – for $400.
I hated that Buick and I never forgave him for trading the Valiant.
My mother’s hairdresser had a 1960 Valiant sedan similar to the black ’61 my ol’ man traded away. When it was time for her to unload the Valiant, she gave it to me in February of 1972. My first car… A dork car!!! Despite the stigma that went with owning an old finned family sedan, I didn’t care what people thought.
Our 38,000-mile Carnival Red ’61 Valiant V100 found at a Minnesota Chrysler dealer. It had been a parade car in a small Minnesota town – a pristine low-mileage vintage Valiant like my mom’s. It needs a little love…
My father, a product of the Great Depression, didn’t see the point in my driving an old “piece of junk” as he so often put it. Still…I loved that car and wasn’t parting with it under any circumstances. One cold February morning a year later, I was on my way to school in the Valiant when the transmission quit. It was towed to Brooks Mobil in the heart of Bowie, Maryland. My father instructed Brooks to haul it away.
I never saw the Valiant again. I never forgave my father for that either.
First cars are a rite of passage – symbols of freedom for teens everywhere. Time to get out from under our parents’ domain. In all the years I’ve been an adult, I’ve wanted a 1960-61 Valiant. In my forties, I decided to find one and buy it. Figuring most of them were gone, I bought the first one I found – a really bad ’61 V200 hardtop (quite rare) in Ventura, California. When I bought that car, I didn’t bank on how to find parts for it because they were hard to find and expensive. I stored it for a time, then, found another Valiant – a 1960 V200 up in the Bay Area. I snapped it up and sold the ’61 hardtop to a buyer in Australia. They love these old Valiants down there.
My wife Barbara decided she liked these vintage Valiants and wanted one too. I was cruising eBay one morning when I stumbled upon a Carnival Red ’61 Valiant V100 in Minnesota with the slant six and push button automatic transmission. I snapped it up for a modest amount of cash and had it shipped here to California. When I sat in it the first time, the aroma of a dusty old interior and cigarettes brought back memories of my mom’s Valiant. I always sat directly behind her so she couldn’t belt me for misbehaving while she was driving.
Goes to show you never get over losing that first car.
Boomer Journey... 