My First Car

[StriperSS]

My first car was a 59 VW Beetle bought for $50.00 and needed a little work to get going. It was black, and in good shape. 36 horsepower that moved it with lethargic pride. Much planning had to be done in traffic due to acceleration that could only be properly measured with a calender. Managed to have fun with it though.
The car pictured below was not even my first performance car, but is all I can find photos of right now.

I bought this in the summer of 1975 for $2,200.00. A 1970 W-31 4 spd. It was a repaint, I found out later, but was green when I bought it, and not a GM green either. Black interior with guages and the sport wheel. I had about 3 sets of wheels and tires for it, and of course, the Hijacker shocks. Two friends and I went to California and Nevada in it in the winter of 1975. We went to Iskenderians shop, met Ed and the boys, met some other salt flats racers, cruised Whittier, etc. Never saw another performance Oldsmobile the whole time. We also went to Tonopah, Nevada to look at a Bonneville car that my friend was considering buying. It was 'The Worlds Fastest Coupe', a 53 Studebaker with a 68 Corvette nose on it. It had gone well over 200 MPH at Bonneville, closer to 300 if I remember correctly.
It's funny how when you own a car, suddenly you see others like it. I met the original owner of this next one in 1976, and a little while later, he traded it in at one of the GM dealers that I did business with. Naturally, I was all over it, and made a deal on it. So now I owned two 1970 W-31's.


While I was making the deal, they had sent the car out for paint. It was a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing. It was originally a white roof, white stripe car, in this same green, but I was much happier with a one color car. I added narrower W-style gold stripes.
The previous owner had regularly raced the car at Mission Raceway, and it had Doug's Headers, Hurst Line Loc, and a reworked Turbo 350 trans, and 3:91 gears. Had a green interior with no guages and a plain steering wheel.
This car was a lot of fun. Wouldn't spin the tires off the line, but would just go. Won a lot of street races with it, against cars that would eat me at the strip. It would chirp second gear every time, no matter how you drove it.
I ran it once at Mission, but had carb issues, and didn't get a good run in. The previous owner had run high 13's in it, and he was a big guy.