NewGuy

How about a few pictures of it?

Smudgey Loc: Ohio, Calif, Now Arizona

A 1960 Valiant? Bet you diden't attract many girls with that.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Reminds me of the 1974 Olds 98 my father-in-law had when I first married my wife.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It was the 1970s. I gave girls rides to school or the neighborhood pool all the time.

One summer, 1971 I think, my parents were in Illinois at a funeral for a friend. I had just started driving, and was taking two girls to the community pool in the Valiant. They were in bikinis under long t-shirts. We took my usual short cut down a dirt road that led to the back of the pool parking lot.

Unbeknownst to me, the dirt road had washed out in a couple of places, with deep ruts. I drove over one of those ruts, bottomed out with a THUNK, and the rusted steel bar that holds the battery down managed to break and somehow short the battery through the wiring harness. The car went dead, and huge pillows of acrid smoke spewed forth from the dashboard as the wiring harness melted off its insulation! We made a run for it, thinking the car would explode! It didn't. I came down the dirt road into the pool parking lot with a laughing girl on one arm and a crying girl on the other. I didn't know whether to $#!† or go blind! I got razzed for days by my male friends for "trying to have a threesome in a rut" or "rut in a threesome" or something.

Dad had the car towed out of there a few days later. A friendly mechanic at his work offered to replace the wiring harness. Meanwhile, Dad got my Mom's Plymouth and she got a new Ford LTD. I got the Valiant. It would let me down mechanically several more times before I went to college and Dad sold it to a junkyard. But most of the time, it got me to school and work and parties and concerts... It wasn't the dark green MG B I wanted, but it was probably slightly more reliable.

Two years later, I skipped school with those same girls and we took the Valiant to the mountains nearby (Upstate SC/Western NC). That story is unremarkable.

Bob Smith Loc: Banjarmasin

That's why it would only do 15 miles to the gallon

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Car makers go to a lot of trouble to make the door-closing sound solid.

Smudgey Loc: Ohio, Calif, Now Arizona

burkphoto, lets here about the trip to the mountains, I have a feeling that would be really interesting.