Disclaimer: This is not my car, but looks exactly like my car did. I was born in 1957, and wanted my first car to be a 57 Chevy. In 1972, at age 15, my step-dad told me he would buy me my first car as long as the price was within his means. I started shopping around and found a 57 Chevy at a used car lot in Kansas City. They wanted $500. We went to look at it. The body was in excellent condition, and it started and ran. We test-drove it, and it seemed fine. We talked the guy down to $300 and bought it. We got it home, and parked it in the driveway. With no license yet, I could not drive it on the street, but did pull it forward and backward in the driveway a few times. Then one day it would not move. Then one day, it would not start. Dad was not a car guy, so he had no clue what was wrong. I had fixed bicycles and lawn mowers before, so I tried to see if I could fix it. That didn't work. I got a family friend to look at it, and he said the dealer had put saw-dust in the transmission to keep it running temporarily. The carb was shot, and it needed a complete tune-up. I had no money, or knowledge of how to fix it. So, there it sat. It seemed like it just self-destructed while sitting there. Finally, we sold the car for the $300 we'd paid for it, and my step-dad got his money back. I got my license and learned to drive using dad's 1971 Buick Le Sabre. I started teaching myself how to do simple work on the Buick, and little by little the things I learned to do mechanically grew. A year later, I got a job as a junior mechanic and quickly learned to do all sorts of mechanical work I never dreamed of, and I got paid for it! By time I got the next car of my own, a 67 Ford Galaxy, I could do everything to maintain it, except transmission work. I still credit that old 57 Chevy for motivating me to learn to work on cars.
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