In each edition of Living 60+, we ask a handful of local people a fun question, and this time it's about their first car.
Gail Lazeo
"My first car was a Vauxhall Vivaro. Oh my goodness. A long time ago, 1960 something, I guess. And it was a little green car. This was in New Westminster. My mom went in, and we picked it up. And they [the dealership] had to drive at home, because I didn't have my licence. So what happened was I ended up driving the car to get my licence and then I went to work."
She was about 20 years old at the time. Lazeo choose the English-made vehicle, because it was something she could afford. Her mom helped her out with the purchase. But the little green car had its limitations.
"You try to go up a hill, boy, you were going slow," she chuckled.
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Joan Brown
"Well, my dad had a car dealership so I had a Buick Century that was about as long as this building. And that's when I tried to get my driver's licence. I was 16. It's beautiful. It was hard to park."
It was 1955, and she and her family lived in Milverton, Ont. She drove the salmon pink and gun-metal grey car for a couple of years before she started going with a boy who had his own car so she didn't need the Buick.
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Matt Buss
"A '61 Pontiac station wagon. I was about 16. I bought it. I had saved money from my paper route."
His purchase in 1972 was unique for a teenager.
"It was great, because I get to go camping, and I had a place to sleep. It was a good car, because I could carry all sorts of stuff in it. It got me from A to B, and the axle only fell out once, on the Patullo Bridge. It was okay. I was able to jack it up and hammer it back in and then drove away."
After buying the car, he couldn't afford to pay someone to fix it so whenever it had problems, Buss did the work and that started a lifelong trend.
He drove it "until I could afford something else. And so that was probably about a year. And then I bought another old junker. And I fixed that. And then I did it again and several more times."
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Patricia Colville
"That was 1969, and it was a 1970 Ford, and oh my god, it was anti-establishment green. That was why I remember it. And it had a funny name to it, but anyway it was my first car. It was my dream. That was one of my bucket things at that time when I was 18 that I go on a trip and buy a car. And I did them all in one year, and I can still see it in my mind."
Colville drove it for about six years before trading up, but subsequent vehicles never did elicit the same feelings.
"It was thrilling to have that first car."
[Editor's note: From 1969 to 1972, Ford offered its range of cars in a colour called anti-establishment mint as well as other glib names including hulla blue, thanks vermillion, and Freudian gilt.]