Before the Impala, there was...

I got this extremely wretched 1967 Pontiac GTO for $113, about six months after my 16th birthday.  There was not an undented square foot to be found anywhere on its body; it had the look of a car that had been used in an experimental series of low-speed crash tests in which a '73 Buick Electra had been pushed into it at about walking speed, repeatedly and at every possible angle.  All the weatherstripping had long since turned into black powder, permitting water to pour freely into the car's interior; in fact, mushrooms would grow on the carpeting behind the front seats after a week or so of rain.  The dashboard had been cruelly chopped open with what was probably a chainsaw.   It had four different sized tires (including different diameters on the same axle!) and a vinyl top that had been half-chiseled away.  On the plus side, it had a strong rubber-charring 400, 4:10 gears and a Hurst dual-gate shifter, all of which I would not recommend for a 16-year-old, particularly one whose entire driving experience up to that point had been obtained behind the wheel of a '69 Toyota Corona.  I got my first moving violation (actually, it was two moving violations at the same time) on my first drive around the block in the car, unwisely choosing to get sideways at 80 mph (in a 25 zone, I'm proud to say) right in front of a traffic cop.  After a few wrecks and many sets of rear tires, I sold what was left of the GTO a year later for $550 to an auto-body man who wanted a real challenge.

After getting rid of the GTO, I decided it was time to get something a little smaller and less likely to get my driver's license revoked before I even got out of high school.  A friend lived next door to a junkyard in East Oakland and spotted this '58 VW with what he thought was a Porsche engine sticking out the back.  It ran and was $50, a price too good to pass up.  The car was completely gutted, with an all-bare-metal interior, no gauges, and no vinyl top for the huge 3-foot-square sunroof. The entire rear body had been torched off, leaving the engine protrucing like a shelf, the bumpers were long gone, and the fenders had been chopped down.  It looked like a grim parody of the Baja Bugs then in vogue.  Nothing electrical worked other than the ignition (it was strictly a twist-wires-together affair to start the thing).  The engine turned out to be a 1600cc Type III VW mill, the kind they put in those horrible late-60s "Squareback" station wagons, but it had dual carbs and a dune-buggy-style straight-through exhaust.  The car sounded like the world's biggest chainsaw; it managed to hit a perfect nerve-jangling note that caused the eardrums to flutter, even a block away.  Since it was stripped down to what was probably a lot less than 1,000 pounds and had an engine much more powerful than anything it was designed for, this Bug was fast.  It was able to beat any car in town... for about 1-1/2 blocks.  The gearing in the transaxle was designed for a 25-horsepower engine, so the Type III was redlined and screaming at about 65 mph.   Still, it was cool to have a car that would lift the front tires if you dumped the clutch hard (unfortunately, the instant the front tires lost their grip, the car would swerve sickeningl to one side or the other, occasionally dumping me out o the belt-less seat.  I burned out the 6V wiper motors immediately by using a 12V battery/generator, so I had to reach up through the always-open sunroof with a squeegee to wipe the windshield during the rain.  I ended up selling the engine when I went off to college, leaving the car at the family's house, and my parents, being sick of the thing,  pushed the car into the street so that it would get towed away.

My next car was this Competition Orange 1968 Mercury Cyclone.  It was actually reasonably intact, by my standards, though the heater, power steering, and gas gauge didn't work.  The original 302 engine had been replaced with a 351 Windsor, and it had extra-redneck air shocks that enabled me to jack the rear end up about three feet, giving me that "Aerosmith Road Crew" look.  The column shifter had been hacksawed off and a Pinto floor shifter installed (with an ingenious garden-hose-and-clamp linkage arrangement which gave me the choice of setting it up to get into Park or 1st, but not both).  The trunk was about ten feet deep, but this photo clearly shows the tiny trunklid, which limited trunk access to objects that would fit through the very restrictive opening.  The Cyclone was reasonably powerful and actually managed to get 20 MPG on the highway.  Note the cheapo gold universal-slotted rear wheels and fat 275 tires- this photo was taken in 1988; the same wheels and tires (painted flat black) would end up on the Impala later on.