My First Car...

My first car was a 1979 Ford Pinto. It’s pictured below on the left-hand side (this is the only picture of it I have). The location in this picture is where we used to go during the “hot” summers in Northern Utah: “The Flumes”! Basic fluvial processes were at work: when moving water gets forced into a smaller area, the velocity increases…so as the water got “squeezed” into the “flume”, the current got stronger and faster. And at the other end of the flume there were “rapids” big enough to “surf”! Really. We must have gone “fluming” a hundred times in the early 1990s. “We” means Jared (my brother), Todd (my cousin, jumping in the picture), and various friends. But this blog is about my Pinto…

The Pinto was given to me by a “friend” of the family (I use “friend” very loosely, since he sort of came and went…and no one knows where he is now). I was offered a choice by this friend of the family: a 4-speed stick-shift 1979 Ford Pinto or an almost-new 1989 Ford Mustang convertible. At the time, I had no driver’s license (it was during my first license suspension), and figured the Mustang would be too much. Besides, I’ve never been greedy, and the Mustang was waaaaay out of my league at the time. I was just happy to have a car. Even if it did have to sit on the other side of the road across from Norm and Maurie’s house for a few months until I got my license back.

The Pinto was great for a 19-year old: cheesy and yet lovable. I drove it to Zion National Park once. Something like 300 miles from where I was living at the time (thanks for putting me up, Norm and Maurie). I filled-up the tank at the Maverik petrol station (that’s how the store spells it) in Farmington, UT. Then in Beaver (UT). Then in Cedar City (UT). Then in Hurricane (UT). Driving around the city, back and forth to school, I never noticed how much gas it used. When I paid attention, speeding down the freeway, I could actually watch the gas gauge slowly move from the “F” to the “E”. Probably the wrong choice for economy. I think I spent more on petrol that trip than I did the rest of the time I had the car. Until I drove it to Idaho Falls to trade-in.

Towards the end of my ownership, the muffler mysteriously got a hole in it, and since I had zero money to buy a new one, I had to drive with the windows down all the time or risk carbon monoxide asphyxiation. The muffler “leak” could have had something to with the many times I bottomed-out in it, or the few times Jared “borrowed” it and literally drove it into the ground. But that is the kind of car it was: a “beater”. About a year-and-a-half after it was given to me, I sold the Pinto. Actually, Bob (another of my brothers) sold it. For $200 to some guy at the Rent-a-Wreck store around the corner from his car lot. I used the money to buy (from Bob) a newer car: a 1983 Mazda GLC. My favorite car. Ever!

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