For three months in 1986 I drove a rusted, unreliable Ford Pinto. And I loved that car beyond all reason.
The next of my post in Curbside Classic’s Cars of a Lifetime series is up, and it’s about my Pinto. You’ll read about all of its failings, including its stripped reverse gear and its rusted-out undercarriage.
What’s that? You say it sounds familiar? That’s because it’s a nearly word-for-word retelling of this post from 2008.
But click here anyway to read the story over on Curbside Classic!
A great memoir! However, I believe that “rusted, unreliable Ford Pinto” is redundant. “Ford Pinto” says it all. I drove one, too. My younger brothers called it “Schlepcar,” which annoyed me more because it was my car than because I disagreed with their assessment.
Clarify something for me, if you would. Is “Curbside Classic” your site, or just a vintage car site for which you sometimes write? The site is so papered over with advertising that I could hardly get at your post or see much of the site itself.
Scott, the Pinto was the ultimate crappy transportation. Cheap to buy and easy to fix, which was good because it needed fixing often.
Curbside Classic is someone else’s site and the owner invited me to write for them. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue after my Cars of a Lifetime series is done in late January as time is always at a premium, but I am enjoying myself.
I have ad blocking software on Chrome so I never see ads on the site. I looked at it on IE and saw a few ads but nothing serious. So I’m wondering what caused you to see so many ads.
Jim, I was looking at the site with Safari on my iPad, where I don’t have ad-blocking software installed. That’s probably why I saw so many ads. In my desktop browses, I use AdBlock and a Flash blocker, so I don’t usually see ads, either.
How ironic…my first car was a 1975 Ford Elite and it too was dark brown and unreliable but I loved that ocean liner-sized car with a hood long enough to land an aircraft on. The only options it had was air conditioning and a right hand remote control mirror! I should probably write an ode to it too before I forget some of the stories! Thanks for bringing back some memories of mine to the surface.
Ford would paint anything in that brown during the ’70s! You should write your Elite stories. So much is lost to the mists of failing memory over time!
A few of those memories probably SHOULD be forgotten too!
Great essay… though only a college boy could ever have considered that a great car. How adorable that you found absolutely nothing to complain about!
When you’re 19 and grew up with nothing, a car that starts and runs is great by definition!
