Remember Your First Car?

By Tom Sprague

Author with his 1948 Mercury convertible which he bought for $2250. Scroll down to see a video of it in action.

You remember your first car? Of course you do. Everyone does. Might have been the old Buick handed down by your parents. Or maybe the slightly older car you bought by saving up money earned from mowing lawns, babysitting and paper routes. Now you must figure out how to pay for gasoline and maybe a used tire. But it surely was fun washing the car every weekend.

My first car was a 1930 something Model A roadster with a Model B engine. That engine was important, because it had a fuel pump, which the A did not. The Model A was gravity flow from the gas tank in front of the seating compartment. Which meant you had to back up hill. Not so with the Model B and its fuel pump. Pride of the neighborhood.

That car cost me $46 total. It was put together from various pieces garnered from Stockton junk yards. That $46 did not include fenders or a windshield or a top, which came later. But it was street legal.

My handwritten parts list is quite specific, like 56 cents for one valve lifter and a dollar each for four pistons. The roadster body cost $2.50 (plus .06 cents sales tax) from Stockton Auto Wrecking on April 26, 1944. The engine came in at…