First Automobile - Remember When?

Summary: Do you remember your first car? Remember how proud you were of it? It might not have been the newest car on the block, but it was going to be the best. You took it home and washed it, polished it and took the vacuum cleaner outside to make sure it was totally spotless, every week! As a teenager, living at home, with brothers and sisters, the car is your space. Your friends judge you by your car and how smart it looks. Your car gives you the chance of privacy that you...

Do you remember your first car? Remember how proud you were of it? It might not have been the newest car on the block, but it was going to be the best. You took it home and washed it, polished it and took the vacuum cleaner outside to make sure it was totally spotless, every week! As a teenager, living at home, with brothers and sisters, the car is your space. Your friends judge you by your car and how smart it looks. Your car gives you the chance of privacy that you never get at home. The opportunity to take your girlfriend somewhere quiet, maybe, or just the chance to go off on your own and enjoy the sea view, maybe do a bit of fishing. That was just the outside. Remember tweaking the engine, changing the brake fluid, and fitting a spoiler? Did you fit a nitrous oxide nitro kit to improve the performance of your automobile? Did you tell the insurance company that you had modified the engine? Of course you did. Was your first car in the days before catalysts? When you could smell the nitric oxide emissions coming out of the exhaust when the engine was hot? Do you remember the chlorine like smell as you backed your car into the garage? That was nitric oxide. Remember when gasoline smelled different. Nowadays, with all the benzene compounds added to it, gas smells totally different. Some peole say that modern, benzene rich, gas in a car with no exhaust catalyst gives out more harmful emissions than the good old type, complete with nitric oxide and hyrdrocarbons. Remember the leaks in the trunk? Oh, you had forgotten that. Remember how the heater leaked coolant all over the carpet? No? Did you forget that, too? Remember the strange noise that came from the front wheels at 75mph, but that went away once you were up to 85mph? Strange isn't it, how memory works? Reminiscing is one thing, but would you really ever go back?