After I sold my first Bugeye, I bought a Deutsch Bonnet. That was a 40+ MPG
car. However, it was terribly unreliable. It had a severe case of "Dreaded
Previous Owner" syndrome. It was a good thing that it came with a wrecked
Panhard Dyna for spare parts. That was the only car I ever owned that I
spent more time fixing than driving. When I finally got rid of it, I traded
it for a Twin Cam MGA with a cracked head.
I bought a 750 Fiat Abarth as a daily driver because the Deutch Bonnet was
so unreliable. That was a really fun car and dead reliable. It also got 40+
MPG. You have to love Italian cars.
The car after that was an NSU Wankel Spider that I bought new. It was a year
old dealer demo. The NSU got about 35 MPG. It was pretty quick and fairly
reliable after NSU replaced the transmission and engine under warranty.
They were all fun cars. In those days, except for the NSU, they weren't a
lot of money. Each one of them took their turn auto crossing. I wish I
still had all of them. They all got great gas mileage in the era of $.30 per
gallon gas. In those days, nobody cared about gas consumption. One of my
buddies had a Chrysler 300 with 2 4 barrel carburetors that got 6-7 MPG. It
cost less than $10 to fill it up.
When I bought gas, I could just drive to Shell station 3 blocks away. They
would pump gas, clean the windshield, and then just put it on my parent
account. There were no credit cards. I never had to sign anything. Daddy cut
me off when he finally figured out how much I was driving. That was after I
filled the car up on Thursday night and when he got into it on Friday
morning, he ran out of gas 2 blocks from the house on his way to work. :-)
As I look back on it, between 16 and 20, I owned 4 Bugeye Sprites, a '50
Studebaker Champion with suicide rear doors, a 48 Studebaker Champion coupe
bought to be a parts donor but turned into a regular driver, a Mk III
Sprite, a Fiat Abarth, A Deutsch Bonnet, a Twin Cam MGA, a 1500 MGA, a Lotus
7, 2 MGBs, a Ford Falcon, and a Buick Riviera. It was a good thing I had
understanding parents and a job as a mechanic. I learned early that sweat
equity will go a long way in increasing the value of a car.
In case you are wondering, this was between 1964 and 1968. It was a great
time for unusual cars.
Jim
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