We had such heartfelt responses to the question 'What was your first Pontiac?' that we're going to pose the same question with another much-beloved Detroit marque that got the axe this decade: Plymouth.
I haven't owned many Plymouths- just a lone Fury and a couple of Valiants- but I still felt real sadness when Chrysler sent the brand to The Crusher. That Fury was a fleet-spec '73 sedan formerly owned by EBMUD, the water/sewage agency popularly known as "East Bay Mud." My parents bought it for my younger sister when she turned 16, shelling out a princely $150 for it at a county auction (they came close to getting her a retired AC Transit 40' bus, but decided that some jokes aren't worth the hassle; yes, they're probably to blame for me turning out this way). It had the government-grade "everything delete" option package (no carpets, no radio, no headliner, no power accessories, dog-dish hubcaps, etc.), but included a snazzy EBMUD paint scheme (turquoise and white), a totally unkillable 318 V8, and a bunch of cryptic water-company tools in the trunk. As is the nature of 16-year-old girls the world over, my sister passionately hated the idea of being seen behind the wheel of an unwieldy, 13-year-old, cop-car-looking barge and refused to have anything to do with it. Naturally, I added it to my fleet of wretched, low-buck heaps cool machinery and drove it often. It took a while for the 318 to get 3,800 pounds of Mopar steel moving, but I've never had a car that was as much fun for dirt-road hoonage, or as good at jumping the berms at the Island Auto Movie drive-in theater (where I worked as a ticket-taker my senior year of high school), or that could withstand as many extra-cruel, Ronny Montrose-soundtrack, neutral-drop burnouts.
Now it's your turn! What was the very first Plymouth you ever owned, or rode in, or at least formed some sort of emotional attachment to?
[Image source: Old Car Brochures]