Cheap winter rides,what was yours

Back when I was a young punk we drove our good cars in the summer and picked up a bomber for winter.That was around late 70s.You could pick up an old Falcon for $50,drive the hell out of it , then junk it come summer.I had falcons,mavericks,galaxies,chevelles,ect.Even a 53 Ford I drove for two straight years till I blew the radiator on a cold day.Was wondering what your cheap wheels were back in your day .Wish I had a few of them today.

 

Ha Ha here is my current snowmobile

 

I bought a 66 Cutlass 4 door for $300. Every panel on that thing was dented and rotted but it ran like a champ. I ran it for 3 winters. I had a 69 Impala after that. Timing chain jumped a tooth in the middle of winter and I changed it in the driveway. In the spring I gave it to a buddy who entered it in the demo derby at Westboro Speedway. The next winter bomber I had was a Olds 98 ambulance with a 455 and a spotlight on the roof. Man, we used to party in that!! After 3 years it needed a tranny so I sold it for a grand and doubled my money, only car I ever made money on!! Haha

 

What ever I drove in the summer. The 48 went through several winters as my daily driver.

 

back in the day, corvairs ruled my winter rides. Great traction, no coolant to worry about, if the heater worked you had to keep the window down. If it was an automatic, you slammed it into neutral to stop on snow or ice because in gear the rear end wanted to come around. And at the time you could buy 5 for a 100 bucks, so you never were walking. I had four the same year and color one time, and only one set of plates. Lucky numbers never had to be checked.

 

1974 Buick le Sabre,rust holes everywhere,had a stout 455 in it,paid 150 pounds for it,ran the snot out of it all winter till the spring when the annual safety inspection(MOT) ran out,pulled the motor and tranny out ,sold them for 500 pounds,sold the ralley wheels for 100 pounds.cheap motoring except for the gas that thing went through.it was great for letting the smoke out of tires!

 

The first specificly bought for winter car I bought was a 71 GTX, this was to keep my 70 GTX, my 62 New Yorker wagon and my 69 R/T vert off the road. A few years later it was a well optioned 71 Mach 1. Since the mid 80's I have had a beater as daily transportaion. Currently a 89 454 4x4 dually

 

I had a 77 Vega Cambach wagon, woodgrain sides and horse head stickers on the back window! Didn't want to drive my 57 2 dr hardtop.

The best part was, I traded my gas guzzling 69 Charger R/T 440 auto for it even...I hated to take advantage of him, but you know...that was 1979...

 

62 Nova HT was one, pretty cool car, white with a blue gut. Had visions of a straight axle gasser, but my sister needed a car so it became hers. (She was my favorite sister!)

 

Guess my story was different as i grew up in Sweden, but i had a '64 Chevelle as a winter car for a while, and then later on a '57 Ford Custom 300 4 door..Later chopped that one and made a 2 door out of it.
Hmm....memories are coming back!!
Well...i had a buncha Volvo 544:s too...wrecked a few of them kinda bad. But you know, icy roads, tons of snow and a whole lotta fun!!

 

the non hamb friendly... ultra high performance 97 toyota camry 4 cyl stick shift... I love that beater.. but I think its going to go away this winter for an ultra high performance suzuki samurai lol

 

It was you! In the late ninety's I looked at 15 Falcons (in person, all over Kentucky) for sale and they all pretty much looked like they'd been used as winter cars. Hard to complain about that now, though. I recently looked for a suitable Falcon in some online classifieds and was disappointed to see so many of them with straight axles or in black primer with red steelies... There's still some decent stockers out there but the prices have doubled in 10 years. I drive O/T OBD1 GM cars in the winter now. Used to be able (in the mid-ninety's) to pick up late 70's Buicks and Olds for about $500 a piece and we were happy to plow them into frozen herbies and whatnot. Had a couple LeSabres, a '78 Park Avenue that was pretty cool with an Olds 350 in it, Olds 88s etc

 

79 Pinto. Ran forever and took all kinds of abuse.

 

I've had a few, but my favorite was my '76 valiant more door. A real granny special with a leaning tower of power under the hood and grey and black vinel (spelling)bench seats. The thing i loved about it was the od four speed with the two foot long shifter (factory, even had a bend to go aroun the bench seat). Fun!

 

I worked at gas station and I was always finding out about cheap beaters for sale. Every winter I pretty much had something different from High School and into College.

I had a $75 65 belair 4dr that rusted in two before spring, I parted out the 283, sold the rest to scrap and made a profit.

A $75 64 Dodge 440 dr sedan that was actually a pretty nice car until the brakes went out. I crimped the rear brake line and drove home 60 miles. I made out like a bandit and sold it for $200!

A $85 73 Ford Galaxie that I drove from MN to Padre Island an back for Spring Break (when I was 17) I used over 20 quarts of oil, one flat. At a high school keg party an upperclassmen girl backed into it and took out the drivers door. She gave me a couple hundred bucks to fix it without her parents knowing....

A gold 71 Dodge pickup with a slant six. The six was really weak. Not even sure what I did with that truck?? I remember I put fur on the dash.

One of the nicer was a $125 66 Pontiac Star Chief Executive 4 door, burgandy, with a beautiful burgandy interior. I lost control around a gradual curve and slid backwards over a row of mailboxes with no major damage to the car. The mailboxes weren't so lucky.

Red 69 Chev pickup long box with a 350 3 speed for $750. A girl pulled out in front of me and I t-boned her monte carlo. It was drivable until I found a metallic green with dk green cobwebbing front clip. Looked pretty hideous until my Uncle repainted the truck for me at Votech. I lost the timing chain and plastic gear and bent some pushrods. Fixed it and sold the truck for $1800. It looked really nice.

Then I had a yellow 73 Dodge Dart 318 4 speed. Fairly rust free and a nice black vinyl interior. I think I paid $350. It was so bad on oil that I resorted to filling milk jugs with used oil from the gas station. It would burn a quart every 40-50 miles. I laid this car on its side after missing a curve, it had very minimal damage. It later got side swiped while parked in the street. I collected insurance and sold it for what I paid.

And then a bronze 73 Impala 2 door with a white vinyl top. It had 60K miles, and was really a nice car. I stepped up an paid $650 for it. A snow plow ran a stop sign and I t-boned the edge of the blade and totalled it. Another insurance settlement and I sold the car to a friend for the 350/350

 

My last winter beater when I was up north was an 84 GMC S15 with over 300K on it. The clutch was shot, it leaked a quart of oil every fill up, and the bed was held on with some 2x4 scraps and U bolts. I was too lazy to check oil when it was zero out, so it blew up after a month...

 

When I lived in Anchorage I always had a winter beater. One year it was a 62 Chevy II with a 4 banger and posi. Then I had a 74 Olds Nova clone, hatchback. I had a high compression 330 from a 67 Cutlass in it.75 Bronco. Eldorados and Toronados made great winter cars.

 

Mine needs a new '96 truck 5.0L shortblock...

 

Only winter bomb I ever took a picture of, probably because it was the only one to last more than 1 winter!-MIKE

Oh yeah, I only paid a dollar for it.

 

had a 76 pontiac lemans back in the late 80's. a woman i worked with bought a new car and thought the pontiac was junk so she was going to drive it to the junk yard . i asked what the junk yard was going to give her for it , at the time the scrappers were paying a penny a pound.....so she was getting about 35$ for it. i offered her 50$ and drove the car another 3 years. it was god awful to look at but i kept it up on a low buck plan . it had 4 different sized tires , i rarely changed the oil but it ran really good . my buddies called it "the turd"

 

Don't know about cheap and its a little on the OT side. I'm in about 2K at this point including purchase and using a couple of bits I had laying around. But its my new daily until my project hits the road then its a bad weather and go and bring 'em back truck.

I'm still a couple of wires short of legal but it beats walking.





Hell I'm sorry I thought the thread title was what is yours not was yours. I was into my last one pretty cheap. This one was a hoot in the snow but the damned heater didn't work, ask Mrs beaner

 

Well, The one winter that I was brave enough (dumb enough?) to live in Minnesota, I landed a '74 Pinto Squire wagon for the princely sum of 20.00. Put a 18.00 water pump on it, and a 15.00 used battery - I was stylin'! (And probably the only person in Minnesota history to use the word stylin'!!!) The rust was so bad that the wood grain decal on the sides was structural!!! Literaly, with the windows rolled up, you could stick your hands through where the door panels should have been, and right out into the airstream... The best part though was the floor pan was rusted at the seam that ran right behind the front seats, so that when someone sat in the back seat the floor pan would droop and scoop air in. Or snow on unplowed roads!!! I got everybody I know once by offering to pick them up for school, and letting them sit in the back. Came to an end the night before I left to come back to Arizona when my friends threw a goodbye party for me out on White Bear Lake...We ended the evening by pointing it to a soft spot in the center of the lake under it's own power. A sort of modified Viking funeral for a fine car!

 

Did a full restore on my British car and bought a 1969 Superbee convertible 4 on the floor, for $350.00 in 1974 Houston Tx cause I wanted A/C. Sold it for $500.00 a little over a year later and thought I made a killing. That is where the term "young and dumb" comes from.

 

I bought a ol' 79' Mustang w/ a 2.8 V6 for 400.00 bucks from a friend. Tortured that car for two years . Peg leg one tire burn outs constantly , pinned the accelarator to the floor for over an hour tryin' to blow it. lol Ended up selling it to a buddy of mine. He was gonna do a V8 swap on the car. Lost contact with him then bumped into him 6 years later at a cruise in he was still drivin the stang with the orig. V6 (still has it as far as i know).... lol You can't kill it...

 

My first one was this 1959 Volvo 544 back in Oct. '72. Paid $100 for it as it came with a new set of snow tires. Was real good in snow.

 

The best winter beaters I have had were old Subaru 4x4 wagons, tough as hell and with the 4-lo they will go through anything, good skid plates for bouncing over those frozen colds and berms. Now I have an all wheel drive Aerostar I paid 200 for. It gets around great and hauls lots of parts but isn't very well protected underneath like the Scooby-doos were.

 

In the late 70's and 80's my winter beaters were.....68 chevelle 4 door 307 with a glide.....a 69 4 door nova with a 6....a 70 2 door nova with a 307....65 4 door valiant 225 six ....63 Biscayne 4 door with a 6 always drove them a year or two then sold them for a profit....never paid more than a couple hundred for them...good old days for sure.....

 

Had a few over the years. 71 Pinto, 76 LTD. Driving a 97 Escort Wagon now thats ready to fall apart. Come to think about it I drove it last summer, the winter before that, the summer before that.............

 

used to love doing the winter beater thing. Had a '70 Impala, '72 Catalina, '69 Delta 88, '76 moredoor chevelle, '74 Delta 88, '77 Chevy Van, and last but not least the biggest turd of all--a '91 Geo Metro--pound the living HELL out of it and STILL get about 45 MPG!!

 

72 Pinto. $100 and I thought I paid too much. Drove it until I couldn't stand it anymore and took it to the crusher.

'80 Olds Cutlass. $300, and it was awesome until the heater core popped. Sold it my cousin for $500.