1980s & earlier Family Car / Name of one ?

[SirOtter]

Originally Posted by jaksen

Ford Maverick. Small and sporty. We had a pale or powder blue one. (It was actually my mother's.) We got more turns of the head in that little car, and people honking (their approval), boys making sounds out the window at us, etc. The two colors which were seen everywhere were the powder blue and the lime green.

So it was a smallish, popular sporty car.

My dad drove a Torino, aqua with a black top. My gf drove a Torino, yellow with a black top. My grandfather, who always had a little more money than the rest of us, always drove a Cadillac.

We had a couple of Mavericks, one two-door and one four-door. It was a replacement for the Falcon, and IIRC, was the last American production vehicle priced under $2000. The Mercury Comet was retooled to be virtually the same car, as it had been in relation to the Falcon. I learned to drive a stick-shift in my dad's 1974 four-door Maverick.

And I learned to drive an automatic in Mom's 1974 Gran Torino station wagon. I found racing better in the Torino, which had a 400 cc engine with a four-barrel carb. Sucker would move! The engine was big enough to propel it off the line in a snap, and the weight of the thing carried you past the finish line on pure inertia. Of course, you were pretty much out of gas by then, so coasting across the line was your only option.

[SirOtter]

Originally Posted by Ken

Plymouth Duster gets my vote. Wonder if there are any still about.

I still see a few here and there. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and I had a '75 when we got married in '81. That slant-six engine was a goer.

[Hip-Hop-a-potamus]

Our family had a 1970 Chevrolet Kingswood station wagon. Many family trips taken, from Austin to Weslaco, TX, where my granny lived. (like this, only forest green: http://www.cars.e-mond.com/2009/05/1...ate-wagon.html)

It was great cuz I could spread out my Barbies in the back luggage area and play, and my mom loved it because it would keep me out of her hair for a few hours, without having to listen to me say, "Are we there yet?"

[Kathl33n]

Dodge Dart (Swinger) - my father loved that thing. Had two of them and they had a lot of power. One was white and the other was brown, 1972 and 1975 models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Dart#1975

[TheRajinski]

My parents had a Toyota Tercel. I cried the day they sold it.