I bought my first car when I was 15 in June 1992. It was a blue 1982 Dodge Omni that I bought myself ($900) after finding it in the paper. I looked at several cars including ones I wanted more like a Regal but settled for the Dodge as the body was in great shape but needed some mechanical work, although it did run and move under it's own power. I planned to fix it by the time I got my license.
Most of it was the maintance needed to be brought up to date, many of the parts were original and showing wear. The hoses, belts, plug wires, ect. The car only had 51k on it.
I kept the car on the road until Aug 1995 (right after I graduated HS) and finally sold it in Oct 95 for $325. It had 72k on it by then, about 7k a year I had put on it.
The car just never was dependable and was constantly costing me money. I thought I could get it's issues fixed but I kept finding more wrong with it. I didn't know much about cars back then and overlooked somethings and didn't check others.
Some of the bigger things I found out later is the gas tank was rusted on the inside. Apparently the PO never filled the tank above 1/4 so it would get condesation in it. They were too cheap to replace the air filter so the air filter box was stuffed with Chore Boys as a makeshift air cleaner element! The Chore Boys had gotten crap into the carb.
Someone had added air conditioning to the car. The car was a base model to begin with with no power steering, brakes, windows....anything. They did a nice job mechanically but wiring they made a mess and cut into the main harness. The AC never worked when I had the car but then other electrical problems started to show up. As the wiring was being looked at we found out how badly spliced it was, and the wires even changed colors though out the harness. Around this time the transaxle started to leak and the clutch was slipping from the fluid. The car would need the transaxle repaired, new clutch since it was contaminated but this still would leave the electrical problems. So I decided to get rid of it.
I had it for sale from Aug until Oct when it finally sold. I sold it to an older man from the next town over and my father drove it to his house for him. I have no idea whatever became of it. He did say he was giving it to his daughter who lived in a bad area with on street parking only. Her cars kept getting trashed and would look for cheap cars to buy.
I don't really miss the car but I have wondered several times what happened to it and how long after I sold it was it still on the road. With all the problems that kept creeping up with it I learned alot about cars because of it. It wasn't a complete loss owning it.
