20 Mar 2023 | 4 mins
Overview
  • Let us take you down memory road and tell you how your first car was the perfect accessory to your teenage years. 🚗🚗🚗

Getting your licence brings the promise of adventures with your mates, the sweet, sweet taste of freedom and not having to rely on your parents to share the family car all the time. But we often neglect the real star of the show - securing our first set of wheels. Yep, you betcha. I’m talking about your first car.

Nothing will quite beat the little crap-box you drove into the Maccas drive-thru at ridiculous hours of the night. And when it’s time to say farewell to your first car, you'll remember the memories that were created and how it was the perfect accessory to your teenage years. 

You'll reminisce about the hard slog saving up for your baby, how you slaved away at work to secure yourself a four-wheel stallion that could get you from point A to point B, regardless of its condition. Eventually, you got your grubby mitts on that beat-up Barina and on the day you were acquainted with your first car, it felt like the beginning of something. This was the start of your teenage years and all the memories you were about to create.

 

The moment you slap those P plates on signals your newfound freedom. You don’t have to wake up at ungodly hours to rush off to the bus - you can catch some Zs and drive to school instead. You’re able to ditch overstayed family gatherings without begging your parents with the question of “when are we going?”. You're able to drive your mates to the beach with the windows down and the radio blaring, singing at the top of your lungs without a care for who might hear you. 

You’ve spent many late nights having DnM sessions in the carpark. You’ve laughed, cried and even fought with your mates in this car (has anyone else noticed how heavy conversations always seem to go down in a car?).

But the most important thing is the unspoken connection you have created with your first car (unspoken in the sense that this is indeed an inanimate object we are talking about - cars can’t talk back). I'm talking about that connection you forge through all those close-calls behind the wheel. Whether you nearly killed your mates while you were busy queueing up songs or you were just really terrible at reverse parking - you and your car have been through it all together. 

You’ve experienced highs and lows together, whether it be its unexpected survival of a lengthy road trip or your car's sudden breakdown on a highway, it was never a dull moment. My favourite memory of my first car was when I picked up my mate to go get KFC and it started to pour with rain. I chucked on the windscreen wipers and to my surprise, they stopped halfway on the windscreen. I was stuck driving on a main road in the torrential rain with no working windscreen wipers, swerving through the streets attempting to get to the KFC drive-thru. In the end, it took weeks to get fixed and I copped a lot of dirties off other drivers when they saw me on the road.

All in all, you and your first car share a powerful bond that will be with you through all your teenage years and beyond. RIP Barina, you were so good to me.