My First Car-1968 Chevy Impala

My first car was a 1968 Chevrolet Impala, 4 door, 327 cubic inch motor, with a 4 barrel carburetor. It was the most ugly shade of green. The interior was a green and gold. Pretty stylish for the time, I guess. But, when it's the late 70s and it's your first car, it wasn't the sexiest car in the school parking lot.

It was, however, in the school parking lot, which was more than all of my girlfriends at the time could say. I was the only one of my friends with a job and a car. That made me popular.

My dad was driving an old Impala himself and thought they were the grandest cars. He bought the car that was to be mine from my uncle. It had been sitting up in his yard for goodness knows how long. It smelled that way too.

The high school I attended allowed us to leave campus for lunch. Most schools don't allow that anymore. This gave us an opportunity to ride around. We didn't venture far since a 50 minute lunch goes by pretty fast.

One thing we always managed to do was circle the school a couple of times. This always meant groups of students would be gathered on the lawn of the school and the smokers would be gathered across the street at the pool hall. It was a fairly common for three of us girls to be sitting in the front seat of my car since it had a bench seat. Just as we were in front of half the student body, the person on the far right would bend down and hide leaving me and another girlfriend sitting side by side.

Another time, my girlfriends and I decided to cruise around a local college campus hoping to find some cute boys to gawk at. We managed to find the male dormitory and luckily there were a couple of guys in the parking lot. We were flagged down and decided to stop and talk to them. I remember my girlfriends coming up with the bright idea of hanging their jackets in the back window of the car so that the car would somehow be less noticeable as mine in case someone who knew us happened to drive by. I'm pretty sure we could have done almost anything to that car and people would have still recognized it as mine.

In my high school years I worked for a donut shop and had to be to work at 6 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I spent quite a few early mornings driving my Impala to work. I got my first speeding ticket in that car. It was a Friday afternoon and I had just picked up my paycheck. That tends to make a gal put the pedal to the metal. I was clocked at 48 mph in a 30 mph zone. At the time they had an option where you could have the ticket dismissed and cleared from your record if you went to Teen Court. I got that ticket in 1979 and I spent the next 23 years without a ticket.

Not long after I graduated and got married, we got rid of my 1968 Impala. It really was a very reliable car and served me well. I was glad to get a different car, but a little sad to see it go. They really don't make them like that anymore.

Check out the short video below of a car exactly like mine. It even looks very close to the same color. Sure brings back memories.