I found 2 pictures of my car parked next to my brother's '78 fiat spider convertible. I still regret not buying the convertible. One of my mom's clients had had it since before she got married, but it wasn't practical anymore because they lived out in the country where the roads were unpaved and could be really bad in nasty weather...you really needed 4 wheel drive out there. So she decided to sell it because it was a shame to have it just sitting there....she LOVED that car. She knew I was looking for one, and she was willing to sell it to me for 1500, which was a steal, but I didn't know how to drive stick and the only person I knew with a stick who could teach me was my dad. As a teenage girl, my father and I had a very tenuous relationship and I would break out in a rash just talking to him on the phone. I also knew from my brother's experience that he was not a patient driving teacher. So I passed on the car and my brother snatched it up. It was hilarious because my brother was 6'2" and about 350 pounds, and that car was TINY. His head stuck up over the windshield. He had to push the drivers seat back as far as it would go, and it touched the back seat. We used to cram 4 extra people in that thing to go to the movies. His friend Donna would sit in the passenger seat, pushed all the way forward, I'd sit behind her with my knees against the back of the front seat. My friend Dawn, who was tiny would shove herself in sideways behind the drivers seat with her legs going across my lap, and the German exchange student we squeazed in between us in the back seat. We'd make the 40 mile drive to Gillette like that, and then have to climb out...man we had fun, though. I loved that car, and if I could have driven manual, it would have been mine.
Can't really see the wheel rims, so I don't know if they were the originals or not. But I DID have the hood ornament at that time. Maybe it got stolen when I was in college....now I don't remember. But I obviously had it then, and this looks like the parking lot of the apartment building where my brother and I lived. Or maybe it got stolen in high school and then returned because someone had seen who took it? I had suspicions because I remember a certain classmate drooling over my car...he LOVED old cars and liked to fix them up, and I think he's the one who told me the hood ornament was an important piece on the older cars and that people stole them all the time. And then I think maybe that's when mine went missing? So maybe that's what I'm remembering. In any case, it's there in the picture, so if it was stolen in high school, it was probably him and then he felt bad and returned it. It was so long ago now, I just don't remember. And you can't see the damage on the side because it was on the Driver's side where the lady always drove it into the garage. The drivers side had this nasty scrape all along the side of it.
View attachment 641535View attachment 641536
