My first car happened late in life, age 37, when I moved to South FL, which has no public transit to speak of, in the later 1980s. It was a 79 Toyota Celica, and a really good car overall, but it was a little like a cat, in that it did not like low pressure systems. In wet weather it would slow down to 5 mph. (The carburator didn't like being wet.)
I looked all over for an old Kodak of me as a toddler and my first soul-mate car, a mid-50s buick ((black, with the side-vents) that my dad had just purchased.
At the same time, my grandmother had just given me a handmade velvet coat, hat, muff, and leggings with faux fur trim and I posed like a goddess before it.
I was born around Christmas, so the car was probably a gift to my mother from my father, and the velvet suite a gift to me from my sweet and skillful grandmother.
The Buick gleamed, it glowed. It lived almost forever, too. 