My first car. I purchased it for around $300 if I remember correctly. It didn't have power steering or power brakes, but it was mine! I loved the freedom it brought. It had a huge dent in the rear quarter panel that I painted a big Band-Aid on. It became known as "the Band-Aid car". One night while driving down Deer Park Ave (Route 231) it stopped running... I quickly learned where to put oil in. Amazingly, after I added oil, it started right back up and kept on chugging. Those Chevy 250's are indestructible! Well after I made a turn and the motor mount let-go one day, I figured it wasn't safe to drive and drove it to the junk yard. What a dumb ass I was, I should have just replaced the motor mount, but I really didn't have anyone to guide me and I was tired of the car anyway.

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With a 400 cubic inch motor, four barrel carburetor and dual exhaust, you would think that this car could at least break the tires loose. Sheesh was this car slow! I only had it for a few months before I blew the tranny. Another one bites the dust!

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See the Mustang in the back, yeah, I wrecked it. That is when I learned a very hard lesson on why "counter-steering" is so important when driving fast.

My first hot rod. God, I loved this car. When the transmission went on the Grand Prix, a girl who I worked with, had a boyfriend, who new someone, selling a 1973 Camaro. Did you get all of that?
So I went to look at the car. It was sitting outside of a house right off of Commack road in Deer Park. It had a brown door and steel wheels. It looked pitiful and drove worse! The owner assured me that it would run great if I had it tuned up. I was so damn gullible and plain old stupid that I bought it. I think I paid $400 for it. I proceeded to drive it up to Deer Park avenue and get it tuned up at "Precision Tune". The guy who did the tune ( I later worked with this guy at Jiffy Lube) told me to take it easy with the car, because it was fast. Huh?! Yeah, right, OK. I get in the car and drive up to Montauk Highway and while driving through West Babylon, it starts to drizzle. Immediately after it starts to drizzle, I see a few guys in a late model Monte Carlo SS from school. The all laughed and pointed at me and the car. I was probably rather upset and wanted to get the hell away from them, so I floored it. The transmission kick-down engaged and the skinny bald tires started to spin. I went sideways, almost into on-coming traffic and then swung back towards the guys in the Monte. Finally I got a little bit of traffic and blew past those guys like they were standing still.
It was definitely a sleeper. It had a two barrel Rochester and stock, cast exhaust manifolds! As I drove the car, I found that it MUST have had .411 gears and a shift kit. It wasn't exactly "fast", but I raced and beat a Grand National at the time. So that would probably put the car in the mid to low 14 second range.
One day I was putting gas into the car and decided to find out what the tire valve near the gas filler neck was for. Oh! air suspension. Now that the car could be jacked up in the rear, I needed bigger wheels and tires. I went to a tire and wheel place in Lindenhurst and bought a set of Torque-thrust D wheels with tires, however, my friend Smitty liked them and was willing to trade for a set of four Cragar wheels with N-50's on the back. Sweet.
After plotting and scheming with my friend Donato in 1st period History, we decided that he would put a cam in and do some other things to hop it up. Well, that was the end of that. He knocked the oil pickup off when he put the distributor back in and that turned one of the lobes on that new cam round. The shop that dismantled the motor said that it looked like it had a lot of nice work done to the heads. I parted the car out for like $500. That really sucked!

So my mother felt bad that about what happened to the Camaro (she may have had a part in it's demise, but I'll keep that between her and I) and she talked my stepfather into buying me this Cutlass. I really should have been more appreciative, but he and I got along like oil and water. I think that it may have been because of this relationship that I hated the car. I beat the piss out of it and then traded it for the '74 Camaro. On a positive note, the car had a (I think) 260 ci V8 in it, and that was kind of cool. Another thing that I didn't like about it was that it had a piece of brushed aluminum that wrapped around the C pillar on the back of the car. You know, where the landau tops usually went. Except this didn't look half as good as a landau top (and I don't particularly like Landau tops).

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I traded a guy in Lindenhurst, my Cutlass for this Camaro. The picture was taken, before I got the car, in front of his house. It wasn't nearly as fast as the '73 Camaro I had, but it was a lot cooler than the Cutlass with the stupid stainless thing over the roof. It had a ratchet shifter (which I found and figured out by accident) and headers, so it was fun. My fondest memories are going down third street in West Babylon, hitting the crown in the road where it intersected 15th ave and seeing a shower of sparks in the rear view mirror. Also, racing down Wolf hill road in Huntington, trying to get my girlfriend at the time, back to her school for the late bus. I really worked the shifter and drove that car on the edge to get her back. If I didn't get her back, I would have to drive all of the way to Coram to get her home. The problem with that was that if her mother or father (who came home about that time) saw my car, they would be very upset and probably ground her. Yup, the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.
One day, I stop at the Amoco on Route 109 in West Babylon and a Habib asks if I am selling the car. Always ready for a change, I say yes and suggest a reasonable price of probably about $1700 (damned if I can really remember). He agrees and I tell him that I need to get a ride. So I go back to my friend Jon's house and he follows me to the gas station. We make the exchange and the guy writes me a bill of sale for $200, this way he would save on taxes at the DMV. I go back to Jon's car and give Jon $1500 and put the $200 in my pocket. Before we could get out of there, the habib runs over to tell me the car won't start. He then threatens to call the cops and does.
The problem with the car was that after a while, the starter had developed a hot spot from the headers and would occasionally not start. I had no idea though and thought that the problem was much grander and that is really why I wanted to sell the car.
Well, the cops show up and I say the guy is crazy (Yeah, I was a no good little fuck). I show the cops my $200 bill of sale and the $200 in my pocket. They then say that everything is in order and proceed to let me go. I almost feel bad about that, but looking back, it wasn't that big of a deal, the guy just needed to put in a $50 starter and he had a decent car for the money.

I picked this car up from a guy with the last name Guido. Funny, right? I would pass the car all the time on my way to and from an ex-girlfriends house in Coram. It was primer over a nasty shade of Yellow Ocre (Imagine Gulden's mustard). My memory fails me, but I may have been the one who primered the car, just so I didn't have to look at that putrid shade of yellow. It was a lot of fun that little piece of crap. except for the slush box tranny. I actually had a bad run in with the cops in this car. I was chased by an off duty Lieutenant (I didn't find this out until afterwards) and I almost lost him in his Chevy Celebrity. However, I turned down a dead-end street and the next thing I know, he's tapping on my window with his Glock 9mm. After I got it back from impound, the transmission went. It sat in front of my parents house for a few weeks until it was towed away as an abandoned car.

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So when the Opel left the scene, I was left without a car, so my friend Jon's father sold me this car for a really good deal. Frank (Jon's dad) was a very nice guy. It was a forest green with tan interior. I always admired the car when Jon's father had it. It had wide door saddles with kick plates that said 'Scirroco' and it had a lot of gauges and crap. It just seemed like a nifty little car to me. And it was a fun little car, but it developed a problem where the throttle would stick (open, of course). So rather than go get it fixed, like a person with half a brain would do, what did I do? Nothing, I just kind of worked around it. Well, it flared up one time too many. The last time was on the George Washington bridge in New Jersey on our way back from Action Park. After removing the license plates and my personal belongings, my friend Wendy and I had to cram into an already packed Oldsmobile Cutlass and leave the Scirocco to the Jersey DOT. Lucky for us, we were traveling with the four other people in the Cutlass...

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This was the first car I ever owned with a manual transmission. I really enjoyed beating on cars and automatic transmissions just didn't seem up to the task, so I learned how to drive a manual transmission and I've never been the same since! This was a really fun car. I loved the way you sit so low in it. It had a really cool dash layout and handled extremely well. It wasn't too slow neither. I raced a late eighties Mustang convertible (with an auto I think) and beat him pretty good. So it was probably a high fifteen second car. Not too bad for a straight six! I found this car in Newsday and had to drive out east to get it. The clutch quit on it shortly afterwards. I was working at S&K Speed in Rockville Centre and a fellow employee help me (who am I kidding, he did all of the work and I drank beer and watched). Then I traded it for the Granada and maybe $100 I think. I forget. We were supposed to trade back after the guy fixed the vacuum leak, but he told me that it got stolen I think he just liked it and wanted to keep it, whatever.

I traded the 280Z for this car plus a $100. It had some big wheels and "GT" badges on it. I guess one of the previous owners had an odd idea of what a GT car is. I drove it for a few months until it blew a head gasket on the Southern State Parkway, while driving home from work. I left it on the median and the state auctioned it off.

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Mom felt bad for me, so she lent me $2700 to buy this car. It was pretty nice and served me well for a while. The one thing I remember about this car is that I almost lost my life in it. I pulled an all-nighter with a new girlfriend. We were getting to know each other and at about 4 am she had to get to sleep and I had to get to work. I was snoozing away when I was rudely awoken by what felt like somebody shaking me vigorously. The car was going down the center divider at about 50 mph and the "shaking" was the vibration from the car rubbing against the guard rail. That will wake you up in a hurry! It had a small V6 that was prone to over-heating. I changed to thermostat a couple of times to no avail and it probably needed a water pump. I cured it by just removing the thermostat altogether.  One day, while trying to merge on the L.I.E. BANG!, clacka-clacka-clacka-clacka-clacka-clacka. Yeah, I blew the motor and sold the car for $600 as a rolling chassis. I don't think I ever paid mom back for that one, not do I think she ever asked for the money back. Thanks again mom!

My first new car. What a ton of fun this car was! I rate it 9.5 out of 10 on the "fun factor" scale. I never made a three point turn with this car. What for, when you can speed up a little, drop anchor (the e-brake) and spin the car around? Yeah, I did that a LOT. This car also had a nice limited slip differential. I did a smoke show on a hill once where I went from first into second, then into third, where I started to loose momentum and then dropped back into second. It was the biggest, baddest FWD smoke show that I have ever seen in my life. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing a RWD smoke show that good! The only bummer was that the car was hit in the door eleven days after I bought it. Just my luck! Eventually, I got it fixed. As much fun as this car was, I was twenty years old and dumb with testosterone. I was at a car sale one day with a co-worker and I saw a gorgeous red 300ZX for sale, so I bought it. Then I got fired at work for playing practical jokes. Ugh! As luck would have it, the car got stolen, before it got repossessed. The bad part was that I didn't have gap insurance and had to cover the $2,800.00 difference. Nothing like getting hit when you are down!

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As you probably read on the previous entry, I bought this car when I really shouldn't have. It was hot and me feel like hot shit. It wasn't fast and the handling was mediocre, but I still loved this car. It killed me when I had to do a voluntary repossession. Let me tell you, don't ever do that, because they will auction the car for peanuts and bill you for the difference!
There were two notable days with this car. The first was when I got T-boned doing about eighty by a girl who didn't realize that you are supposed to stop when the light is red. And the second was when I raced my boss, Matt down the LIE doing about 100 to 120 mph from exit 62 to exit 49. He was in an '88 Mustang LX, the same one I bought a few years later.

Shortly after High School, around 1989, my friend Jon DioGuardi bought one of these and I really loved it. Approximately three years later, I found this one near the apartment I had in Port Jefferson Station. It ran well, but was rotted all to hell. I was working at the Goodyear in Coram and I was driving somewhere with one of the mechanics, I think it was this guy named Chris. Anyway, I remember going somewhere after a hard rain and when I went through a big puddle, the water shot up through the floor and soaked my passenger. After beating the piss out of it for a little while, I think I may have traded it to another mechanic, named John for the Firebird Formula. Chris, John and I did a lot of trading and selling of cars between the three of us. The 280ZX, the Firebird Formula, the '68 Mustang and maybe even the second 280ZX all probably changed hands between the three of us.   

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Cool car, classic F-body handling and I think I blew the motor on this one too. If I remember correctly, it leaked a lot and I didn't add oil frequently enough. I drank a LOT in the nineties, so my memory is a little fuzzy for that decade.

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This car was a rat. It was in sad shape when I got it, but I polished it up and made a shiny turd out of it. I did the body-work myself and it really showed. If nothing else, it was reliable. I don't think that I broke down in it once. I wound up selling it to either Chris or John from the Goodyear store. 

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I slide this on into a curb and sold it to this other guy Chris who got me into motorcycles for $100. 

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I bought this car for a few hundred dollars. It had a rotted freeze-out plug and leaked water like a sieve. 

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It broke down and I don't remember what I did with it. I think I left it at a diner in Port Jefferson.

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I blew the motor and sold the chassis to some woman I was working with at the time. I thought the oil pressure gauge didn't work, but it did...

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I give this car a solid ten out of ten on the fun factor scale!

I bought this car after the LeBaron was stolen. It was a piece of crap, but after I replaced the fuel filter it was finally able to go faster than a Toyota Corolla. Then I gutted the catalytic converter to fix the overheating problem. after that, the performance upgrades came. A full exhaust with a high flow catalytic converter, Edelbrock headers and a Flowmaster muffler. Then I ported the throttle body, made a 3/4" throttle body spacer, installed a 3" K&N air filter and increased the fuel pressure. The transmission went, so I had it rebuilt with Corvette servos (it worked like a shift kit). A year later, the tranny went again, so I converted it from an automatic to a five speed. Lastly, I installed a posi rear and 3.73 gears. It wasn't fast, but it was pretty quick. It also had a nice $2,000 stereo system with a sub, two amps, nice speakers with cross-overs and a nice head unit. The whole time that I had it, I was chasing an electrical gremlin. At one point, I installed a push button starter and that helped keep me from getting stuck all of the time. In the end, the gremlin won and I traded the car in towards the Eclipse. It was terrible, I remember driving to the dealer; the lights where flashing on and off and the wipers were going on their own!

My second new car and my first leased vehicle.

I was doing 135, but got ticketed for doing 100 in a 55. Thank god my brother assisted in getting me cleared of the charge.

I bought this from the owners of Gulf Coast Motorsports where I worked at the time for about $1,000. I sold it a year later for $1,500. During a hurricane I submarined it through a huge puddle and it kept on going. It was a good little truck!

I bought this from a Pontiac dealer by the name of Dick Norris. No, really! It had sucky brakes, so I put drilled and slotted rotors on it and it served me well for a while. Then I needed to get rid of the payment book, so I sold it. 

I found this on a website called tamparacing.com and bought this from a kid in Sarasota or somewhere near there. It was fun as hell. It was easy to work on and fun to drive. I enjoyed it, but then sold it because I got a job as a consultant and they gave me Honda CRV to use. I needed the space more than I needed a third vehicle. 

My third new vehicle. I was really sad to see this one go, because I immensely enjoyed chirping second gear. This was by far the easiest car in the world to do it with.

It was my wife's minivan, but I bought it and it was in my name, so technically it was mine.

I bought this car for $2,000 put $2,500 into it and then traded it for the 2004 Jeep Wrangler. I was trying to save a few bucks by buying this car, but in the end, it cost me almost as much as the 2006 Mustang in up-keep and fixing it up. The damn thing kept snapping clutch cables and I don't know why. 

I traded the Mustang for this thing as it was worth more money. I did well. I had $4500 into the Mustang and couldn't sell it for $3900, but the Jeep I sold for $7300! Woo-Hoo! I really miss having a convertible and this reminded me of that. I'd love to get another one some day.

I got this for free and flipped it for $300. I made a little over $200 for basically towing a car to my house and putting an ad in the paper.

I always wanted to build a replica or a kit car. Unfortunately, I had to sell this one before it was 100% complete.

I almost bought a car like this back in 2001. However, the cost of the car was a little high and the dealer didn't want to haggle, so I bought the Eclipse Spyder instead. Having owned this particular example makes me believe that I did the right thing back in 2001. That may not be fair, because this car wasn't cared for, but it was a piece of shit. I hated driving it, because it paled in comparison to my current daily driver, a 2008 Honda Civic EX. It was nice when I had the top down, but what convertible isn't? The brakes sucked, the shifter sucked, as did the clutch, even after I replaced it with a new one! It didn't drive well at all. It is amazing that Ford went so far downhill when you compare this to either '88 Mustang I had before it. Thankfully, they regained their ground, as the 2006 model I owned was stellar. 

This was the first time that I purchased a car for practically and not because I NEEDED a car or WANTED it. It was a fun little car it handled great, however it was prone to skidding to a stop. I suppose it was just a little too nose heavy. The aforementioned issue resulting in two accidents. One being someone else's fault, they side-swiped me because I couldn't stop in time to avoid it. The second time there was a bump and a dip in the road followed by sand which cause me to slide into a sign on a median as I was braking in the turning lane. Regardless, it left before it's time due to financial issues of the 2009 depression. 

This was a very enjoyable car to drive, big, roomy and comfortable. I bought it with 101,000 miles on it and sold it six months later with 108,000 miles. I paid $3,000 for it and put about $100 into it, then sold it for $3,000. Free car for six months! I really liked this car and didn't want to sell it, but it started leaking like a sieve. It probably would have cost $1,000 to fix the oil leaks and such and after I took a deposit on the car I regretted it. I was hoping the lady would back out of the deal, but she didn't.

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Yup, I dropped it (While standing at a light). It ran good, it handled like crap and I wound up selling it to (my friend at the time) Rich Bernie. The picture was taken when he owned it. He would park it, as you can see in the picture, on the side of the road. He lived on a fairly busy road in not the best town. After about a month it got stolen (of course, duh!), wrecked and recovered. He sold it I think.

This bike had so much torque that when I first got it, I thought it had a slipping clutch. My friend Jeff took it for a test ride and said "you idiot, that's not the clutch slipping, that's the back tire!". He he, I was laying rubber in first and second with that bike whenever I got the chance! When the motor in my '76 280Z blew, I rode it as my sole means of transportation for a month and then traded my boss Matt for his 1988 Mustang LX.

I bought this one as a basket case. After I reassembled it, it didn't run. It turns out that the motor was jammed up real good. So I had it rebuilt by a motorcycle shop in Bayshore on Sunrise highway. They bored it out to 727 cc's, with Wiseco pistons, a Falicon super crank and a few other goodies. It was quick for a six hundred, but couldn't keep up to my friend Jeff's CBR1000 when I tried to race him. Shortly after that, we were at the Steamroom in Port Jefferson when I saw a guy with a CBR 600 race bike in the back of his pickup. I asked him what I could do to my bike in order to keep up with Jeff's 1000? He told me to sell it and buy a bigger bike...

This was a hold-over to keep me on two wheels. I hated it and quickly sold it to my boss Matt, if I remember correctly.

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I had this customer at the gun store who worked on bikes. He had a shop in his garage at home. He told me about this bike, so I decided to go look at it. While I was waiting for him to finish with a customer his wife walked up and started to talk to me. She pointed at the bike on the rack, a full out drag bike and explained to me that it was hers. Then she pointed at the bike that I came to look at and said that it was her old bike. I asked if it was quick and she said that she could consistently do 9’s with it and sometimes 8’s in the quarter mile. Of course I bought the bike. When the guy asked me if I wanted the wheelie bar for it, I responded “what for? I am going to put lights on it and ride it on the street. He shook his head and said “ok”. A few days later I tried to race my buddy Jeff on his CBR1000F. We went from a roll at about 20 or 30 miles per hour. When I cracked the throttle, the bike stood straight up and scared the snot out of me. Holy shit! I lost the race, but found a new respect for that piece of shit.
Yeah, it was ugly and I even had some guys make it a point to hang out of their van laughing and pointing, but it was fast, God-damn it was fast. Well, towards the end of the season, I was showing off and doing a healthy burnout when bang! The motor seized. So my buddy Jim’s father and I dragged it down into his basement and dismantled it. It was FUBAR. I decided that to part it and that was that...

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I bought this bike from a guy in Staten Island. This quite possibly, may have been my first "internet" purchase of a vehicle. Anyway, it was another track bike that I added lights to and rode on the street. It was pretty quick. It had aftermarket fairings on it which were still in primer white. So I drew up a cool, but simple pattern and paid my friend Rob to paint it. He pitched my drawing and made up his own design, which I didn't like at all. If you look at the picture, you can probably see why. I really don't remember what happened to it. I must of sold it, but I have no idea to whom or why.

I bought this bike from a co-worker when I worked at Formula One Motorsports in Bayshore. It was a good clean bike and I had to pay the guy off in weekly payments. I wound up taking this bike with me to Florida when I moved and then sold it to a motorcycle shop (that I later worked at) when I couldn't find work and needed the money more than the bike.
A few months later I saw the bike while I was driving down alternate 19. A black guy had bought it and quickly dropped it, destroying the perfect plastic fairings. It looked terrible and I felt so bad for it.

This was the last motorcycle that I owned. I bought it from a co-worker at AAR Composites. It was a lot different than the japanese bikes that I was used to. It shook violently which was annoying at lights and scary on sharp, low speed turns. I wasn't sad to see it go as I used the money towards a down payment on the Cobra.