My first actual car purchase was a 1979 Chevy Monza, very much like this...
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I was a senior in college (1987) with a part-time job earning just above minimum wage ($4 an hour). The car was previously owned by a guy who was subletting my roommate's room for the summer. He just bought a Mazda RX7 and was desperate to get rid of the Monza since he couldn't keep two cars. He offered the car to me for $50 and at first I refused. The thing is, I drove the car once prior to that and swore I'd never drive it again. It had been in an accident at some point and the rear bumper was hanging about 2" low on one side. But the real problem was that the alignment was so bad that if you let go of the steering wheel at 30mph, you'd be in somebody's front lawn within 50 feet. You absolutely had to hold the wheel straight every second you drove.
But, my girlfriend was standing there as I was declining the offer and she talked me into buying it just so I had a car of some sort. So, for $50 (which probably took me two weeks to pay off) I was a not-so-proud car owner.
My knowledge of car maintenance consisted of knowing where to put in oil (but not how often) and how to change a flat tire. So I drove the car as it was for a year, bad alignment and all. I don't recall actually changing the oil while I owned it, but I probably only put 5k miles on it.
About 6 months after buying it, the drivers door lock stopped working and the door couldn't be opened from the outside. It was too much of a pain, even for a 20 year old in excellent shape, to crawl across the center console from the passenger side, so I just left the window open and learned to do the Dukes of Hazzard window slide. Real classy, I know.
Eventually the clutch started to slip beyond what I could work with, so I ended up junking it for $75. Considering I never did any maintenance, I made $25 driving it for a year.
