My first car was a blue Pinto wagon.  I think it was a 1974.  This isn’t my car, but is pretty much what it looked like.  What a junk box.

It was around 1981, and I was a student at Ohio State.  I was going to be co-oping at General Electric, at E152nd in Collinwood.  I needed a car, so went to a used car lot and picked this up for $700.  That’s $2400 in today’s money.

I didn’t like anything about this car.

A friend worked at the DeLorean Cadillac dealership at about the same time the DeLorean cars went on the market.  The DeLorean was the first car we’d heard of from a new car company, and looked like it was from the future.

DeLoreans did look really futuristic and had a bunch of innovative features. 

In 1985, it made sense that Doc Brown’s time machine would be a DeLorean.

The DeLorean Cadillac dealership had chromed plastic plates they put on the new cars they sold.  The plate said, “By DeLorean”.  Basically the same as the decals that other dealerships put on their cars, but fancy looking.  My friend got me a few.  I cut of the “By” portion.

Since my car was a junk box, I pried off the “Pinto” plates, put “DeLorean” plates on it. We thought it was funny.

When the transmission blew, I sold the Pinto to Al’s girlfriend for $500. 

It got me through my first summer of co-oping, so I guess that’s not so bad.  Fortunately, GE paid pretty well, so I could afford a less embarrassing car.