A true spider milestone

[riverdadd]

ok, so i grew up with Fiats... blah blah... had maybe 30 or so...... in the 70's you could buy 3 for 500 bux....ect...128, X19,spiders, sedans.... no one wanted them....... fast forward to today, I spent the day with my 16 year old daughter, teaching her to drive my "old" car...... (see my avatar) in the modern world of automatic everything, it was so rewarding to see the smile on her face to actually drive a stick shift. It kinda brings a tear to this old eye to see the next generation driving an old Fiat.........

[klweimer]

Nice. My daughter has always loved driving my Fiat. She had a stick shift Saab in high school. Built like a tank, not very fast, but she was always safe in it.
Kirk

[DUCeditor]

How nice for you!

I've observed that there are relatively few young car enthusiasts today -- at least by the standards of my generation. And among the relative few I see the majority are into the hotted up Asian sedan scene.

But once in a while I am surprised by a youthful reaction to my `77 124. "Hey mister! Nice car!"

What's amazing to me is owning a car that is still fresh and new in my eyes -- a "forever" timeless design -- that is seen by others to be an antique.

But then again the design for the 124 Spider is now over fifty years old. In the terms of my own youth, having started driving in 1964, that's a car design from about 1910. Achhhh!

Is the car that "aged"? I admit I cannot see it that way. Not like, say, a Morgan or an MG TC. Those are old classics. My 124 is, in my eyes, just shy of yesterday.

-Don

An old man in an "old" car?

[DUCeditor]

deleted - double post

[phaetn]

I spent the day with my 16 year old daughter, teaching her to drive my "old" car...... (see my avatar) in the modern world of automatic everything, it was so rewarding to see the smile on her face to actually drive a stick shift. It kinda brings a tear to this old eye to see the next generation driving an old Fiat.........

Congrats! My 12 an 10 y.o. daughters pretend to argue over "who gets the car" when I'm done with it.

My older one is very cautious (a good downhill skiier, but also plots her course carefully) and is nervous in go carts; my younger, meanwhile, when in doubt just goes faster. Doesn't matter what it is, go carts, bicycles, skiing -- she's a speed junkie. (No kidding, we went zip-lining by the Niagara Falls and she complained it was boring). She'll probably drive the Fiat first.

Congrats to your daughter. What a rite of passage!

Cheers,
phaetn