My
first car...
1937
Delage D6
Since
my dad collected classic cars its no suprise that my first car was not
an old rusted out Malibu or a hand me down station wagon. It
was a pretty rare French Classic. When I was about 8 years
old I got bit by a dog. Right on my face! Really. I
still have scars to prove it. Anyway a few years later I got
an insurance settlement of $775. I was 11 or 12 years old. My dad had a
friend with the '37 Delage for sale and some how managed to agree to
sell it for $775 :-)
Mine didn't look anywhere near as good as the one in the picture.
However over the next year or two I did manage to get the car to run.
I tried to teach myself to drive and drove it into the side
of the dog pen.
This
is a 1938, mine was a '37 but I think nearly identical. (Except this
one is in good condition)
We
used run my go kart around the driveway and keep lap times. I had the
Delage parked behind the garage which was a very fast off camber corner
at the end of a long straight away. I came around the corner
way too fast and drove straight under the back bumper. In
retrospect I guess that could have been really, really bad.
As it worked out the front of the kart hit the rear tire.
The distance from the tire to the steering was was just about
right. As the front of the cart hit the tire, the steering
wheel hit the bumper and broke in to two pieces. I bounced
back off the tire with both pieces of steering wheel in my hand, one of
the pieces still connected to the kart. It was still running
so I finished the hot lap....
Finally after 2 years or so I got a body man that worked for my dad to
weld the rusted fender back on to the car. I put an ad in
Hemmings Motor News and sold the car for $1500.
That money went to car number 2 ......
