I'm 36, my first car was a 73 Beetle ($800, from a fellow with a son a couple of years behind me in high school; it was first car for father and son both) which unfortunately disappeared when the friend who was going to rebuild the engine got an out of town job and disappeared leaving it with a friend of his who had it parked on the street and eventually forgot to move it often enough to not get towed! gee, thanks... a 73 Squareback ($800 or $900, I think. purchased from hippy chick who a friend turned out to know who'd purchased it from a fellow a girl I later worked with happened to know. to price of car add cost of new master cylinder required immediately and cost of transmission work I postponed for over a year but knew I'd need if ever I were to go in reverse using the transmission) was my replacement while (I thought) the Beetle was being rebuilt. When the Squareback was MOFOCO'd, I bought a 77 bus with serious body problems (my stepbrother owned a body shop in SC) only to have the beam collapse in WI before I could get it home. Before I could find a beam for less than the $900 I'd paid for the bus, I'd made the mistake of buying a 77 Westie from the brother of my best friend in WI. The bad muffler turned out to hide a knock in the engine, so sadly the engine from Bus 1 (Matilda) went into the more solid Westie only to have the Westie turn out to have some sort of fuel problem which is STILL not repaired two years later... :P Westie cost is $1500 plus $900 for the engine bus (no other parts retrieval since the guy who hasn't repaired the Westie lost the name and address of the junkyard with Matilda) plus $400 for the engine swap. Since my employers ran out of cash and laid me off almost immediately after the Westie went into the shop, it's stuck there until I break down and tow it back to SC - unless it's actually repaired. The squareback needs a new starter, but is otherwise back in operable shape in SC after a couple of thousand dollars spent repairing the repairs made by MOFOCO in WI. I now drive a 77 bus I purchased in Vancouver in April for ~$500. It's a former Westie hardtop, but the PO removed all but the table, cooler, curtains and mattress - even the light and (not a Westie part, but...) the gas heater. I also have two severely rusted fasties, 70 and 73, which are nearly complete between them. I hope to assemble one nearly solid car from them in the next few months. $400 plus whatever I buy to repair them. Probably too much detail - my apologies, but I need to get back to other tasks and won't take time to edit. :)
oh, and even my friends tend to call me Mez or Animal Boy. :) The latter caused some mild discomfort to a friend who always called me Animal Boy, which comes from a Ramones album and song, when he introduced me to Joey Ramone.