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There are moments in life that you always remember. For me, these moments are landmarks that stand out clearly in my memory. One such memory was the day I purchased my first car. Now while many might question whether such an event ranks at the same level as your wedding day or the birth of your children, there is no doubt that my first car was a celebrated event that I still look back upon regularly.

My first car was a black, 1987 Ford Thunderbird SC, with a 5.0 litre V-8. I had found it quite by accident, and I had not even given it a second look the first time I saw it. As with so many teenage boys, I had made up my mind that I was going to purchase a "souped up" Camaro (or similar muscle car). My best friend had recently purchased a 1983 Trans Am, and I was determined to have a car that would be just as flashy and just as fast. I had long believed that my first car would be a Camaro, as I had been such a huge fan of this car since I was a little boy, and I had set about looking for one.

Ironically, the car lot where I found my Thunderbird was a small, family owned car lot that specialized in finding muscle and sports cars. These cars were purchased throughout the southern United States and then brought to this lot via tractor-trailer. If you know anything about living in the north, you know that many months of snow and ice mean many months of salt and brine being dumped on the road. This does a lot of damage to cars in the north, and so finding a southern car was all that much more desirable because these cars, though often high mileage vehicles, were very clean. An added bonus of this lot was that their prices were very reasonable, and so we frequented this lot-which was as much like going to a Friday night car show as it was shopping for a car.

In the days before I purchased my Thunderbird, I had found my dream Camaro on the very same lot. Black on black, this 1979 Camaro was beautiful. It had a powerful 350 and looked like a show quality vehicle. Still, my parents, who would ultimately cosign on the loan for my first car, had decided that maybe this was a little too much horsepower for a first time car owner. Their insistence that I find something else led me to continue my search. While still determined to find a Camaro, I went back to the small, southern car lot to see what else they had to offer. It was on this second go-round that I found my car.

This Thunderbird had been put further back on the lot, not because the car was lacking, but because it was

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