––How did this car come into your possession?

Clinch: My dad and I bought it brand new. He produced the down money and I handled the payments—which came, as I recall, to something on the order of $3,000. The car had a three-speed automatic transmission, a brown vinyl interior, and a 70-horse engine that looked like something stripped from a John Deere lawn tractor. My dad, who has always been a great inspiration to me, was then and is now of the opinion that when you buy a used car you're buying somebody else's troubles. So we bought a brand new 1974 Chevy Vega instead, and got $3,000 worth of our very own troubles.

Lee: A hand-me-down from my sister.

Siegel: That would depend on what “possession” means. The car was Howie’s, but he had nowhere safe to park it, so my father stored it for him in the garage under his apartment building. My father may have started out with good intentions; good intentions are a family trait. In this case that would have meant keeping the Caddy safe under the tarpaulin, probably, but pretty soon he was driving it around town, and then I was driving it, too, and then Howie seemed distracted by his own problems (money, sobriety, marriage, cheese soufflé). After a while, he stopped coming by to check on it, and I didn’t see him again for a long time.

Strauss: I grew up in Manhattan and never sat in the driver's seat until I went to Ithaca college in 1987. My best friend was from Rockville Center and was one of the few freshman with a car. Late at night, after we'd seen a movie or gone for a pizza run, she'd pull into a mall's parking lot and hand me the keys. Technically, I learned to drive in the freezing cold, in dark while listening to Rick Astley.

Wilsey: I bought it straight from the Saab factory in Gothenburg. It was me and a bunch of US Army guys stationed on bases in Germany. Saab had a deal where they'd charge no tax and ship the car home for free if you came and got it. Airfare to Sweden was a lot cheaper than sales tax back then. Also, it was defective!