[Seltzer]

Here’s my list…..I’ll try to dig up photos later.

1. At age 14 (this was 1964), I bought a Cushman Eagle from my older brother when he bought a ’53 Ford Flat-head 8. In Kansas, where I lived, you could drive to school or work at age 14. He then had the Ford painted, put moon hubcaps on it, removed the front grill.

2. At age 15, I bought the above Ford.

3. On my 16th B-Day I bought a ’61 Austin Healy “Bug-Eyed” Sprite. This was my high school car and a lot of fun. It had a huge 950 cc engine which meant in Kansas on some of those long hills (there actually are hills in eastern Kansas) I might slow down to 40 MPH.

4. My senior year in high school, anticipating needing something to drive to college on the Interstate other than my Sprite, I bought (actually ordered) a ’68 Chevelle Malibu with a 327 and a four speed. My mother offered to pay for bucket seats but I declined (for dating reasons). Actually in Dec ’69 I married my high school sweetheart so the bench seat served its purpose (and no, we did not have to get married). In retrospect, I should have kept the Sprite.

5. In ’72, with the above Malibu with over 100,000 miles on it, we bought a ’72 Old’s Cutlass Supreme. That car was our graduate school and Air Force car. We put 140,000 miles on it.

6. In ’76, after I got out of the Air Force (with one kid), we bought a used ’73 Pontiac Le Mans station wagon. This was our first ‘second” car. I guess we were in the big time. Great car…kids slept in the back (before all the seat belt / chair seat requirements). We put 100,000 miles on it.

7. We traded the Malibu in on a one year old Toyota Cressida. I think it was an ’81. That too was a great car.

8. I had an old uncle die around ’85. Out of his estate, I ended up with a Chrysler Le Baron. It was an ’75 (I think) with maybe 8,000 miles on it. We sold the Le Mans to my father-in-law (for a price of $500).

9. In ’86, I sold the Le Baron and bought an ’84 280 Z Turbo. It was a great car but had an automatic and a digital speed-o that maxed out at ’85 MPH.

10. ’87, things got crazy. I traded in the 280 Z Turbo on my new ’87 Targa (which is my DE car with 170,000 miles on it). My wife (still married) decided she needed a bigger car than the Cressida, so we traded it in on ’87 Cadillac Coup De Ville. Strangely that was a very good car. I think we put 75,000 miles on it.

11. While commuting to DC (which I did for ten years in the ’90s), my wife called me up to tell me she sold the Cadillac and bought a new ’94 Ford Explorer. We had been looking at a Toyota Camry and when I left town that week, that is what I thought she was going to buy. Long story short is that she called me up that weekend and said instead of the Camry, she bought an Explorer (Eddie Bower edition I might add). At the time, I had an apartment around Dupont Circle and then out for a jog the next morning to see what an Explorer looked like. I finally found one and called my wife, “So you traded a Cadillac in on a truck?”

12. We drove the Explorer until ’99. Then we bought a ’99 Toyota Fore Runner Limited. That too was a good car. Unfortunatley, it had only a six and once we moved to DC (in 2000), my wife eventually decided we need something with more power.

13. So we bought the ’04 Cayenne S.

14. Then because I did a bunch of suspension stuff to our second car (the ’87 Targa), she announced that she could no longer drive the Targa. I have to admit, it is a fairly physical car to drive. So we bought an ’97 Boxster from her boss’ friend --- as a back up car. Thus we had three Porsche’s.

15. Then a couple of weeks ago, her boss (who owns the vet clinic where she has a hobby joy) called me to say that he knew I liked his ’02 Turbo and he had decided to finally sell it (10,000 miles). So I bought it.

16. Now we have four Porsches.

17. Did I fail to mention that I also this year bought a part of a car trailer and now am seriously considering having the Targa’s engine rebuilt this winter and converting it to a much more dedicated track car. Someone told me about the slippery slope…….but what can I say.