My "first" first car was an '85 Z28 with gold trim and the worst wiring job anyone would ever say "I can DO THIS!" at - it'd been wrecked and bought by us...took a couple years to slap a new hood-with-vents on it, I ended up kajiggering things as time went on, with Dad helping for the Big Portions...

Between having a Chevy SUV try to mate with and crush its hood, Pastamonster knows how many people in the wiring bolting on alarm systems and "Hey, it's got electric stuff! Let's use the POWER OF RADIO!" to impress girls by having a remote! and shit...

Ugh.

Mom wanted the fucker. She'd had a Corvair back in the 60's, driven the 70's boats, been reduced (and I do mean reduced) to bus transportation when and if it ran, and walked...and..well, the Camaro was beautiful if banged up.

So - we bought it - couple hundred bucks or some shit.

I spent forever with it parked in the yard - started it up, revved the engine on occasion...I was just a kid, and the first time I saw it, I prayed we could have it - or something like it - sometime.

Weirdest shit ever when it happened - divine providence? Luck? I dunno.

Learned how to drive in it. Had my first collision-with-other-car in it - thanks, forgiving Arab guy. $20 is cool.

Now, I've hit the pinnacle of what I found I wanted over the years - small car, not rusted out thanks to salt, and most specifically - manual transmission.

I'll use a god-damned broomstick. I've had an incident with this car. I don't use anything near its capabilities with engine braking or downshifting or whatever.

I don't trust the timing belt - it's getting a bit long in the tooth.

But I had to - after getting home, there was no Interwebs on the road to explain my Cavalier suddenly dying every so often- yank a fucking plug on the trans that controlled overdrive and just locked shit up.

On the Camaro, it was overheating - the cooling fan had been rewired so many times it was stupid.

On my first car - good for autocross, guess the unibody wasn't bent - as it turns out, it had been wrecked pretty badly and fixed without benefit of salvage title.

It ran straight til I got hit.

After all that, cars are...disposable. Mine, like OP - I drove my dad to his death in it.

But...it's still a car, and it's rusting out from under me and he probably hoped I'd be buying a new one about now.

Sorry, amigo. Maybe a rusted out truck or something next time. Well, it's all rusted out...but...well, fuck...