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Must have been a wealthy bunch of kids. Me or my friends couldn't afford nice muscle cars, with a blower- no less. The extent of hop up goodies for my 65 Cutlass in high school was a cherry bomb,a pair of used chrome reverse wheels and a "Oldsmobile" sticker across the top of the windshield. Neat picture!
I agree with Greg Rogers. I am a Boomer . I am 65 years old.In 1969 thru 1973 my high school had nothing like this. I drove my parents car for a few years, then a 1966 Skylark. My "muscle car " had a small v-8 a set of cragars ss a an am -fm after market radio. I was glad to have this as I bought everything myself including insurance. Bassinguy
Must have been a wealthy bunch of kids. Me or my friends couldn't afford nice muscle cars, with a blower- no less. The extent of hop up goodies for my 65 Cutlass in high school was a cherry bomb,a pair of used chrome reverse wheels and a "Oldsmobile" sticker across the top of the windshield. Neat picture!
Most late 50's cars and late 60's muscle cars that I bought in the mid to late 70's were around $500 private party sales. They were in need of substantial maint to keep them on the road.
When I started driving to school, I had a '55 Olds 88.....turned the whitewalls around and painted "red lines" on the bias ply tires, added an aftermarket 4 track mono sound system, I think I had about three 4 track tapes. In 1967 I bought a '62 Starfire 50,000 miles from a neighbor for $800.
Must have been a wealthy bunch of kids. Me or my friends couldn't afford nice muscle cars, with a blower- no less.
x2
There was 1 guy in my high school class that drove a 1979 Trans Am. A good friend of mine had an 81 Camaro that never ran right but had cutoff cherry bombs and Cragar SS on it. My 75 Caprice had cancerous rust with big enough holes in the fenders and doors that I could get my mom's small dog into the car without opening the doors or trunk lid.
I got dropped off by my old man on the way to work, and walked home, so I did not get a car because I did not need one. I could borrow a car sometimes of my dad's.
At the school I went to, rich, stupid parents would buy their rich, stupid kids new rich, stupid automobiles, which they would drive in a rich and stupid fashion and often wreck at the school's traffic light.
I came from a farming community and many had cars or motorcycles but we were far from rich it was just a long way to anywhere. I came from the original rat rod era.
Many of the junkers would make your mouth water now a days, bought my first Model A for $75.00 and drove it home. The newest rides were usually hand me down family cars or early ford hot rods of dubious builds. I do remember Dan Earlies 53 corvette and Bill Wilson"s 57 Chevy that would be nice and quite fast even now. Me, I drove a 4 door 53 Hudson Hornet as dd driver. Yes it had a very large back seat and 308 ci straight six and the styling of a bar of soap but I thought I was a king.
A friend and I bought a nice 33 Ford three window for $300 bucks and traded it for a Honda motorcycle, not one of my better traded. It was a good time to grow up....... Tedd
At the school I went to, rich, stupid parents would buy their rich, stupid kids new rich, stupid automobiles, which they would drive in a rich and stupid fashion and often wreck at the school's traffic light.
............and then their rich, stupid parents would buy them another one.....
That describes a chunk of my HS class as well. My folks only let me drive their L6 '74 Ventura because their '68 Cutlass (now mine) was too fast. I did have some HS friends who had pretty fast cars, a '69 Gran Prix 400, a '71 GTO 455, a '69 LeMans 350, '73 Charger SE 400, '69 Mach I 390, '69 Cougar 351 'vert, too many Novas and other Cutlasses to recount. Good memories.
For some reason our high school days were influenced by the Ford Motor Company... Mustangs, Galaxies, and a couple Falcons... A few Chevelles and Impala SS's were also popular... All I can say is "The Days of Old when the Toys were Bold"... Still trying to live some of the dream, only now it's an Oldsmobile stable...
Even by todays standards i cant see high schoolers driving those. That has to be a car show at a school. The car guys hanging out has never changed the cars did. IM 30 and our high school parking lot had some lifted early 90's fords and chevy's a couple of fox bodies , some tuner imports , I rode around in a 95 blacked out 9c1 caprice with a set of mufflers and a lead foot you could hear me coming blocks away. last day of high school we did doughnuts in the baseball field while everyone was monitoring the senior parking lot as many rituals took place the last 3 hrs of school there. A few years later me and my buddies had a fleet of " muscle ". fast forward to today im the only one still wrenching and tinkering with cars. Also one of the only ones that actually works on cars still for a living. The same picture or sentiment is still a reality today the taste in cars just matches the times. You got 17 year olds buying some beater civic sticking a loud exhaust and putting on cheap parts to make em fast. On any given weekend they have their own version of American grafitti . Its cars , girls , tunes and good times.
Last edited by coppercutlass; November 14th, 2019 at 06:41 PM.
Graduated in '76, very few cool cars in the lot back then, insurance alone on those Mopars would have been expensive. Had my 65 convert back then for the last half of senior year but usually walked the three blocks. One day I parked it in a teachers spot and he blocked me in with a VW bug and we bounced the vw out of the way into middle of lot.
I graduated in '81. That pic looks like the lot at the Tech School where I certified in auto body repair and resto. The auto mechanic lab area was adjacent to the body shop and all the gear heads drove their hopped up rides and parked together. Especially Fridays - if all our lab work was done for the week, we could work on our own cars using shop equipment. This is what mine looked like at the time. I took more than half an inch of bondo off of that left quarter
I graduated over 30 years ago. My schools parking lot was dominated by mainly Oldsmobiles. Of course being a handful of minutes west of Lansing helped that out. One kid had a U code 72 supreme and one rich kid had dad that worked at our local Olds dealer he had 85 442. A young girl a 68 88 delmont. Lots of mid to late 70's Cutlass'
I was looking for 79 or 80 cutlass with the 260. I also drove my dad's 76 98 somtimes. I ended up with this 79 regal with the 3.8 turbo which looked great and was a total money pit and the last Buick I have owned. This photo is of me and my regal and was part of my graduation pictures. And yes, I bought, fixed and spent my own money on it!
I agree with Greg Rogers. I am a Boomer . I am 65 years old.In 1969 thru 1973 my high school had nothing like this. I drove my parents car for a few years, then a 1966 Skylark. My "muscle car " had a small v-8 a set of cragars ss a an am -fm after market radio. I was glad to have this as I bought everything myself including insurance. Bassinguy
Agreed. I graduated in '81 in a wealthy community and our HS parking lot looked nothing like this. Yes, some kids had muscle cars, but most did not and of those muscle cars, they were all pretty tame and generic. Most were pretty rough too. Yes you could buy Barracudas, GTOs, Cutlasses, Torinos all kinds of stuff for $700-1200, but they looked like it too. If you wanted a Mustang or a Camero, you paid a lot more and they still looked rough.
Most kids drove either hand me down family cars given to them, or what they could afford on a teenager's wages. It was not common then as it is now to get brand new cars given to the kids, but it was a wealthy community and so some kids did have brand new cars and in the community I lived it, it was mostly imports with BMW being highly prized. The kids that had the muscle cars never had the money to build them as nice as the ones in that picture. BackInTheGame's Cutlass above was far more typical. A sweet, cherry high school muscle car was all one color, shiny and had mags on it, that's about it.
I say all this because I don't want the younger folks to think the OP's photo was the typical HS parking lot and get romantic about the old days. The photo is atypical and while it may be a HS parking lot, I think something special may have been going on there. My first car and the one I drove through high school was a '72 Chevy Vega hatchback I bought myself and it blended right in perfectly.
In the early 80's there were a bunch of Chrysler K-cars, Fairmonts, assorted Impalas & family barges.
4 of my friends got Camaro's in their Sr. year, but they were mostly mid-late 70's cars.
I was one of the few with a 60's muscle car (one of my friends had a nice '66 Mustang & I had my '66 442) but we never drove them to school.
Another guy drove his fathers 69 Road Runner to school once in a while.
I personally could not afford gas to drive my Olds more than on the weekends.
We also had to build ours as our parents did not buy us finished cars.
I graduated from HS in 1969. Most of the kids there either walked to school or took the bus. There was a brand new parking lot in front of the school that could accommodate around 50 cars, with overflow on a side street and on the street in front of the parking lot. Teachers filled the the first row of parking lot spots but the rest was just first-come first-serve and it was was more than sufficient at that time. A couple of kids had real neat cars. A classmate and friend of mine had a '67 GTO, red of course, that everyone oohed and aahed over. A classmate and friend of my brother (graduated in '70) had a tricked-out '67 Chevelle (marina blue, mags, lifted in the back with bigger tires, Thrush glass-pak mufflers, you know the stuff!) that was real neat. Our junior and senior years, we got to drive one of our parent's cars to school one day a week. My day was Friday. It was actually farther to drive to school than it was to walk but it was still quite a thrill to show up to school every Friday morning in a car. And fortunately for us, our parents drove pretty cool cars. First was my mother's '67 Camaro RS convertible, marina blue with with Keystone mags, buckets, console, red stripe tires and dual exhaust. That's about all that car had. The rest of it was a 327 engine (with I believe 195 HP) and the 2-spd automatic. My senior year it became my dad's car, the '68 4-4-2 convertible that I have now, a bench seat car (great for dating!) with the THM 400 on the column, red stripe tires and chrome reverse wheels.
I just went to my 50th HS reunion in September. The parking lot in front of the school, as well as the side street, is reserved for only teachers, staff, and a couple of visitor spots. There's no parking on the street anymore - all the curbs are painted yellow. The space on the school grounds where the baseball team used to hold their home games is now completely paved and that's where the students park. The first day of our reunion was on Friday, a school day, and that student parking lot was full!
What proof is there that this photo really is of a high school parking lot? Since when was a high school back then behind 20 foot prison walls? Anyone can take a vintage photo and stick some words on it.
Jaunty you are such a sweet heart, I thoroughly enjoy your comment's even though they tend to be very negative and caustic. Who knows if this is someones HS or a staged event some where at a prison of my chose, I pulled it from the net. The whole purpose of this forum is to have fun and enjoy a kinship with fellow car enthuses. Do we need to document these posts?..... Tedd
I like the image. To me it says nothing more than kids having fun with cars. Who gives a mashed tater if it’s not your H.S., not your car or the first car you hid in the trunk sneaking into the outdoors Drive-In Theatre. It’s kids having fun w/ cars.
I graduated in 1981 from the Northern CA town of Livermore. Not that our parking lot held a collection of cars like this, but 68-75 model year cars were the norm. Our high school had the ROP classrooms for the Auto Mechanic and Auto Shop programs for the surrounding schools. There would always be some very nice cars coming in and out of both shops. Livermore is known for it's yearly Rodeo and the government Lab. I had friends that drove some really nice cars and some really terrible ones. Livermore in the 80's was a farming community and we had one of the last cruises in the valley. Friday and Saturday nights we would cruise from the East end of town, down main street and turn around at the Sambo's diner and do it it again about a 3 mile loop. The kids who's parents were Doctors, Lawyers or Dentist's always seemed to have the better cars. A few of them drove Cuda's, Chargers and Trans Am's. Mustangs were what the girl's would drive. We would always meet at the Jack in the Box, open our hoods and hang out until the cops moved us along. At the time I had a 55 Ford F-100 with all 67 Corvette running gear. My Senior year I had a 71 El Camino that wasn't quite stock. Alot of good memories were brought back from this thread. It's just too bad that these days seem long gone and now it just Cars and Coffee get together's for us . Thanks Tedd for starting this off and reliving some memories.
Steve
They didn't let us use the parking lot (teachers only) but the street outside our school on any given school day circa 1978 might have included any of these: '68 SS396 Camaro, '68 Firebird 400, '69 GTO convertible, '64 Chevy Impala 409/400 4-speed (mine), '68 Ford Torino 390, '62 Chevy Impala SS convertible, '69 Dodge Dart GTS 340 4-speed, '67 Chevelle Malibu 327, '67 Chevy Impala SS427 convertible, '68 Roadrunner 383/4-speed, '67 Firebird 326HO, '67 Firebird Sprint OHC-6, '68 Dodge Coronet R/T 440, '68 Mustang J-code, along with disco-era Z/28s and Trans-Ams for the rich kids and a few others that escape my memory.
I graduated in the mid sixties so the cars pictured weren't even built yet or were so new that only your parents would have them, most would have 4 doors though. Big muscle was still coming for the young public but build your own happened more often than any bought new and fast stuff. Like I said before it was a farming community and most every one had a shop and wrenched and welded as a way to make do. We built some strange stuff back then some not so safe..... Tedd
I have really enjoyed this thread and apparently so have the others who have posted. It really brings back memories, if it was a picture of a typical high school park lot or not?? Who cares!! Still a lot of fun ... Thanks for posting it Tedd. I hope others add some more stories. I forgot to mention that a buddy and I also added black stripes to the hood along with 3/8" white pinstripe tape along the stripes and following the body lines of my 65 Cutlass. It looked pretty gaudy.. Also I went to a pawn shop and bought a pair of 14" super stock wheels that were orange. They were only like $20.00 for the pair. My Dad thought I was nuts, but I painted them black in the basement and put them on the car along with 4 ply nylon duralon tires bought at Quality Farm and Fleet F78X14. They were pretty skinny and they had a terrible time getting them to air up on the 7" wheels. Then I took a model car small paint brush and painted the letters on the tires white! Looked awesome and lasted about 2 days before flaking off! Anyway then after seeing them on the car my Dad was really proud of me and what I could do. Oh the memories!! I also remember putting a cal custom Tee shifter handle that was made to go on a floor shifter on my column shifter. It attached with a set screw. That was really stupid !! Wish I had a picture of that. Good times. It never occured to me to save for good stuff I would buy cheap trinkets and "fix up" the car.
My first car was a '50 Furd tudor. I bought a pack of spiffy decals from Honest Charlie through the mail. On the glove box door was "Fasten Seat Belts" and on the gas door was "High Test Fuel Only". Boy, that Furd sure did burn a lot of oil.
November 14th, 2019, 04:54 AM
. It was a good time to grow up....... Tedd
