I too had a Passat as my first car - A Tornado Red 95 Passat GLX with the VR6.  Way too much car for 16 year old me, but a beloved hand me down that barely had 70,000 miles on it when the front end got pancaked by a fully loaded dumptruck that blew a red light.  The newer ones never did it for me, but I too have a…

Plus those 5mph bumper guards on the front.

My gut reaction was a late 70's early 80's Mercury Zephyr / Ford Fairmont

I discovered this exact situation (except that I have four kids) recently when starting to look for a new car to replace my Mazda 6. My wife’s got a van that gets 2-2.5x the miles put on my car a year because we can’t all fit in my car but I regularly get 29MPG with my commute and while we could use the space I can’t…

I see what you see after you picture, but what I first saw was more of a muppet sillhoutte wearing a hat like this one of beaker. What you had as the beard I was thinking was a nose...

I used to love the ‘Swing’ feature on a friends Mazda 626 in college. Basically you pushed a button and it made the center air vents constantly rotate back and forth so they were blowing out the a/c like an oscillating fan.

Now I know they didn’t use the GM logo on the outside much but I remember getting branded with the GM logo on old metal seatbelt buckles similar to these in the 80's when they were in the sun on a hot summers day. 

I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest for awhile now. When I was 6 I stole two matchbox cars from Zayre’s. Ripped them right out of the bubbles and left the cardboard backs hanging on the shelf. Whew, that feels much better. Actually when I was younger and much stupider I bought some cheap ass strobe reverse…

Almost half my job the last couple years has been designing self storage facilities and many different brands will do this. These old industrial buildings make some sense, but many are just too big. People don’t want to walk more than 90' from loading door to the unit. We’re finding a bunch are starting to buy up old…

I love this. I’m newly a parent of 4 and can’t fit the whole family in my car anymore. I only need the family truckster maybe 25% of the time and the rest of the time is me commuting to work and back and this would’ve been great.  

I’d think if you could find a used Kia Stinger that’d check most of his boxes.

My first car wasn’t horrible, but was the hand-me-down family minivan, a 91 Mazda MPV, but I truly LOVED my second car. In 1997 I somehow talked my Mom into letting me drive our family’s 95 VW Passat GLX VR6 to high school and work over the base model 94 Corolla in order to ‘keep the miles down’ on the good car. She…

I’m late to the game here and didn’t read all 600+ comments to see if this was already mentioned, but the other thing about the storage spaces and cubic feet in a minivan are that they are just plain more useful and functional. My wife hated the idea of getting as minivan, but we have 4 kids one of which who has…

You are correct sir. The SX/4 was my 8 y/o self’s dream car and I still love them to this day.

This is more stupidly catching air than intentional, but freshman college me foolishly was trying to make a yellow light in my year or so old Mark VI Jetta. I was heading to the parking ramp across the intersection trying to avoid being late for class again, so I gunned it forgetting that this intersection is…

I had a 99 Jetta with a similar cluster and still miss that low eye strain and blue glow.  Simple, effective, and just plain looked good.

Sort of sounds like an abbreviated version of the constant bell ring locomotives use when moving slowly near a station because its not always apparent that they’re moving. That might get confusing

That was my first car as the family hand me down in HS. But I had to get rid of it since the middle seat wouldn’t stay latched to the floor and it kept pulling to the right after it got hit by a semi truck. Loved that thing as it was my first taste of freedom. They only had one swing door on the passenger side out…

My wife bites her fingernails constantly while driving. That in itself is a pet peeve of mine, but to make matters worse she just lets them loose in her car and they end up all over the black carpet, in the door cubbies, power window switches, etc. You can’t not see them everywhere around the drivers seat. She then…

Are those really headlights from a 93 Pontiac Grand Am on a 2012 build? Couldn’t they source some newer headlights?