Soon to depart Norfolk for my West Coast duty station 50 years ago, I needed a car.
A new sports car had just come on the scene and, like many others, I was smitten. I wanted a Datsun 240Z.
I went to a local Datsun dealer ready to lay out the $3,500 list price and was told they could put me on the wait list and I might get one in six weeks. “But I have to leave next week!”
Bummer. I still needed a car, so I decided to check out their used cars. I figured I’d get something to get me across country and maybe get a 240Z in California.
Fickle as I am, another car smited me. I drove off the lot in a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda Formula 340-S. I think I paid in the middle teens (hundreds, not thousands) for it.
I can’t find any pictures I took of the car, so what you see is from the web. My car was reddish-bronze and had a four-speed transmission with a Hurst Speed Shifter. The engine was rated at 275 horsepower at 5,000 rpm. The car could go 0-60 in a little over six seconds.
The previous owner had added an eight-track cassette player to supplement the AM-FM radio.
I figure this is when I first joined USAA. Back then, it was United Services Automobile Association (probably still is officially, but USAA is the marketed brand) and it sold car insurance only to officers in the armed forces. It’s a little bigger now. I still get my car insurance through USAA, as now do my kids.