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I am glad I looked obscure up in the dictionary. Otherwise, I would have been tempted to answer this Q incorrectly. I was going to answer the Q substituting eccentric for obscure. But, the American Heritage Dictionary includes the following definitions for obscure:
- Indistinct
- Not readily noticed or seen; inconspicuous
I would have to answer your Q as follows: my 1972 Plymouth Valiant.
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Whoa there!! Before you give me a 3 or a 2, you have to go back to the early 1970s! In 1972, this was inconspicuous.
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The problem was...it wouldn’t die...after 2 decades, it ceased being indistinct or inconspicuous. The boxy, rusting outline definitely stood out in my boringly manicured suburban neighborhood during the mid 1990s. In fact, it became so NOT obscure... :) ...that I had to sell it (reluctantly) to my local pizza guy as a delivery car. Within a couple months, sadly, the local high school delivery boys had crashed it enough for it to go into permanent retirement. But, I still believe that somewhere, its straight-6 engine is alive and well in some other car’s body...
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Sources: http://www.bartleby.com/61/33/O0013300.html ; http://tuerca.cl/
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My first car was a 1956 MGA roadster. Of all the cars I've had, it's still the most memorable. I spent more time working on it than I did driving it, but I loved every minute doing either.
It was similar to the model shown above, but in nowhere near as good a state of restoration. The vulnerable grille was dented, and the rocker panels were rusted out. Nevertheless, I literally wept when I sold it, but I was young and poor, and just could not afford the upkeep on it. If you take a good look at the car, you can see something unusual: there are no door handles. The car could not be locked, and you had to reach inside to open the doors. The convertible top stowed neatly behind the rear seats, but it didn't have roll-up windows, either. It had side curtains that dropped into fittings on the door and made a deafening whistle at highway speeds.
This was not, however, the weirdest car I remember from that time of my life. Limiting it to cars whose owners I knew, that I got to drive or ride in, that honor would go to a 1959 Citroen DS owned by my dorm RA in college. It looked a lot like this one:
I'd heard this car described as a "French Thunderbird." It did have some interesting features, like its low profile (except for the roof line), and a four-speed manual gearbox with a steering column linkage. The car was so unusual that one was featured (along with an early Jaguar XKE) in the 1960 film The Time Machine starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux. The producers decided the car was sufficiently futuristic-looking to feature it in a sequence that was to take place in, I think, 1970. Personally, I didn't think the car was futuristic-looking. I thought it was funny-looking, and seeing this picture makes it even more so.
I don't care if I never see another DS, but I wish I had my MG back. I drive an RSX, too, an '02 Type S. The MG wasn't as quick, but I've never owned anything nearly as much fun.
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Sources: IMDB, and pics from here and there on the Web.
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IchtheosaurusRex's Recommendations
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Amazon List Price: $19.98
Used from: $11.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
(based on 191 reviews)
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The original, better than the remake. Features a Citroen DS.
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Unixcorn, let me start by sympathizing. You had to ride in a Rambler? How can any of the rest of us begin to compete with the humiliation of that? I did have a friend who had a Pacer, but she was sort of iconoclastic anyway and proud of it. She probably didn’t even realize she was supposed to be traumatized by it.
In the early ’60s my parents had a 1959 Studebaker something-or-other. I was mortified to be seen in it, although I must acknowledge, at least it wasn’t an Edsel (or a Rambler). When my father turned 40, he bought a red Alpha Romeo Spyder convertible for his mid-life crisis. Now that you mention it, he was probably trying to shake the Studebaker trauma.
My husband totaled an Acura Legend in 1992 and for some strange reason we replaced it with an Oldsmobile Achieva, not exactly a model that caught on like wildfire. It was so cramped we gave it to one of the kids and replaced it with a real car.
You know, whenever people talk about what their requirements are for a car, I always say I only have two: it has to have a great sound system, and I can’t be embarrassed to tell people what I drive. So I probably have undiagnosed car trauma too. I feel so much better for getting this off my chest!
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SharonW's Recommendations
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Amazon List Price: $16.98
Used from: $9.98
Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5
(based on 2 reviews)
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Look at that! Two whole people actually liked this book!
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When I graduated high school (1967) my father bought me a used 1960 Vauxhall station wagon. An English car distributed by Pontiac over here, it was modeled after a 1957 Chevy Bel Air, only half-sized. It had a 4 cylinder engine with a top speed of about 57 MPH. When I drove the DC Beltway I would always try to draft behind a semi to pick up enough speed to stay up with traffic.
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I was taught on an old 1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88, but it was on it's last legs...the trunk was almost rusted through, the seats were itchy from the stuffing coming through and my Dad had rigged up a little fan to sit on the dashboard because the windshield got foggy (the defroster stopped working).
Here's one in its day:
 yet ours looked so much worse than this!
Of course as a teenager learning on it, I was embarrassed because of it's condition, but god forbid anyone commented on it when I picked them up in it. I'd kick them out if they said anything! 
(And my Dad cried when he finally had to take it to the junkyard...He really loved that car...)
So when I saved enough money to buy a car of my own, I bought a little much used 1978 Toyota Celica 5 speed. I didn't even know how to drive a manual transmission at the time, but I soon learned. The color of it was a faded dull gray. It seemed it wasn't even a color. Looked as if it was a primer, but it wasn't. It was just so "loved". At the time, I was dating a guy who was taking a body shop class at the tech school. He offered to paint my car as part of his grade. I said sure! Hey, free paint job! I wanted it pink. He said no way. I said yes, pink. (Hey, I was 17, ok?) So he didn't tell me this, but he changed the color when he bought the paint & brought it back to me sort of a dark purple color! I guess because it was unexpected, I wasn't too happy. The color grew on me, but I got many comments on my "purple car". (Like pink would have been better!  ) It was unique, needless to say...
 <<-------------pretend this is purple!
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