1993 Eagle Talon TSi AWD with an automatic trans...
This was somewhere between the first two Fast and Furious movies so I got a lot of props from my High School classmates for having a "fast" import or whatever. Then in front of actual car guys or other DSM (Eclipse/Talon/Laser/etc.) guys, I got bagged for missing a pedal.
Probably not the greatest first car, however... Without my Dad helping me on the financial and mechanical end and having spare vehicles to drive... I would've been riding the bus or bumming rides to work or school for most of my junior and all of my senior year of high school... I had a few people warn me about the reliability of these cars before I bought it, but I didn't listen... Within two months of getting my license, the car needed a radiator, water pump and timing belt and other crap. Within 6 months it toasted an alternator and starter before it finally spun a rod bearing. Put a used motor that apparently had low miles in it, but it ended up having blow by so bad that oil shot out of the dipstick tube during some "spirited" driving and caught fire on the exhaust manifold. The car was fine, but within 2 months of installation, that motor too developed bearing issues. It spent my entire senior year taken apart in my Dads garage while we rebuilt a motor and gathered up the necessary parts to swap the car to a manual. It went back on the road the summer I graduated and I got about 3 good years out of it before I got tired of replacing turbochargers.
I got into a different "fun" car and had planned to sell the Talon, but it instead sat next my Dads garage for a couple years. I dusted it off and fixed it up to take it to finally attend my first DSM Shootout and fell back in love with the cars. Ironically, having an AWD automatic example is all the rage now if you want to build one into a fast car... Back in maybe 2005 I couldn't give away the auto trans related parts that had been pulled off of mine.
I still have it to this day. At least 5 different significant others have ridden shotgun in it, I've commuted to work in it on nice days to various different jobs over the years, the car and my involvement in the whole DSM scene is the root of many of my good friendships today and being into them for 15+ years has seen me accumulate a ridiculous amount of parts for them.... It's not as nice as it once was, but I'll probably never get rid of it.
The picture below is from the summer of 2014. It has less clear coat now.