As cool as the PT Cruiser, is my sister, Kate's Miata.  She got this when the new body style first debuted in 1998 and uses it as it was intended, with the top down almost all year 'round!

My sister, Kate, is really into kayaking.  Do you think she'd let having a two seat roadster stop her from taking her kayak with her?  Oh, no!  One of her friends helped her build this rig to haul it around.  You would not believe all of the places she's taken it.

I know what you're thinking when you look at this picture - "Of course, Channing's sister must be as big a geek as he is, so her license plate must mean she is a Trekkie or Trekker."  Well, I thought so, too, and we're all wrong.  Kate is really into cycling and her bike is made by TREK - thus, TREKFUN!

Just so you know, though.  She was a Star Trek fan, at one time.  Evidence?  The license plate shown here as she puts it on her "new " Accord.  The USS Enterprise's number was NCC1701.

Not willing to be outdone by Kate, at 75 Dad decided to revisit his youth!  He took Suzie to buy a new Aurora and she told him she'd only buy one if he bought himself a new car.  This is what he got!

This is Suzie's second Aurora.  She loves it!  Dad says it is because of the V8 which helps her speed all over town!  The car in the back is Dad's old Tracer, that he  traded-in on the Miata!

At the same time as the 63 Country Squire, we had a Renault Dauphine.  My only memory of this car was that the pattern of the material of the seats was good for playing with Matchbox cars.  Oh, and that it was ugly!

In the mid-'60s, my dad had a great little sports car, an Austin Healy Sprite.  His was just like this, except it was blue.  My big memory of this car was driving down the road sitting in the cubby hole behind the seats and making a sound that (I thought) sounded like the engine.  Dad did not like that!!

After the '63 Country Squire, mum wanted something besides a wagon, so they got a 1967 Mercury Park Lane.  Ours was the body style of the car in the lower picture, but the color of the car in the top picture.  This is the car that I wanted for my own, but since I was only six, my folks would not put it on blocks until I was ready for it. So, to stop the trade-in, I ran away from home (to the creek behind our house) and hid.  My plan was to keep them so busy looking for me that someone else would buy the car instead.  They found me and (horror of horrors) took me with them to get the new car!!

After the 67 Mercury Park Lane turned out to be "too small" to carry us around to swim meets and the like, we returned to the Ford stable and bought another Country Squire.  This one was a '69 with a 429ci engine.  It was fast!  Ours was exactly like the one above, except we had different hubcaps.

My dad eventually succumbed to whatever makes parents give up their youthful urges and traded in the Sprite for a Toyota like the one pictured above.  Ours was white.  We were one of the first families to buy a Japanese car in our neighborhood.  (Please excuse the print bleeding though from the other side of the ad.  It's an old ad.)

Although this picture is not of our actual car, I saw this one at Lowry AFB in Denver and had to take a picture since it was identical to ours.  My grandfather owned the Mercedes from 1962 - 1973 When he bought what would later be known to us as Mrs. Hall.  He gave the '62 to my brother as his first car.  When Eric got his Mustang, he gave the MB to Kate.

I took this picture with a Kodak pocket instamatic from our driveway the day Eric left to go back to college at Ole Miss in 1974.  I was eleven years old!  The car was fairly non-descript - the 200ci inline six cylinder engine with a 3-speed manual transmission. This was Eric's first car after the '62 Mercedes (which everyone got to own except for me - the only car buff in the family).  It could have been a nice car, but Eric fell in love with a girl from Wisconsin and drove it up to visit her one summer.  It broke down on the trip, and she talked him into trading it in on a 1976 Pinto Wagon (because it would be a better family car).  She dumped him not too long after that!

When we traded in the fastest wagon in town, we bought THIS!  It was the car I learned to drive in.  Despite its name, it was really nothing more than a Pinto.  Ford downsized the Mustang that year because of the "Energy Crisis" of 1973, thus  they were more concerned with gas mileage than power.  This car's performance illustrated that, but it did handle well on "S" curves!

When my sister, Kate, went off to Auburn University, my parents didn't think taking a '62 Mercedes Benz 220S that was prone to breakdowns was the best idea.  So they sold the Benz (for $250) and bought her this beauty.  It was used, and came with the wild stripes (top photo) which actually flowed from a design on the hood.  She later had it painted a prettier shade of blue with no stripes.  It was fast, though.  It had a 302 ci engine that came stock with over 200 horsepower.  For 1972, that was tame but it still moved!  She kept this car through getting her bachelor's (Political Science, Auburn University) and masters degrees (Public Administration, Mississippi State University).  She sold this car to a family friend when she was leaving to go to the University of Utah for her Ph. D. She bought the family's first Subaru for that adventure (a 1979 Subaru Brat!)

Unfortunately, this is the only picture we have of "Annabel".  In order to get the Bobcat (behind her in the picture), I had to buy Annabel from a friend of my mother's because she wanted to sell it to a young man who she knew would take care of her.  I bought her and Mum gave me the Bobcat.  Even then, I knew that Beetle convertibles were chick cars.

Like our 1962 Mercedes, Granddaddy Mike (Mum's father) was the first owner of this car.  He drove it for 10 years and probably never changed the oil.  When mum inherited it upon his death, she had to have a new engine installed.  She drove it for a few years before giving it to my stepsister, Vanessa.  I think it ended up as a planter.

These are the only photos we could find of Kate's 1979 Subaru Brat.  She drove that little puppy for 10 years, and it went to Utah and back while she worked on her Ph.D. in political Science at the University of Utah!

The TRUE family car!  This one we cannot begin to get rid of as it was originally sold to Eric by one of my best friend's in the world, Joanne Gottsche, who died of brain cancer in January of 1991.  I bought the car from Eric when I returned to the states from Panama in 1993, but only kept it a year.  I was getting out of the Air Force and did not have a job lined up.  I sold it to Kate, and she drove it until '98 when she bought her Miata.  She then sold it back to Eric and he still drives it on a daily basis in Washington.