Ours was orange, but pretty much like this one:
This was just before we got married, so my almost wife and I bought this together - well it was my money, but she came along to help me choose the car.
At least that was the premise - her choice was actually a Toyota Celica of about the same age - which I liked as well - but the lure of 4x4 adventure interested me.
So we bought the Subaru - which she said looked like an orange grasshopper.
But we had so much fun in that car.
We left our wedding reception in it - the guys had covered it in love hearts and teddy bear stickers, shaving cream, and toilet paper, with "Just Married" written across the back.
We drove from the reception to one of the flashest hotels in Perth - drove up to the front door, where we were met by the doormen. I wound down the window and asked where I was supposed to park, and was told that if I would like to get out of the car, they would park it for me! How cool was that!!!!!
And right as we were getting out, a pair of Rolls Royce's with a wedding party pulled up.The guy who got our car must have been seriously disappointed.
It was even funnier when we left the next morning and they had it waiting at the front door, all washed and cleaned and warmed up ready to go, with our bags back in it. That car was an absolute dog when it was cold, and needed to be heavily revved to get it away without stalling. They must have had some good fun getting it out of their private underground car park.....
Then we took it down south of the state for our honeymoon. we stayed in lovely place called "Tinglewood Lodge" for a few days, and then just toured across to Albany, and even slept one night in the back of the Subaru in a carpark by the ocean. In two weeks we went from top luxury to slumming it rough in the car.
But we had a great time.
Nearly got stuck twice on that one trip - once in the Valley of the Giants, we went exploring the tracks - got in OK but when we went to retrace our tracks back out we found that the little car did not ahve the grip to climb one of the hills we came down. No low range, and with just plain road tyres, not enough grip. We had to go another way, but with no maps and no such thing as GPS then, it was guess work. We did guess right though.
The other time was driving onto some cliffs at the ocean. We got onto this ledge - it all looked very simple and safe. We got out to the ledge OK and there was plenty of room and it was all solid. The view was beautiful. When we decided it was time to move on I turned around and then tried to drive back out - but the angles were such that we lifted opposite front and rear tyres, and when you do that in an unlocked 4x4 the lifted wheels just spin in the air. And there wasn't enough room to reverse and get a run up. I sort of rocked it back and forth as much as I dared and just - only just - managed to get it to rock far enough on one forward rock to get the lifted wheels to scrabble a bit of grip.
We made it, but I was not sure we were going to.
We went places and did things with and in that little 4x4 that ignited a fire fro the off-road that has never left.
I am not a full on 4x4 freak, but we always hanker for the dirt roads and the out of the way places.
Mind you the Subaru with it's little wheels, low ground clearance, and no low range taught terrible technique - if something looked sticky, you just gunned it and hoped you could bounce over the top of it - and normally we did.
So many things come to mind with this car, so many memories. This was really "our first car" together, and as such so much of our early married life happened with this car in the background.
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