What are the cars that you have owned and absolutely loved?

[VIVA GT]

1) My first car was a pea green Standard 10 (VWK994) bought from a neighbour for £15.00 when I was 16, hoping to make it road-worthy for when I was 17. That didn't happen, I scrapped it!
2) My next car was a pale green 1964 Ford Corsair 1500 which I bought from an older fellow apprentice for £40.00 with a short MOT. This appealed as it had 5½J steel wheels and looked quite sporty. This proved to be too rotten to pass the MOT so I scrapped that too (something about green cars?), but not before removing the engine, gearbox, wheels & a few other bits with a view to my next purchase.
3) This was a 1966 Ford Anglia 1200 Estate which the wheels went straight on to. I thrashed that car everywhere and carried out lots of modifications to it including fitting a Cortina GT lookalike fibreglass dashboard with lots of extra gauges. I never had the nerve/money for the extra insurance to fit the 1500vcc Corsair engine but after knocking the bottom end out of 3 1200 engines, fitted a 5 main bearing 1300 pre-crossflow engine which looked the same as the 1200 externally.
4) My first Vauxhall, an 1156cc HB Viva bought from our apprentice training officer with a view to doing up and selling at a profit. This also proved to have a strong appetite for big-end bearings (nothing to do with my driving style obviously), which in the end a mate & I could whip out the engine and change in 45 minutes from driving on & off our drive!
5) Now we're talking, car No 5 was a 1968 Vauxhall Viva GT (as pictured) which I adored. Eventually painted Silver (to look the same as Gerry Marshall's old racing car) and fitted with a set of alloy wheels from a Jensen Healey. I loved that car and did a number of modifications to it to help it stand up to abuse it got. It was also a great car for towing when I started racing an 850 Mini Se7en.
6) Now I was into my Mini's I bought 2 cars from work colleagues because I had a plan, a 1971 Austin 1300 GT and a 1982 Mini Clubman Traveller which already had an 1100cc engine fitted. I rebuilt the 1300GT engine to a higher state of tune and fitted that to the Traveller along with the larger front disc brakes that were fitted to the 127GT Mini when it had the larger 12" wheels & Dunlop Denovo tyres. (To accommodate the brakes I also fitted 12" Hillman Imp wheels which had the same stud pattern). This was deceptively quick road car and also a very capable tow vehicle too, although not really heavy enough to safely tow my Mini which was also loaded with all of my spare wheels etc. Luckily I survived a couple of very scary moments doing that without coming to any harm.
7) Next I had a job with a company van and had decided to give up on my racing career (after an accident) and didn't have a road car whilst searching for my next project. This was a very rare 1974 Vauxhall Droop Snoot Firenza, one of my reasons for buying this was that it was supposed to be faster than my mates RS2000! Another car I loved and (luckily) enjoyed working on. This was finally written off on my way home from work when I was hit head-on by an old boy who jumped a red traffic light driving a Mk 111 Escort (which he drove away afterwards!
8) After that I had an Astra GTE, a 1987 325 Sport BMW and a later 325 4 door which I had to sell to gain funds for a house deposit as I was getting married. Purely by coincidence (I'm sure) this also brought the end to me owning 'interesting' cars...