ORIGINAL: Yankee
My first "official" car that I bought with my own money was... a 1970 Dart Swinger (2-door) with, you guessed it, the Slant-6. Had that car my junior and senior years of high school, it never let me down - started every morning even during the harshest of sub-zero Pittsburgh winters, even when my parent's new K-car sometimes wouldn't.
I'm surprised your slant-6 started that easily. I never had one, but everyone I knew who did have one had a VERY hard time starting them in the winter (in Iowa). I remember in auto shop class in high school that our shop teacher said they were hard to start because of the unusually long intake manifold. According to him, the droplets of gasoline would hit that cold metal, condense and run down to the bottom of the manifold instead of flowing on into the cylinders.
My first car, meanwhile, was a 1950 Ford Custom Tudor. (That was the same kind of car that Robert Mitchum was supposedly driving in the early part of "Thunder Road". I say "supposedly" because some of the scenes show either a 49 Ford or a 50 Ford with a 49 hood). Originally, it had a Flathead 6. Later, I put in a Flathead V-8 out of a 51 Ford. After I blew a rod in that, the Flathead 6 went back in.
