Mazda GLC: "It's a Great Little Car"
Tracey and I had been married three weeks when we decided to look for a new car. I can't say that I remember why we did this. We didn't have a lot of money, and we had a good, reliable car.
Our 1967 Pontiac Catalina stationwagon got us around quite nicely. No, it wasn't brand new, and yes, it was a little warn, but it was clean and should have lasted us for several years. We just couldn't wait, I guess.
We were driving down Riverdale Road in Ogden Utah one day and saw the new Mazda GLC[GLC meant Great Little Car] at Cutrubus Motors. At this point, Honda was THE small car in the United States, and Mazda was trying to make inroads. Tracey liked a yellow one, but it was a very basic model. This brown one had everything you could put on a GLC. The cost: $3,875. We couldn't get credit because we were still very young, but Tracey's Uncle Nolan co-signed. Interest rates were very high, and the two loans [one for the car, one for the down payment] totaled $168/mo, a great deal in 1979.
No regrets. The car gave us safe and reliable transportation. We went to Seattle to visit Tracey's family, who had just moved there from Layton. Tracey's parents had to go to Boston to visit family, and they took our little Mazda. It survived many years. It moved us to Seattle, then to Washington, D.C. Later, it took us to Ann Arbor Michigan, St. Louis Missouri and West Palm Beach, Florida. By the late 1980s, it had begun to show its age. It needed a new radiator, but we couldn't afford one. We once had to travel from Tampa Bay to West Palm Beach during the middle of August. The only way to keep the car from overheating was to turn on the heater full blast [which drew some of the heat off the engine and into the car]. That was a long, HOT trip across Alligator Alley! We gave the car to Tracey's family, and David ended up wrecking it on a rainy highway.
It gave us good, reliable transportation. It also turned out to be the only brand new car we ever bought.
