AIBU to think old bangers and student dumps were character building?

[Renamedefault]

My first car was a total shitheap. Clapped out. But I loved it, it gave me lots of anecdotes (like not being able to use the radio if the lights were on), and I genuinely appreciated working up to what I currently have.

Similarly, my first experience of living independently was at University, when me and three friends trawled the student area to rent a four bedroom dump, with a hole in one ceiling, a damp bathroom, and dubious furnishings, from someone who can only be described as a slum-lord.

We had some great times.

Nowadays new drivers tend to get something far more serviceable, even new, and a lot of students have modern, clean, well maintained accommodation.

Objectively I know nowadays is better but AIBU to think there was something about having a shitheap of a car and living in a dump that was sort of a rite of passage, something character building. Or am I just a nostalgic old git?

I’m also a nostalgic old git. I do think you tend to kill your first car so best to do that in a banger but the living independently in the cheapest accommodation possible was character building.

Living off 10p noodles and cheap drinks from the student Union. I did quite a lot of solo backpacking after that and I think it really helped round me off as a person.

Definitely not. It was miserable and I’m glad my children have nice cars and lovely homes and did even as students.

Two of my friends actually died in one of their shitheap cars that was basically badly welded together and shouldn’t have been on the road, so I can’t see it through rose tinted glasses at all.

I am actually a landlord now and have a couple of homes that I rent to students, bought originally for my own children to live in at uni with their friends to avoid shit landlords. No mold, everything working and safe, as it should be.

I can’t get nostalgic for shit things! 😬

I’m definitely nostalgic for those early cars. I learned so much from my haynes manual and fixing things myself. My second car went to the scrapper with its petrol tank on the back seat because I’d tried to change it and realised the whole underside of the car was crumbling away. 😂 It still had a valid MoT somehow! The shit housing with ice inside the windows wasn’t so enjoyable but it did the job when I was on McDonalds money, although I also acknowledge that low-end housing was a lot cheaper back then and it was everyone’s choice as to whether they were going to cheap out and get a dodgy room or pay more for something better. The trouble is people wanted good quality housing but were only willing to pay for slums, and now regulations have taken away the cheap options and left us in a housing affordability crisis.

I think there's a lot of pride in coming home with your first shit car and knowing YOU bought it, not your parents. And you're just so so proud of it that YOU achieved it. Often at that age it's the first proper "asset" you've bought (I use that word loosely!). My cousin got bought a new car by her parents, who also paid her insurance, all the petrol, MoT, everything. And while I was jealous of having that money spent on her, she just missed out on that pride and wonderful feeling of ownership and achievement.

I loved my clapped out fiesta so much. At the time I was going out with an apprentice mechanic who helped me look. I wanted a fiesta, in white or silver, with electric front windows, higher than a 1.1 engine. I remember him saying I was looking for rockinghorse poo and I'd never find one with everything I wanted unless I waited months and months. I found one within a week or 2. It was silver, a 1.4, with electric windows, and had all little quirks that every coming-of-age car had. The interior light needed pulling out and adjusting first if you wanted to use it with the switch. The windows wouldn't work if it was raining. It ended up with the passenger door and petrol cap working off one key, and the driver door and boot working off a different key. 🤣 The "you've left the lights on" audible warning squeal never worked, well not until the very day I was trading it in. I arrived at Volkswagen to pick up my shiny red polo (also used!) and the very last time I opened the door the warning went off. She knew she was going and I was leaving her. 😢 I was actually sobbing when I handed the keys over. The salesman tried to cheer me up by reminding me I'd be driving off in my new shiny red polo, but didn't help by saying "You do realise we're just going to scrap it don't you?. Idiot man. I'm guessing he was the type who got bought a car by his parents too! 😂

I said this to my son the other week. My first car had a manual choke, and if you put it in too early, it stalled constantly. I am glad my new driver son is driving something safer. But yeah, even housing, kids are spoiled these days. Son & his gf live in his dad’s 5 bed house whilst he’s overseas working, meanwhile DD and I live in a flat (though moving in 2 months to a house, finally)!

No nostalgia here, I grew up poor and life was hard, living pay check to paycheck or having to get up super earlier to get a bus or walk to work in the dark because my old banger wouldnt start and I couldnt afford to get it fixed.

I've worked hard to give my kids a better start vs what I had - they are not spoilt but their homes and cars are safer and more reliable and I for one am glad about that.

I survived yes, but thrived? Not so much back then. Yanbu though, everyone is different

Omg same - me and my husband always say we learnt to drive properly as we both had cars with a choke! It was a total skill to work that choke just right if you didn't want to kill the car in the early mornings 😂

I lived in a few dumps and turned out ok but I don’t get the nostalgia for crappy cars for the group of people most likely to have an accident.

Cars are just better now so even a 10+ year old car today is going to be pretty much fine compared to one 20 years ago. Even then, I remember having a crappy Peugeot and my friends dad told me get rid of it asap because he had seen the terrible accidents people had in them!

I spent 2nd year of university ill all the time. In retrospect it was the mould in the damp student house. That nearly scuppered my education, and was not character building.
A friend of a friend fell through the first floor of her student house as the rotten floor couldn't support the bath anymore.

I'll never forget my friend and her then-bpyfriend-now-husband driving around in a car that only had a driver seat, no passenger seat. She sat on a footstool she'd 'borrowed' from the sitting room in her shared house and always tried to look baffled when she forgot to put it back or her housemates asked her or the others where it was or where it was the night before.

My lungs are extremely grateful that the old banger has effectively been killed off by emissions control regulations.

Oh yes! My first car I demanded a classic car off my parents (I was a bit of a knob), and so I had an amazing car from 1970, which could be opened with a hair pin, had a seat that couldn’t be adjusted so I had to sit on the edge and drive it, then that broke. My next car was a polo, that when it pissed down let in loads of water that I had to scoop out with a cup, and it all sloshed around when I was driving. Ah memories of scooping out the water when I got in it after college on a rainy afternoon. Made me appreciate the cars ive had since !
I am glad I grew up in the 80s and was a teen in the 90s!

YABVU. Students may have decent accommodation but they're paying through the nose for it, often £150-£200 per week for bog standard accommodation, and more if you want a studio flat.

Likewise, "shit-heap" cars are simply not on the road anymore as they'll have failed the MOT. Yes, you can get "cheap" cars, but again, you're paying more for a "safe" car that actually works.

Oh God. The euphoria of getting into the old banger you bought with your own cash and the feeling of freedom... I can go anywhere in this and no one can stop me...
Happy memories also of the 6 bed student dump with 1 shower in the hallway behind a mouldy curtain- only to be used when washing was absolutely necessary. But bring free to come and go as desired, eat pudding for dinner, stay out or lie in as late as possible... and having to decide to stay in in order to make rent but knowing I could depend on myself to do so....
Yes I think resilience building, and also makes me so grateful now for the lovely things I have that I didn't always have.
Thanks for the reminder OP.

We were on holiday in the place my OH went to uni. We went there and it was a few years ago and the security staff told him that all the student accommodation was being changed to have en suites to allow for the demand by students.

I know a person who had house bought and brand new car bought for them for unI. She's nows 32, married and expects her husband to cough up for her luxuries and if no luck there she runs to Dad. Like the £500 dress she desperately " needed" for an e ent but obviously didn't want to spend her own ££ on it. The woman seems to have no.udea of compromise and budgeting

Think the water must've been a POLO thing. My brother had one with the same issues

There are still PLENTY of shit student rentals out there. Loads.

not so sure about character building but I agree with "genuinely appreciated working up to what I currently have."

If you're given the newest iphone from age 14, new car as soon as you pass your test, etc. do you have the same incentive to work hard? At best you'll just keep getting the same level of 'stuff' you've always had, so it will feel like the norm and if you do ever struggle for money you'll feel hard done by if you have to cut back to a bog standard or even just not top of the range version.

At worst you won't be able to afford the best version yourself (e.g. if you do live in one of the new fancy all inclusive student blocks unless you go straight into a very good job it's very unlikely the first place you rent/buy yourself will be as nice, if you can afford to rent at all and don't go back to living with your parents), which I imagine would be really disheartening.

I found working full time when I'd got used to being a student (even though I worked as well) absolutely knackering and hard work - both physically, but mentally in terms of learning so much new stuff, being at the bottom of the totem pole, learning to engage with all different types of people, having to be professional all day every day - the incentive for all that was to have my own money and either treat myself at the time to things I hadn't been able to afford before, or save up for bigger things like my own house and nice car in the future - if I was working full time but had LESS disposable income because no more student discounts/subsidies and my parents were no longer contributing it would have felt really depressing!

I feel like nostalgia is the wrong word but I do think two things:

Accommodation being shitty and more informal meant it was cheap and flexible, so I could move cities easily and hence jobs, opportunities etc.

Also it really kicked me up the arse in terms of realising that this was a way it was possible to live forever and if I wanted to change it I had to work my arse off in a variety of jobs to afford a better life.

cars: I know what you mean but safety is everything as another pp said so we have to move with the times.

The problem these days is that young people don't grow up watching The Young Ones, and therefore don’t aspire to living the 1980s student lifestyle.

I did. And I loved living in shitty houses. When the ceiling fell down in the loo one night because I pulled the light cord I found it absolutely hilarious. I enjoyed pulling off the 1970s boarding over of fireplaces etc in Victorian houses and finding secret coal holes etc.

I wouldn’t have swapped that for paying three times as much for a shoebox sized room in a new build halls of residence with the world’s smallest en suite right next to the headboard of the extra narrow single bed.

I've actually thought, ever since I was young, that students should HAVE to live in basic houseshares in the poor parts of town. For some of them it's the only exposure to poor areas they will have, and I think it's important for them to see and experience that before they go off to eventually become CEOs and (especially!) politicians...

Cars, not so much due to safety concerns.

I don't know about character building exactly, but there's a confidence /psychological safety that comes with knowing you can manage with worse than you ideally should have to manage with.

Also, there are a lot of people in the world who put up with much worse, and they are our competitors in the global economy. So while we in the UK may choose to require higher standards and therefore have a more expensive economy, we do need to recognise our limits are in some ways artificial and other countries may not be imposing the same limitations.

This is it exactly, I think. Obviously cars and houses shouldn't be actively unsafe: there's nothing to be gained by carbon monoxide poisoning, or brakes failure on a motorway, and I wouldn't romanticize those things. But young, relatively healthy people can survive in less than optimal conditions, and through the process of those conditions you often learn something about yourself and others.

I think its often more the parents than the kids who worry about "rubbish" versions. People want better for their kids, which is totally understandable. I remember my DF being a bit shocked when he saw my run down but fundamentally not unsafe student house, before saying, "actually me and your mum lived in worse."

I've had some truly decrepit vehicles and although I can get a nostalgic glow and some great anecdotes out of them, the reality was sometimes bloody awful.
The times when all four cars in the house had to be started by pushing in snow, in the middle of a long freeze up, the mini moke that blew up in France, which we just had to abandon, the mini that the door kept falling off, the van that we kept a mini motorbike in for WHEN it broke down, the London cab that cut out every time we turned sharp right..
Similarly with the housing. Although you can cope with a lot of hassle and lack of comforts when you are young, especially in communal living, I can recall holes in floors, stairs and roofs, leaks, terrifying boilers and water heaters, if you had hot water at all, vermin, weird housemates, scary neighbours, cold damp, no doubt mouldy buildings, etc.
I think the thing about all that is that it was an integral part of our life histories, possibly made us a bit more resilient, but mostly made us absolutely determined that we weren't going to live like that forever, particularly when we had children.