CRE's First Cars

They don't just get us from Point A to Point B—few things make people as nostalgic as their first car. (Matchbox cars and toy firetrucks excluded.) We asked some CRE execs to share some of those memories. (Check out our 2012 installment here.)

Transwestern president of the Americas Chip Clarke learned to drive on his dad’s 1968 Karmann Ghia. (Great memory: His dad taught him how to drive stick shift in the parking lot of an old Kmart after hours.) He loved it so much, he just purchased the one pictured from Transwestern’s Midwest president Mike Watts. 

JLL SVP Don Foster’s first car was a 1966 SS 396 Chevelle, which he snapped up in 1970 for $1,100. Like Chip, he recently tried to recreate that original thrill by purchasing this 1967 Chevelle. Unfortunately, although it cost well over $1,000, he says it’s not nearly as nice. But at least the music is better—iPhone rather than eight-track tapes! Don recently negotiated a 19k SF lease in 2929 W. Sam Houston Parkway for Atmos Energy Holdings.

Boxer Property CEO Andrew Segal got his first car—a bright yellow 1982 Isuzu diesel hatchback—when he was 15 years old. He had a questionable Louisiana driver’s license using an office building address his father owned, and drove the car to Manhattan the day after getting it. (He admits it was years before he should’ve been driving in New York City.) The car is gone, but the yellow has stuck with Andrew—it’s showcased on the Boxer vans and signs you see all over Houston.

JLL VP David Buescher bought his 1999 Chevy Silverado (which he called The Red Beast) for $10,000. It was a single cab V6 with fake Z71 stickers and a three-inch body lift with oversized off-road tires, manual windows, and a steering wheel worn down to the metal. He bought it his sophomore year of high school and was still using it to drive clients around on property tours in 2011. By then, the AC only worked on full blast, so riders were either burning up or freezing cold, and the radio had been stolen, and you could see the radio connection wires. (And yet somehow, he still got deals done. That’s salesmanship.)

JLL’s Janet Tesch bought her 1950-something Ford Crestline Victoria in 1966 with $50 of babysitting money. It didn’t have AC, had a three-speed column shifter, and the passenger door wouldn’t open from the inside. She and her two best friends used to collect soda bottles to trade in for extra gas money. (It only cost $0.25/gallon then.)

JLL’s Martin Quach loved his first car, a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. He got it in 1991 for a pretty steep price—he had to eat all his veggies and stay on good behavior. Although it had no AC, no windows, and only two horsepower, he says it was easy maintenance and quite the chick magnet. Unfortunately, the car shrank over time and eventually Martin had to give it up.