Thoughts from a car guy

I consider myself a “car guy”. I don’t have a garage full of them like Jay Leno, but that doesn’t matter. Jay and I could probably get along because like many people, we both love cars. I was at the local Ford dealership recently, and while I was there, I had to (heck, I wanted to) walk through the showroom. There, in the center of the showroom floor, sat two Mustangs, side-by-side. The blue one on the right had a "special sale price" sign in the window: it read $49,999. The black one on the left had a window sticker price of over $63,000. They were both hardtops, but had they been convertibles, they would have cost even more. OK, they were both Ford’s top-of-the-line Shelby Mustang GT500s, but still, that’s a lot of money for a Ford, even if they do have 650 HP. My dad bought one of the first V-8 Mustang convertibles back in 1964, and paid a little over $2000 for it.

Like many American males of my generation, I’ve always liked cars. I started reading car magazines about as soon as I could read, and I’ve never stopped. Even though I no longer define myself by the automobile that I drive I still like cool cars, and never pass up an opportunity to drive one or even just look it over. Over the years I’ve owned some very nice cars, including some expensive imported models. I’ve also had friends that have let me drive their cars.

I suppose you could say that I come by my love of automobiles honestly, because my dad liked cars and owned a wide range of models, from bizarrely quirky to awesomely cool. We had a tiny rear engine Fiat that Uncle Bob would take out to the cemetery behind our house, sit us on his lap and let us steer, as he would putt around the winding lanes. It was absolute heaven for a pre-schooler like me. We also had one of the first Saabs imported to the U.S., the one with the rear mounted, two-stroke engine, but we didn’t keep it very long. Everyone kept stopping us to tell us our car was burning oil. Being a two-stroke engine, it was designed to burn oil, just like lawnmowers.

Dad had a Ford Skyliner hardtop
convertible that we would take for a drive with the top down, during warm summer nights, with my brothers and I already in our pajamas in the back seat. Dad also bought an original Mustang convertible, red-orange with a white top and interior. At 6’5” tall, he wasn’t real comfortable in it. After a few weeks, he told us later, he took the car out on the Interstate, which wasn’t complete and ended in the north part of our county, and floored the accelerator. He said the car felt like it was going to take off, a feeling that left him uneasy. He drove the car straight to the local Mercury dealership and traded it in on a larger Monterey coupe, which had an inward slanting back window that could be opened. We kids in the back seat thought that was pretty cool too. Mustangs were so new, and in such high demand, that the dealership called the police to make sure that the car wasn’t stolen. They couldn’t believe anyone would want to trade-in a car that they only had for six weeks.

My dad bought one of the first Dodge Chargers ever sold in America as a Christmas present for my mom. The car wasn’t supposed to be released to the public until after the first of the year, but dad was good friends with the area’s biggest Dodge dealer and he let him pick it up in time for Christmas. It was a fastback design, and had a release in the trunk that lowered a panel behind the seats to allow for greater storage space. While you can find this feature on many autos these days, it was fairly unusual in 1968. My brother used it to sneak his friends into drive-in movies without having to exit the trunk in the usual way. We thought it was pretty cool at the time.

My dad also had a couple of dune buggies during the late 1960’s. These weren’t the heavily reinforced ones that they actually used to drive over sand dunes in California. Instead, they had rather flimsy fiberglass bodies mounted on a cut-down Volkswagen Beetle chassis. For a tall guy that didn’t fit into a Mustang very well, it seems a rather odd choice of vehicles; not that dad drove them very often. A guy down the street, who I think worked as an engineer at Goodyear, had a really cool one that he built himself. My dad was never that mechanically advanced, so he bought his already complete. We drove them in North Canton’s Memorial Day Parade one year, which is the only parade I’ve ever been in. Our first dune buggy started to fall apart when my oldest brother started driving it, and dad bought a slightly bigger one, but we didn’t keep it that long. It’s the kind of car that loses its appeal after a few hours.

In high school, my buddy Mark had an E-Type Jaguar convertible, which still ranks on the list of many car aficionados, including me, as the sexiest roadster ever built (although it was also notoriously unreliable and not really too comfortable for a long drive). My brother drove a Mercedes 280 SL roadster at the start of the ‘70’s, and it remains one of my all time favorites, being fast (Gary had a dozen or so speeding tickets during this time), comfortable, and safe. Denny, a friend of mine who is an extremely talented exotic car mechanic, has let me drive a wide range of superb cars, including various Porches, Lamborghini, and a couple of Rolls-Royce convertibles. He even lent me his personal Porsche 911 Carrera Targa to drive while he was repairing the engine of my Honda SUV. It took him almost two weeks, and I would have gladly let him take all month.

I’ve never owned a true sports car myself, which is odd for a car lover. I did come close several times though. When I was sixteen, I wanted to buy a vintage Jaguar XK-120, but my parents wisely pointed out that it would not be practical in Ohio’s winter. I came real close to getting a new 1976 Porsche 911SC when I was in college, but opted to get a Mercedes sedan instead so that I could haul around more people and stuff. Sports cars are nice, but I also loved to go water-skiing, and law requires you to have a driver and an observer when you ski. I remember a trip to Lake Mohawk in Gary’s roadster with my girlfriend sitting on my lap as my brother drove. While it was great feeling for my teenage hormones, Raeann had a less than well-padded booty, and it wasn’t really comfortable or safe.

I also considered buying a Toyota Supra, the original Mazda Miata, a Porsche 924, and a Datsun 280ZX Turbo. I took a test drive in the Datsun, back when dealerships just handed you the keys and let you take it out for a while by yourself. I stopped by the store to show it to Gary. The car used a synthesized female voice to prompt the driver to remember to turn off the lights and other warnings. When he got out of the car, the disembodied voice reminded him “your lights are on.” Gary responded without missing a beat, directing a question toward the dashboard wondering about the possibility that the young lady could perform other “functions” that incidentally would result in no talking. We had a good long laugh at his impromptu quick wit.

My nephew Paul has not only continued in the family tradition of being a “car guy” but also taken it to a whole new level. He’s currently restoring a 1961 Lincoln Continental Convertible. It’s a four door convertible with Lincoln’s famous “suicide doors”. His stable of autos also includes a Cadillac Coupe DeVille Convertible (he put a Grateful Dead sticker on the rear bumper, just like the old song) and a funky looking 1956 Nash, with front seats that fold flat into the back, making the entire interior into a bed. Oddly, his everyday vehicle is a pickup truck, which is a useful appliance in his line of work, but not the sort of thing that someone would drive for its handling abilities. But he loves his pickup, and that’s important. Some people carve up the turns and some like to cruise. It’s all good.

My dad has owned a variety of collectible cars over the years, although he had no real mechanical abilities to restore them. When I was a kid, he had a 1930’s-era Chevrolet Coupe. Later he had a huge, late-60’s vintage, yellow Chrysler 300 Convertible that never really ran properly. He also bought a Chrysler 300 H, a “racing” version of the big luxury coupe with a fiberglass hood and trunk, a hemi V-8 engine, and a Hurst racing automatic transmission. I used to borrow it whenever my Mercedes was in the shop. When you floored the gas pedal, the car lurched forward with gusto, pushing you back into the huge tobacco brown leather front bench seat. As the speedometer leapt upwards, you could actually see the gas gauge needle go down. I’m sure it never got gas mileage that went beyond single digits. But it was fun. And big.

While I look back in delight to the many fine automobiles that I’ve encountered in my life, I have to confess that the true “Golden Age” of the automobile may actually be happening now. Modern cars have more powerful and more efficient engines. Even twelve cylinder Bentleys get better gas mileage than Dad’s old Chrysler, and would blow its doors off in a drag race (well, yes, it does cost lots more). Airbags and crash engineering (pioneered by Mercedes and Volvo, but now used by all manufacturers) have made modern cars much safer. We used to joke that today’s smaller cars wouldn’t stand a chance in a collision with an older and bigger car, but a recent test proved that wrong.

I’ve owned some great cars myself, and if I had a lot more money, I’d probably have a real nice one, or two, or even three. Right now I like the Audi A8L with the twin-turbo V-8 (and an available mini-fridge between the rear seats) for a big sedan, and the Mercedes SL63 roadster for something smaller. Both of them cost over $100,000 each, use premium fuel, and get less than stellar gas mileage. It’s funny that as you get older, some things just aren’t as important as they used to be. I used to drive fast and far. A radar detector was mandatory equipment in my cars. Now I drive a four-cylinder econobox and get excited when the on-board computer tells me I’m getting 30 MPG. But if you want to lend me your Porsche Cabriolet for a couple of weeks, I might just take you up on it. After all, it’s convertible weather, and I’m still a car guy.