Car Talk
Yes, I’m a cyclist and I haven’t owned a car for 15 years, but that doesn’t mean I hate cars. In fact, I was quite an automotive enthusiast for most of my childhood.
My father dragged me down to the local race tracks even when I was very young. I grew up with photos of my favorite racecar drivers adorning my bedroom. To this day I remember battles between local heroes-now enshrined in the Maine Motorsports Hall of Fame-like Homer Drew and Bob Libby at places like Beech Ridge, Oxford Plains, Wiscasset, and Unity raceways.
In addition to watching NASCAR legends like Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Cale Yarborough on television, I had a whole fleet of plastic model cars that I’d built up, and a slot car track to play with. I would spend endless hours pedaling my Marx Big Wheel in counterclockwise circles around the driveway in imaginary races… wearing out at least three Big Wheels in the process!
Naturally I had the full set of racing flags: red, green, yellow, checkered, white, black, and the blue and yellow “move over” flag. I sometimes confused people driving through our neighborhood by playing race car flagman at the intersection in front of our house.
At even that young age, I didn’t think I had the cojones to be a world-class stock car driver, so I chose the next best thing. When I grew up, I wanted to be a race car mechanic. Never mind that I had no mechanical aptitude whatsoever, nor any access to cars, parts, and tools to tinker with!
At eight years of age, I was already an avid reader of magazines like Hot Rod, Road & Track, and Car & Driver, as well as the wonderful and memorable CarTOONs comic book.
My buddy John Gousse and I would dumpster dive behind the local car dealerships, picking up discarded NADA blue books so that we could study the body styles and engine options of all the current models. I could not only identify any car’s make and model on sight, but also its specific year, options package, engine size, and zero-to-sixty time.
With that kind of upbringing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I suffer from the typical American affinity for the automobile. Growing up, one of the biggest questions in the world was what kind of car I’d own once I got my drivers license.
Well, let’s talk about that a bit, because the main point of this post is to take a look back at the family cars that I remember most vividly. The photos that follow are close approximations of the vehicle we had, although the colors were often different. A couple of the later photos are of our actual vehicles.
There’s only one place to start this list. The first car I remember us having was also the one with the most character and style: my father’s 1961 Chevy Impala. Its gloss black body was in bold contrast to its fire engine red interior. But what captured my imagination were its lines: all fins, sweeping curves, V-shapes, and daggerlike arrows, with six bullet-shaped tail lights. Even the emblem carried crossed red and checkered flags! It screamed speed and class and elegance.
It also was the protagonist in one of my family’s most memorable misadventures. In the days before my brother was to get married to a girl from Texas, he and my father went to Boston’s Logan Airport to pick up the bride’s family, our future in-laws. The car’s engine had been replaced improperly, and as they drove through the Sumner Tunnel beneath Boston Harbor, thick black smoke started pouring from the tailpipe, and the car died just as they reached the end of the tunnel. Welcome to the family!
My father’s next car was a green 1970 Plymouth Fury III. The contrast with the Impala couldn’t have been starker. Big, boring, bland, and boxy, the Fury (or “Furry”, as I’d call it) was a typically sturdy but boatlike American Chrysler sedan.
What scares me is that this car actually stands out in my mind. After the Fury, my father went through three consecutive Oldsmobile Delta 88s, none of which had any personality whatsoever. They were big, comfortable, and reliable, crossing the continent numerous times, but it still makes me sad. My father must have been quite an automobile enthusiast himself, but the last four cars he owned were utterly mediocre.
Over his lifetime, I believe my father owned eleven cars, none of which were imports. On the other hand, five out of six of the cars my mother owned before my father’s death were imported. I vaguely remember a green Volkswagen Beetle-my mother’s second one-in the driveway of my childhood home.
But the earliest car I truly remember was a yellow 1970 Datsun 510 sedan. A very basic Japanese econo-box, at the time of the 1973 Mideast Oil Crisis, it must have been a blessing for my folks. It was nothing but a curse, however, after they sold it to my brother, who claimed it misfired, overheated, and ate oil. The Datsun mark eventually was incorporated into the Nissan brand.
The Datsun was followed by my mother’s only American car and first brand new car: a 1975 Chevy Vega. It was bright red, with a black vinyl top, kind of reminiscent of that old Chevy Impala. This was the car I learned to drive on, and the car I took my license test in. My mother liked the color, and I generally liked its sporty styling; it was, after all, our first car with any character since that old Impala. Its aluminum block engine burned oil, though.
The car my mother-and therefore, I-had during high school was a white 1981 Subaru GL wagon. I nicknamed it “Ur-a-bus” for its utilitarian design and because that’s what you get when you spell Subaru backwards!
A grossly un-cool car for a high school student to have, it made up for it in one key way: it had a neeto space-age glowing amber dashboard with digital readouts and an overhead schematic of the car that indicated open doors. This earned it the nickname “the Starship” from my friends, who then referred to me as “the Admiral”.
The Starship accompanied me through gaming conventions, SCA events, move-ins and -outs from college, and many dates and late-night returns from girlfriends’ houses. Unfortunately, it was also the victim of my “learning experience” of causing two accidents within two weeks. In one, I rear-ended someone while driving a girlfriend to a concert; in the other, I attempted a U-turn on a busy street from a parallel parking space, and got hit from both directions. I still have a piece of paint that flaked off from one of those impacts in my scrapbook for 1983!
Despite the number of times I bounced it off other vehicles, my mother kept that Subaru until my father died, at which point she adopted my father’s habit of buying American: a mid-sized Olds, and then a Buick. Only in 2005 could I convince her to buy a Toyota Camry. It’s served her well, despite Toyota’s current recalls and troubles.
Meanwhile, once I started living off-campus at school, my girlfriend Linda and I needed a car of our own. With college bills and student jobs, our choices were limited. We wound up with the used blue 1982 Mazda GLC you see at right: basically, another underpowered Japanese econo-box. My buddy Mike Dow co-signed for our car loan.
The one cool thing about the GLC-the “Glick”-was that it had a moonroof. That was tremendous! It was the car we took off in after our wedding, and our transportation for several trips to Pennsic. Along the way, we made our own air conditioning by turning canisters of compressed air upside-down and blowing the freon onto ourselves.
We used that GLC hard. We dented the driver’s side door by throwing it open without catching it. And one Christmas Eve, an entire rear wheel assembly flew off on the highway and we spent the rest of the day frantically looking for someone who would perform the repair so we could get to my parents’ for the holiday. It was a good car, but when I got my first job in the real world, it was time to splurge.
But before I get to that, I have to mention one other used car. With Linda and I both working, it became clear that we needed our own cars, and Linda found a friend who was getting rid of a maroon 1984 Dodge Daytona. It wasn’t in great shape, but it was functional, and certainly sportier than the GLC. So she drove that car for a couple years, eventually taking it in the divorce. I only mention it here because yeah, it was in a sense one of the cars I’ve owned.
But the car I bought when I joined the working world was another Mazda: the blue 1990 MX-6 GT sport sedan shown below. It was my first new car, and it too came with a moonroof-one you didn’t have to hand-crank! It was nicknamed the Toxicmobile after it’s licence tag: 869-TOX.
The best part about the MX-6 was its turbocharger. After the Glick’s feeble 98 horsepower, the MX-6’s 145-hp was delightful. The only issue was its horrible turbo lag; you could literally floor it, then count four seconds before the engine suddenly kicked in. But it was a wonderful car, and I thoroughly enjoyed my daily ride to work, which concluded with a fast, downhill slalom through Westborough Office Park. Finally, a car that handled, accelerated, and just overall kicked ass!
Sadly, the Toxicmobile’s story doesn’t end well. It suffered a couple rear-enders on infamous Route 9, and had to have the whole transmission replaced. Then, when I moved into Boston proper, it sat unused for months, except for the times I had to drive it to the shop after some Red Sox fan smashed a window. It became clear that I didn’t need a car in the city, and I’d save money by renting a car whenever I needed one.
I miss the Toxicmobile a lot. As my first new car, it was a mark of success. As a sport sedan, it was just a ton of fun to drive. And it was an integral part of my life from 1989 to 1995, a period that saw my first real job, my divorce, a two-week road trip to Austin and back, a new career at Sapient, a new relationship with my first girlfriend from high school, turning 30, moving into Boston, and lots of involvement in the local music and alternative scenes.
But I also just miss driving. For now, I have to limit myself to enjoying the cars I rent for business and pleasure, although I rarely get to drive them very hard. I managed to scrape up a little Honda Fit econo-box on a recent work trip. And figuring out how to pilot the right-hand drive car we rented in the Caymans was a learning experience, that’s for sure! And I totally fell in love with the Jeep Wrangler we rented in St. Thomas; those things are just stupid fun!
It still amazes me that after being such a car freak as a kid, I’ve lived without a car since 1995. Fast and unique cars always seemed to be one of the great pleasures of adulthood, but now that I’m here, I find them an extremely expensive luxury. But if money weren’t an object, I know two things that would be at the top of my shopping list: a Jeep Wrangler for bouncy, sun-drenched fun, and a 263-hp Mazda Speed3 for screaming fast fun.
Mmmmm… Cars!