My dad was an unabashed automobile lover. He was a poor kid who never finished high school but managed to become a successful production planner at FMC Corporation after starting with the company as a truck driver. He worked alongside engineering graduates who had the same job and earned the same pay, so he was proud of his accomplishments. He was lucky to get the job driving a truck at the age of 18. It allowed him to buy his first car.
His first was a Model T Ford that
he bought for $15 in 1933, the heart of the depression. Since I didn't come along until a few years later, I don't remember exactly what he drove until I became car conscious when I was six. My father came home with his first NEW car, a 1950 Chrysler Windsor. It wasn't gray like the one in the picture, it was beige with a brown plaid seats. He was so excited he broke into an uncontrollable grin when he stepped out of the car. He could never avoid that tell-tale grin when he was joyful about something.
It started my love of cars, partly because the olfactory pleasure of the new car smell is so powerful.
I didn't become a certified car nut on that day. However, I remember exactly the day that I did. It was a summer afternoon in 1954, downtown Willow Glen, a residential area of San Jose. We were in my mother's used 1950 Studebaker Champion at the corner of Lincoln and Willow Streets, waiting for the light to change. A red 1954 Austin-Healey 100-4 turned left in front of us, and from that moment on I was
lost to the world of the car crazy.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen during my 10 years on the planet. I was sitting in the front seat and remember turning my head and following the sleek red beauty as it disappeared down the street. I searched the magazine rack at the smoke shop the next day and found an article in Sports Car Illustrated magazine about the 100-4. I became a subscriber of the magazine and also subscribed to Road & Track at the early age of 10. I was hooked
.
Back to my Father's saga with the automobile. By 1954 he had become bored with the beige Chrysler. What I came to realize was that cars only had a shelf life of about 3 years for him. He couldn't afford a new car, so he bought a paint gun and compressor and consulted the family about what color he should paint it. We decided on mint green with a chocolate brown top and rear fender skirts. He also bought matching seat covers. Anybody who knows mid-50's cars knows that there were some pretty crazy color combinations. Dodge had a white, pink and black combo! My Dad's car fit right in but it was still 4 years old. The new paint only made it acceptable for a year, and then he was done.
His next car was a 1954 (used) Buick Century that he bought in 1955 after driving my
great aunt down the coast to Santa Paula for her annual vacation in her '54 Buick. He loved the smooth Dynaflow automatic transmission. He drove her down there, dropped her off, and drove back home. By the end of the week, he sold the Chrysler and found a blue four-door hardtop convertible, so-called because there were no window posts. For Christmas we gave him a certificate for dual exhausts, and it was the coolest-sounding car on the block. I added that sense to the olfactory pleasure of the Chrysler, and to this day part of my criteria for buying a car is what it sounds like.
In 1957 he decided he was really a Chrysler man and purchased a two-door Windsor in white with a copper metallic top and fins. Gigantic fins. Push-button transmission. I wanted
him to buy the 300C with a three-speed manual transmission that I read about in R&T. Unfortunately, they cost at least $1200 more than the $3700 Windsor. That wasn't going to happen.
I was influential in my Mom's next car, though. The Studebaker was about worn out, and I pored over the newspaper ads. I found a '55 Plymouth three-speed with the coolest sounding dual-exhaust V8. It was going to be the car I occasionally drove, since nobody EVER drove the old man's car, not even my Mom. I convinced her to persuade him to buy it for her. He didn't like the V8, and would have preferred something more economical. He actually suggested a '55 Nash Ambassador, arguably the ugliest Pininfarina design to ever issue from that fine Italian coachworks. Fortunately, she convinced him, and I loved the sound of that car.
After the Chrysler, I was off to college on my Honda Scrambler motorcycle, and my Dad dutifully changed cars every three years well into the 90's—Chryslers, Mercurys, a couple of the cars that carried the name of Ransom Olds, Hondas, and Toyotas before he went to the highway in the sky three years ago.
His love of cars was somehow genetically transferred to me, and I learned yesterday my not-quite-two grandson's favorite toy is a tiny Ferrari that you can pull back and let go, and it zooms across the floor—a little reminiscent of that red Austin-Healey of so many years ago.
Is that a blessing or a curse?
