(Flyer for the 2009 Concours D’LeMons. I include it mostly because we had several Gremlins and my Brother owned a Pacer, which lasted until he cut the rear roof off to convert into a make-shift pick-up truck which he thought he needed at the time. Photo Concours D’LeMons).
This has been an extended love-song to the American way of Car Life, but there is a sordid underside to our impassioned affair. If you have not been associated with a car that made you embarrassed and infuriated, you have not been a real Car Person.
I have mentioned Uncle Dick the Bomber Pilot, whose experience in the skies over Europe had a lasting impact on the way he lived his life. He had a fierce independent streak, and his war experience only reinforced it. He strove never to live closer to the place he worked than sixty or seventy miles- maybe further. To accomplish this act of social defiance, he first drove Packards, but was always on the lookout for something elegant, powerful and hot.
That showed up in the shape of the 1961 E-type Jag, sporting the 265 bhp, 3,781 cc DOHC inline six-cylinder engine with triple SU carburetors, four-speed manual gearbox, torsion bar independent front suspension, coil-spring independent rear suspension, and four-wheel hydraulic disc brakes mounted on a 96-inch wheelbase.
No less a luminary than Enzo Ferarri himself pronounced it the “most beautiful car ever designed,” though I think he said it in Italian.
My cousin was coming back home for a visit, and Dick picked him up at the airport. Walking through the parking lot, they passed a Jaguar XKE 3.8, one of the first in imported to America. They stopped to “ooh and ah” about the sleek lines. Those Jags- later offered with a 4.2 liter power plant- were the sleekest cars of their day. My cousin was probably not particularly surprised to discover that it was his father’s new car. They got in and drove off.
A car that beautiful had to be perfect, right? Dick was as uncompromising about his cars as his heavy bombers. Something was not right in his new ride, and he took it back to the Dealer to ask what was wrong- the vibration from the engine compartment reminded him of a failing engine on the way to the target IP over Germany. The Dealer responded that it was the same with all of them- a slight casting defect in one of the cylinder walls. All was perfectly all right, he said, “You just have to baby it for several hundred miles until it was properly broken in.”
That was unacceptable for something so beautiful. Dick eventually went Corvette and BMW, along with the Syclone truck for bulk-hauling duties that needed 0-60 ETs in the mid 4 second range. But I think it is safe to say that anyone who flogged a British car with electronics by Lucas learned how to curse.
And walk for help.
So, with the beautiful came the bad, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface on some of the rolling junk we drove. My ’73 Vega engine was a case in point- a car I liked, but which clearly was not ready for prime-time. That does not get to the subject of the astonishing offenses to esthetic values represented by Soviet Bloc automobiles- ugly things built by disinterested workers, like the GAZ Volga or the Lada family, much less the appalling travesty of he Econobox era of car-building, as the American competitive advantage diminished against the implacable (and high-quality) Japanese and their successors.
I had a pal who jettisoned his 1980 Mustang 2-door at a loss. “Small engine,” he said. “Metallic auburn with matching interior. A dog. The only car I ever owned that I didn’t like and didn’t keep for an extended period.”
We have all been there. After all, I come from a family that had three- count them- three AMC Gremlins and a Pacer. I know the pain of having to transport oneself in a manner simply not acceptable to any real car person. And yet, even the ugly got us around, and are very much a part of the American Dream and collective nightmare. There are those who celebrate this aspect of the Car Experience.
In California next week (16 August) the Concours D’LeMon will occur again. The words of the organizers give you an idea of the spirit of things:
“An ugly oil stain on the Pebble Beach Auto Week, the Concours d’LeMons returns once again to Laguna Grande Park in Seaside, CA. Hoopties, Rust Buckets, Misfits, Mistakes and the worst of the automotive world will be on display and as always, celebrity judges will be accepting bribes for our Thrift Shop-sourced trophies.”
(A celebration of quirks, oddities and individual liberty at last year’s Concours. Photo Hagerty Insurance).
A business concern called Hagerty Insurance has inexplicably sponsored the the debacle yet again, so the organizers say it is really all their fault. This is a determinedly down market affair, and is free for participants and spectators who get exactly what they pay for.
Show categories include Vegas, K-Cars, and Pintos, Marlins and Barracudas, and special foreign collections, termed “Needlessly Complex Italians,” “Kommunal Kommunist Kars,” “Soul-Sucking Japanese Appliances,” “Unmitigated Gauls” and the baleful best: “Rueful Britannias.”
Somebody has to celebrate electronics by Lucas, you know?
(1969 Dodge Super Bee with Mod Top option. Photo andy440.com).
There is even special commemorations for things that could screw up even cool Detroit iron, like the Mod Squad vinyl roof, which I think the vast majority of car people will agree are “the work of Satan himself.”
And what if you weren’t a Mopar fan in the early 1970s, but you still wanted in on the gaudy fun? Worry not, because you could’ve strolled into your local Ford dealer and ordered a Mustang Grande or Mercury Cougar with an ultra chic houndstooth vinyl roof. There’s even a rumor that a few Pintos were optioned with a paisley print vinyl roof of their own.
(1970 Mercury Cougar with houndstooth vinyl roof (photo credit google.com)
According to Concours commentators Rotten Gas and Rusty Wishes, it is like an English Bulldog- “It’s so ugly, how can you not love it? Thank you, Ford and MoPar for taking the reviled vinyl roof and making it so unbelievably ghastly, that somehow it actually went full circle and became cool again.”
I could go off on the Marlin Florida edition coupe, but I am not going to.
Actually, some of these daily drivers and beaters are actually sort of cool, since we didn’t have the capability to drive a Shelby A/C Cobra or have an Auburn commissioned with custom coachwork. And mostly likely, we never will.
It is the Concours D’LeMons, the cars of our lives.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303