My granddaughter is about to acquire her first car and that got me to thinking about many, many years ago when I first got behind the wheel and about the three cars that meant more to me than just modes of transportation. Those first cars are something special that embed deep in our memories and form a connection with the excitement of freedom and a view we have of ourselves at the time.
My first car was my mother's 1952 Nash Rambler.
"The Nash Rambler established a new segment in the automobile market and is widely acknowledged to be the first modern American compact car." WIKI
Her car was eleven years old when I started driving it to school in my senior year. My father had bought it for her a couple of years earlier from a neighbor and had it painted to match the colors of his car; a black top and a sky blue body. A good shot of what the car looked like is at this LINK. Look four pictures down on the right hand side.
I was a little timid about learning to drive so it wasn't until a boyfriend taught me the intricacies of the stick shift as I sat next to him in his car that I ventured to put all the motions together by practicing on rural dirt roads. Those were the days of bench seats and column shifters. I would sit next to him and he would tell me when to shift. It was from those cozy moments tucked under his right arm that I got a sense of the sound and speed at which point to shift.
I remember my driving test vividly as we had to drive all the way downtown for me to take it. How that examiner got into several cars each day with fearful teenagers I'll never know, but I think he was one civil servant that deserved a medal for calm and the ability to maintain a total poker face during the test. I ascended to a higher plane that day passing the test and gaining one notch in my belt toward adulthood. I drove home with my head somewhere in the clouds.
I would get up a little early each school day to drive my little car to the school parking lot just so I could be seen sitting in my car before school started. I got some funny looks for my boxy little car from all the guys with their 409's and 357's. You have to be a certain age to know what those numbers mean and what car models they refer to. They usually stood around with the hoods of their cars open examining each other’s engines if the weather was fair. They wore tight low-slung jeans, tight tee shirts and had perfectly combed ducktails.
The greatest part was being able to drive around with a friend or two after school. I noticed a sudden spike in my popularity from people that wanted a ride home. Amazing what a set of wheels will do.
Starting the car in the winter was lots of fun. My dad would have to push me down the street while I opened the choke and popped the clutch to get the car to start on very cold days. Through the school year I drove my mother's car most school days gaining confidence and experience.
Some years earlier when I was about fourteen, a handsome, young coworker of my father's firm came from out of town to visit my parents. I remember he drove up to the house in a bright red sports car, an MG. It was love at first sight. Not the man, but the car. I had never seen a sports car up close they were that rare at the time. I somehow wheedled a short ride and he was happy to do a little showing-off. I decided right then and there that someday I would have a red sports car with the fierce determination only a teenager can manage. Think obsessed!
When I was a junior in high school an older woman teacher also drove a flashy red sports car. She was quite a character and had a unique way of teaching. That further cemented in my head my desire for a sports car. While other girls subscribed to Seventeen magazine I received Road and Track and Car and Driver. While they were studying fashion tips I was trying to understand rack and pinion steering, downshifting and gear ratios.
Before graduation came around my parents sat down with me and we talked over getting me my own car for a graduation present. They offered to buy me a brand new Volkswagen Beetle, but I had my heart set on a sports car so Daddy started looking for a good deal on a used sports car and found one. Later we found out why it was such a good deal!
So I had my little red sports car, a 1962 Alpine Sunbeam. Here is a pictureof what it looked like from someone's collection. The 'N' was loose on the 'boot' so I turned it sideways and it read, Suzbeam just to be a little different.
As I wrote in one of possum's diaries, much to the shock of my daughter, I was racing down a country road about a month after I got the car. I had been following my parent's car when I decided to show off and pass them. Once I was out of view I thought I would like to see how fast the car would go. I got it up to 110 MPH when all of a sudden there was a terrible noise coming from the engine. I pulled over and waited for my parents shaking like a leaf. Of course I didn't tell them just how fast I was going! The car was towed back to the dealer and the diagnosis was a 'thrown rod'. Apparently there was a minor crack in the engine block that caused the oil pressure to be too low. I had taken it in before this happened and asked what was wrong; they said the gauge was bad, but the car was fine. Their bad, so they wound up having to fix the car because the misrepresented its condition - yes, this was very many years ago when businesses did that sort of thing! I was given a loaner of a sturdy Volvo sedan to drive until my car was fixed. I had to admit it was a very nice, solidly built car.
It wasn't until winter came to the Rockies that I saw a major flaw in my decision to choose a sports car for a mode of transportation. Of course my car was also a convertible, which added to the joy in the summer but was leaky as a sieve in the winter. Getting to work on a snowy winter morning was a challenge that required getting up early. I discovered my door lock often froze solid so I would have to boil water to pour over the lock to get my key inserted. A long warm up period was needed to get the farce of a heater to defrost the windshield. Most of what passed for warmth seeped out all the small openings is the convertible top. So bundled in coat, boots, gloves and hat I then wrapped myself in a wool blanket and started the long drive to work.
That first summer had been a delight driving around in the warmth with the top down, but winter took the blush off my sports car lust. Since I was living on my own by then I didn't want to concede to the 'I told you so' of my parents so I gritted my teeth (to keep them from chattering) and said my car was just fine. I drove that car for a couple more years until when married and with a baby we traded it in for an old Chevy station wagon that we kept about a year until we could no longer afford the luxury of two cars.
Then I went car-less for 13 years. It was a challenge at times, but it was doable. I was raising the kids and working out of our home on things that didn't require a car. When a job opportunity came up that would require another mode of transportation we were put into a position of needing a second car. We knew we didn't want to spend much and didn't want to take on payments. The opportunity came along to buy a car that I had long had poetical feelings for from a friend. I went back in time when for four hundred dollars we bought the 1951 Plymouth Sedan. PHOTO
Now this was a car! It had the original paint job and interior so at 30 years of age when I got it, it was a little on the shabby side, but that didn't matter to me. It was massive and drove like a tank. At the time I was a mere cronelette that barely topped 100 lbs. It was a fortunate thing that I had a good set of muscles from woodworking and weaving, as the car had no power steering or power brakes. Nor did it have turn signals so that require quickly rolling down the window and flinging my arm out to show which way I was turning. It had an emergency brake that had to be held into position with a notched board when I wanted to use it. Also if it was raining or snowing when I stepped on the gas the windshield wipers would slow to almost a stop. This taught me a unique rhythm when driving to be able to see. Because the car had no power brakes it required some very observant driving to have enough time to stop the vehicle. In spite of all these idiosyncrasies I loved the car and named it 'Lily'. That was the only car I have ever named in my life.
During the warm summer months the interior upholstery of mohair fabric and horsehair and excelsior stuffing gave off a unique old-fashioned smell of my childhood. It was on those warm summer nights we would pile all the kids into the car and drive to the ice cream parlor for a treat after dinner. So then the car's name was expanded to, "Lily, the ice cream car."
I had dreams of restoring Lily to her original glory someday. I had acquired the parts book for her model and done some basic pricing on things, but fate intervened and we needed to have a vehicle we could haul large items in, so Lily had to go and was exchanged for a cargo van. It was just as well at the time as college expenses were staring us in the face in a short time and there was no money to spare on such a dream.
So that is the story of three cars that meant more to me than transportation. My mother's car in which I learned to drive, the little red sports car that I thought I had to have and learned that what you want is sometimes not what you need and Lily, the ice cream car, that challenged all my abilities behind the wheel, but was great fun while it lasted.