The other day, quite unexpectedly, my car took control of the steering as I began to pass a slower vehicle. Color me surprised! The experience was a bit rattling, and granted, I probably should have done more than simply skim through the 300-page owner manual. Had I, I might at least have been aware my vehicle was equipped with “driver assistance,” which I’d somehow inadvertently engaged. While I can see some benefit for such a system, it made me a bit nostalgic for the “good old days” before all the high-tech gizmos we now have on vehicles.
Despite a phase where I thought airplanes were the coolest — and couldn’t hang enough models of them from my bedroom ceiling with fishing line — for me it’s always been about cars. At 12, I subscribed to Hot Rod magazine, and drooled over the color pictures of street and show rods like some kids did their old man’s girlie magazines. I built a bunch of car models, but it just wasn’t enough for me, so I begged my father to buy a cheap clunker I could work on. I hoped one day to build my own hot rod. I spent the entire summer between seventh and eighth grade bugging Dad, listening to The Beach Boys’ “Little Deuce Coupe” and perusing the latest J.C. Whitney auto parts catalogue.
The hot rod idea never took root, but Dad did teach me how to lube and change the oil and various filters on the family car, as well as how to clean and gap the sparkplugs. I guess this was his idea of some sort of automotive apprentice program. Mom said it was because he was Dutch … whatever the heck that means. The mechanic at the corner gas station always looked sad whenever we stopped for gas, but Dad was all smiles. He’d already managed to shirk the much-dreaded lawn mowing duties a few years earlier, and could now add this major coup to his growing list of fatherly accomplishments.
With all our moving around, an automotive hobby wasn’t feasible when I was a teen. But I was always able to find a hood to look under and someone to listen to as they told their stories and turned a wrench.
In this way, I held on to my passion until buying my first car at the ripe old age of 19. At the time, there was no shortage of VW Beetles one could buy quite inexpensively, so I plunked down the equivalent of $179 dollars in Deutsche Marks for a 1957 ragtop and drove happily off into the sunset. My friends and I had a blast that spring and summer driving around Heidelberg in that old thing, always with at least one idiot hanging out of the top. The old ’57 lasted about as long as you’d expect, so I moved on to a 1966 VW notchback coupe into which I later dropped a Porsche 411 engine. That car features prominently in at least a few tales of nefarious doings and high speed shenanigans allegedly engaged in by yours truly on the back roads and Autobahns of Germany.
I’ve indulged my long-held love of motor vehicles by owning more than 25 of them. Most were older, like the British Austin Healey and Triumph sports cars I was into for a few years. But British sports cars are like rescue pit bulls with “issues” — they require lots of attention, and you’re never certain they aren’t going to turn on you at any minute.
My absolute favorite car was a 1966 Mustang 2+2. It wasn’t the hot rod of my dreams, but that little 289 V8 could really pull, and the factory gold paint on the beautifully styled fastback was a real head-turner. It handled well, and I loved running the 4-speed through the gears listening to the throaty sound of the dual exhausts.
Shifting was a big thing for us back in the day. Shifting, it was argued, was REALLY DRIVING. Clutch, shift, clutch shift, clutch shift. Down shift going into the curves and accelerate coming out, constantly shifting through the gears. The general consensus held was that automatic transmissions were for senior citizens, not cool dudes like us. Over bottles of Budweiser, we swore blood oaths NEVER to succumb to the laziness of driving a car with an automatic transmission. Oh, how I’ve failed thee my gear head brothers and sisters!
I didn’t even make it out of my 20s before discovering the bliss of putting a car in drive and leaving it there as I tooled around town. Once on that slippery slope, it was only a matter of time before the inevitable. My current ride has more bells and whistles than a wet T-shirt contest at a town crier convention. But as I drive, if I listen really hard, sometimes I can almost hear the sound of those dual exhausts, and just for a moment I’m that gear head kid again.
W.R. van Elburg is a James City County resident. He can be reached at w.r.vanelburg@gmail.com.
