Gene Carter, Cars I Have Loved, Part 2

Gene Carter

What to do with a baby and assertive females telling my wife that a convertible was unsafe? I argued a lower center of gravity meant it was less likely to roll over, accurate if tangential. Two-door cars were suggested.

For two years of a new body model, Ford offered a 1980 Lincoln Continental coupe.  The doors were so long that one couldn’t easily open them when parallel parked.  It had a new digital dashboard with its own manual as long as the vehicle manual. My Boston demonstrator bought at year-end was the pre-production car on the cover of the brochure.  Ominously, a few weeks after delivery I wanted to have an adjustment done by a mechanic prior to driving to Chicago carrying a trunk of research materials that my wife did not trust to FedEx.  A morning call telling me the car was ready was followed in ten minutes by a call reporting that the car had just been stolen.  A dude had walked in while the mechanics were having coffee, said hello, and just drove it out!  Tooling around in a white derby hat, he looked a lot cooler than I.  He was arrested days later when a cop noted Illinois plates and Massachusetts inspection sticker, only checking the plate when the driver claimed to be me yet did not seem to know the car.  I was asked to come from Chicago for the trial months later; he did not show as he was in jail for some other offense.  At the second trial I confirmed he did not have permission to drive my car. 

Years later, unfortunately, the super new electronic diagnostics instruments in the Lincoln coupe had no memory to tell what was wrong after regularly failing while I was driving. Somehow, the car was fine each time after the dealer picked it up.  My wife informed me that an unreliable car was worse than no car, like a husband.  I argued, like Jaguar owners, we should make sacrifices for grand cars. Then, reluctantly, I traded. Diane Zinn’s mom and husband also owned one of the rare coupes of those years.

The newly emerging convertibles of the 80’s included a turbocharged 1989 Chrysler LeBaron convertible, basically a flying potato! I paid extra to buy a year older new one in 1990 as I wanted, FINALLY, to own the hidden headlights which Corvettes and other cool cars had.

Years later, my new-driver daughter brought home one of those dreadful stories we all fear, CASUALLY mentioning that on the Washington Beltway during a wintery rush hour darkness, one light failed to open. A truck had dropped pieces of firewood in front of her car.  She wisely drove straight over the wood; then, ignoring the crashing, horns, etc. behind her from drivers who had no warning, she continued on. Tough car and kid.

A UAW assembly line worker remarked the 1989 Chrysler LeBaron convertible was one of the worst built cars they had.  Lee Iaccoca said the market for this car was persons between 50 years of age and dead.  It was the car in which my three sibling godchildren learned to drive and which they used  as a school vacation car until squirrels chewed up the wiring one winter. The squirrels had good taste.

For one of my birthdays my wife Rita gave me a 1995 Saab 900SE convertible. We had a beagle I hated for 17 years, but he brought smiles to everyone’s faces as he happily sat on the folded rear seats, ears flying when the top was down.  A  close friend remarked he was glad he lived to see an attractive Saab. I gave the Saab to my god-daughter when her car engine burned and she was an impoverished med student. I thought I had found a ploy that would get my wife away from a purple Taurus and also give me a cool car – a win-win. I wanted a four-passenger hard-top convertible like the old Ford Skyliner from the late 1950’s.  My wife, meanwhile, hoped for an Audi, the only car she ever liked driving.  Her other favorite was a family VW Beetle whose engine she burned up on the Penn turnpike as they drove with five from Jersey to Chicago.

Sadly, Audi kept canvas tops, as did Saab, so I purchased a 2007 BMW 335i convertible, my newest convertible.  It is wonderful to look at, fine to drive, and murder to enter and exit.  With seating for four, the car’s metal retracting top mechanism is fun to watch.  I let a six-year-old honorary grandchild operate the top up and down from the key fob.  But run-flat tires are a disaster for a driver like me.  Over $20k in repairs on tires, wheels, transmission, audio, etc. It is my worst car by far.  32,000 miles, no accidents, and never again. 

But then my favorite! I debated the merits of engaging my junior high fantasy and buying a Mercedes convertible.  Bob Oursler, a music teacher at Roosevelt known to many East ’60 students, had a Mercedes 190SL (at right) I had more than one trip in this car with Oursler driving John VanSlyke, Diane Zinn and me around, top down.  Unfortunately, I was in what John called the puppy dog seat, turned sideways knees to chin (pre-seat belts).  The fabulous gull wing 300 SL from 1954 was a classic and the SL was the strongest brand of Mercedes.  The fifth generation started with the 2003 SL500, a two-seater with an integral retracting steel top.  I thought the Lexus was better made and less expensive, but found it unattractive with worthless kiddy seats in the rear that required rear headrests.  The point of a hard roof was far better visibility with a more attractive design than canvas or various removable hard tops.  Mainly, I wanted to watch the fabulous mechanism, the same fascination I had from the time I first saw Susie Smith run the top up and down on her yellow Ford convertible in 1958. 

The Mercedes model I wanted was popular if impractical, and the cars were on allocation.  I waited unsuccessfully almost a year after ordering one in Washington.  Lee and Shelley Ayres had a Topeka dealer from whom they bought their BMW, and Lee learned they had an undesignated slot for the last 2003 model.  So I ordered to spec, flew to Kansas, picked up the car, and drove home to Boston.  That was the most mileage per year it’s ever had.  Last June, 18 years later, it had 18,000 miles. I consider the SL art, which may offend Glenna. I like looking at it and enjoy watching the top.   It has aged far better than I.  Rita refuses to drive it.  So far, I have kept both car and wife.

There were other cars of course. Enthused by ovals everywhere inside and out, I gave my wife a metallic rose (=lavender) 1996 Taurus.  I alone found it attractive and the ovals were soon scrapped.  One day, we were called by the highway patrol to learn our daughter and friend had been in an accident, and told to get there immediately with no further information.  Arriving, we learned a highway patrolman behind our daughter saw a car attempt to pass another without looking, forcing our daughter’s car to the shoulder.  He said she almost got back on the road until an impending bridge caused her to do a ¾ roll over.  He wanted to follow the offending car but said his job was to check on her, though he dreaded what he would find, based on experience.  To his surprise, both girls in the rolled car were fine, sunglasses in place.  The girls did manage a photo with the highway patrolmen.  That new car, a 2-door 1999 Explorer Sport, was repaired.  Ultimately, years later, driving with her cross-country I totaled it in Indianapolis.  While I sat behind a deflating air bag, she crawled out the passenger window to check on the other driver.  As usual, she got a photo.

Some cars are significant for life rather than for the car itself. My dad’s used work car was a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.  It was very fast, and I often drove it on weekends.  Indeed, I was arrested for racing down Kellogg one evening, and an irritated Officer Rudisell was annoyed I would not give up the name of the other driver, who carefully eased away from the scene.  My parents had enough cash (before ATMs!) to keep me from being thrown in jail with drunks (I was sober!), and Patty Maben’s dad suspended my license for 90 days.  I needled Don Trees at a reunion for never thanking me for not ratting him out.  A wise older friend in finance heard this story decades later.  He observed he regretted not being able to attend college, but said I was preparing for some types of business: (1) always have a source of ready cash, (2) don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, and (3) know if you want loyalty own a dog, adding that all of us are self-educated in the end.

At our age, change is a problem. Most cars are boring in color and styling.  It takes more minutes to do tasks required for driving and we have fewer good minutes in a day.  Cars should minimize buzzers, flashing lights, or frustration aligning a seat when 80-ish owners are driving to medical appointments.  Although late to SUV’s, our family car is now a 2010 Escape hybrid.  We like sitting high, entering and exiting easily, and hauling junk loaded at thigh rather than knee level.  Got it. Recently a car at low speed bruised the Escape’s right rear fender.  My engine would not restart because the float inside the gas tank fell from rust.  I elected a $3000 repair payment rather than accepting that the car was totaled.  

I like lane change warning, collision avoidance, etc. on the newer cars.  Yet friends with Tesla’s convinced me that I would be dangerous driving multiple cars that are different from one another, and I won’t give up my convertibles.  So, in October 2021 I declined delivery of an electric blue 2022 Mustang E GT I had on order, as my wife refused to drive an electric.  I know the driving range figures are optimistic in any electric and felt the regenerative braking could be dangerous if I forgot in a crunch which car I was driving.  But at least American and Europeans put real dash instruments in their cars rather than the ubiquitous touch screens.  A fellow 80-something needed many screens to tell me the mileage on his two-year-old Tesla 3. And the newer safety features are fallible. My god-daughter notes rain kills the cruise control with auto distancing on her new Tesla Model Y. 

My memories of my cars and other people’s cars are miscellaneous.

• My fastest car 0-60 was a 1987 Nissan Maxima or the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. My most practical and safest is the 2010 Escape. The Mustang E GT, which I decided against, would have been a win both ways. 
• I spotted “Gene’s Chrysler” license frames at a Fairbanks dealer, and they mailed one to me for free. It is still on the Mercedes SL.
• I remember smiling at an underage lithe blonde’s exit as a bloated geriatric male was pulled out of a yellow Lamborghini at the Monte Carlo casino. 
• And I recall my close friend Rich Cohn (at right) with his portable oxygen tank for leukemia as he happily bought this yellow Corvette.

Boys and Toys.  Memories and Dreams.  Time moves on, as do we and our cars.

Below – four of my convertibles – ’95 Saab, ’03 SL500, ’73 Buick and ’07 BMW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four of my seven convertibles (not all at the same time, tho…’64 Fury, ’68 Sport Fury and ’89 Chrysler from misspent youth in car heaven.)