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I like cars, especially muscle cars from the late ‘50s, the ‘60s
and the early 1970s. There are very few things that can force my head
to spin around, stop me dead in my tracks or detour me from my intended
destination like an old Mustang, GTO, Roadrunner or Charger.
I know I’m not alone. I attended a car show in Mabel this past Saturday
and spent over three hours drooling over some very beautiful cars, as
did close to a thousand other car nuts.
I think my passion for muscle cars was born when I was in grade school.
My cousins were all older than I, and they were all “gear heads.” I
think there were a lot more gear heads back in the 1950s and 60s. Just
about every teenaged boy I knew when I was growing up was working on an
old car, trying to make it go faster, trying to make it look cooler.
Four-barrel carburetors, dual exhausts or headers, wide chrome wheels
with low, fat, red-striped tires and the back end of the car jacked up
at least six inches higher than the front end. If you wanted a cool
ride, the aforementioned “goodies” were a must. All that and custom
tunes.
By the time I reached junior high, the eight-track tape craze had hit.
A cool ride included an eight-track tape deck bolted to the underside
of the dashboard. I nearly flipped when I saw my first in-dash
eight-track player with AM-FM stereo. It was in a red 1967 Pontiac
Bonneville with bucket seats, a floor shift, a 389 cubic inch engine
with three two-barrel carburetors and a black convertible top.
While I was a town kid whose father never monkeyed with the family
station wagon, I spent countless hours watching my five cousins
wrenching on their latest projects. I know I couldn’t have been more
than 12 years old when I could identify all the parts of a working
motor. Many of my friends were reading comic books and collecting
baseball cards. I was reading Motor Trend and Hot Rod and knew that a
326 cubic inch V-8 was in a Pontiac LeMans, but a Chevy Malibu came
with a 327.
I started working at the local gas station when I graduated from high
school and spent several summers, Christmas breaks and one spring break
during my college years changing oil, repairing tires, pumping gas,
helping rebuild carburetors and packing wheel bearings.
The mechanic I worked with used to curse the engineers who came
up with some of the asinine motor designs. To change the spark plugs in
a certain Oldsmobile, the motor mounts had to be loosened up and the
motor jacked up several inches. To remove the heater fan on a 1963
Nova, one had to cut a hole in the inner fender wall. And remember, I’m
talking about cars that were made 30 to 40 years ago, when you could
still see the ground when you opened up the hood.
I still work on my old 1963 Plymouth. I had to change the water pump in
it several years ago, and if my memory serves me correctly, it took me
less than an hour to replace it. There’s no way in heaven or heck I
could do that with either my ‘96 Bonneville, or 2000 Jimmy. I let
those with much more knowledge and patience than I have deal with those
vehicles.
I’ve wondered many times why car engineers design cars the way they do.
Did they have abusive fathers who were mechanics and are now trying to
get back at them? I once had a mechanic tell me that if every auto
engineer or designer had to work as a mechanic before they were given
their degree, they wouldn’t design cars the way they do.
I’ve always wondered why a vehicle with single exhaust has the tailpipe
located on the driver’s side. When one is backing the vehicle out of a
garage in the winter, all you see is exhaust. If the tailpipe is
located on the passenger’s side, your view isn’t obstructed nearly as
much.
Cars used to have a setting on the heater that would allow one to have
hot air blowing on the windshield to keep it clear and hot air blowing
on one’s feet to keep them from freezing at the same time. You just
slid the little chrome handle half way between the “heater” setting and
the “defrost” setting. I’ve owned at least a half dozen vehicles in the
past 10 years that won’t allow me to keep my windshield from fogging up
and my feet from freezing. There’s a “bi-level” setting for the air
conditioner, but not for the heater.
Why did car designers ever come up with hideaway windshield wipers? I
suppose they are fine in places like California or Florida where they
never get snow and ice in the winter, but in the northern climes, where
most of the American cars are manufactured, motorists are forced to
chop the ice and snow away from their wipers before they can use them.
And the person who invented the flush-mounted door handle couldn’t have
lived “up north.” I’ve broken at least three flush-mounted door handles
when attempting to gain entrance to my vehicle after ice storms. What
was wrong with the chrome-plated door handles where you pushed the
button with your thumb and pulled the door open with your fingers?
My daughter has asked me on different occasions why cars are referred
to in the female gender. I’ve always told her that’s just the way it’s
always been. I never had the heart to tell her it’s because most
mechanics are men and most men just couldn’t have a love/hate affair
with an inanimate object that was referred to as a him…it’s just got to
be a her or a she.
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