Things You Learn as an Old Car Driver

[LizzieMaine]

One thing I learned about having an old car sometime, or a car with an old battery, was to park it on a hill, if possible, in the event there was trouble getting it started. Of course that wouldn't work with an automatic, I think, and it wouldn't be a good idea on a snowy day. But my fortunes have increased since those days.

I had to do this all the time with my old VW. The starter didn't work and I couldn't afford to get it fixed, so I'd always park on hills. Trouble was, I lived on a street with a very slight grade, so I had to get someone to give me a push down the street to get me started.

 

[MikeKardec]

My "fun car," not my daily driver is a 70s Alfa, so no AC and 1960s aerodynamics, it is wonderful to drive a car where when you roll the window down the wind doesn't beat you to death as it does on a modern car designed in a wind tunnel for driving with the windows up. A previous owner reupholstered the seats in corduroy and it is remarkably comfortable in the heat ... as long as you are moving. The noise with the windows down is considerable, I had forgotten about that and I wonder how many people in generations before ours have become deaf from hundreds of thousands of miles on the highway with the windows down. Exhilarating, but not good for the ears!

 

[MikeKardec]

Another thing the Alfa has suggested to me: the future may hold a market of the sort of simple cars many of us grew up with. The thing is just a fun riot, it's really a blast to drive. Not fast on today's scale but it's ... elemental. Constructing a new car with a similar feel and either simple technology or hidden technology could be an up and coming market. Already Toyota/Subaru F-86/BRZ and of course the nearly classic Miata play on this turf.

It's funny an old friend of mine and I were talking about how new cars were so fast (VW GTIs out performing Shelby Cobras) that we now felt free to investigate older cars we'd have never considered when we were younger because their performance was so low (Citroens, old VWs, ect) we'd always been into muscle cars and the like because they were still some of the highest performance vehicles around including what you could buy new. Now it's like a whole new automotive world is suddenly attractive, all we had to do was accept slowness.

 

[BlueTrain]

I have heard, though I have no idea if it's true or not, that the old muscle cars didn't last all that long before they were wrecked. Probably not true.

If you see some older car, not just any but some, that has been well restored, it's easy to see both the appeal of that particular car as well as how different it is from cars now. It may or may not have been that different from its contemporaries but it is almost certain to be different from what is available now. But there are exceptions.

There is, in my old college town of Morgantown, West Virginia, a dealer who sells Morgan cars. No doubt he couldn't resist getting a franchise even if he didn't expect to sell a dozen a year. I think the dealer is located in a building that used to sell MGs and Triumph cars. But I haven't seen a Morgan in probably 40 years. But as far as I know, they still look the same. With only a slight difference in the front end, they haven't changed their styling since they introduced the four-wheel model.

Not everyone was always interested in performance, which is a relative thing anyway. No one would ever have bought a Midget or Sprite if that were the case, or the early Subarus, Renaults or Fiats. But requirements change. Where I used to live, there was no place you could legally drive faster than 55 mph. Where I live now, however, people treat the posted speed as the lower limit rather than the upper limit. You don't need a really powerful car here but some of the older models wouldn't cut it. Even the Smart Car is borderline. That doesn't mean a lot of people still don't buy relatively fast and powerful cars, of course, because they certainly do.

I've only been to one rec-center parking log car show since I've been here but what I saw was remarkable. First, there were a number of chopped cars, meaning old cars that had the roof lowered. I sort of expected that but I really didn't have a long list of cars that I had expected to see. But there were half-a-dozen AC Cobras. Not Shelbys but ACs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've mentioned before that in Maine up until the 1960s, operating a motor vehicle at speeds over 45 mph was prima facie evidence of reckless driving, period. Didn't matter what kind of car you had, either.

That changed when I-95 opened, but the problem was, most drivers were still operating on roads designed and built for the 45mph limit. The fact is most drivers in Maine today are still operating on those same 2-lane roads. And yet they think they can drive 65mph on those roads and not get killed when they go off on a curve and ram into a tree. Or run into a deer. Or a moose.

It's politically impossible because a lot of grown men would stamp their feet and hold their breath and wave their arms and scream bloody murder at the mere suggestion of it, but I'd sure like to see that 45mph rule brought back for non-Interstate roads.

 

[1930artdeco]

45 is fine for me in my Model A. I may not get there fast but i will get there in style.

Mike

 

[MikeKardec]

That changed when I-95 opened, but the problem was, most drivers were still operating on roads designed and built for the 45mph limit. The fact is most drivers in Maine today are still operating on those same 2-lane roads. And yet they think they can drive 65mph on those roads and not get killed when they go off on a curve and ram into a tree. Or run into a deer. Or a moose.

Moose = Bad. I've seen cars that hit an elk ... bad enough.

Actually one of the sweet things about some of the cars like the Alfa is that they were designed for narrow mountain roads and they are quite fun and allow you to experience that design as performance even at 45 MPH. Of course on the highway they feel like they are geared stupidly low, you just have to find the terrain they were built for.

I have heard, though I have no idea if it's true or not, that the old muscle cars didn't last all that long before they were wrecked. Probably not true.

I always found an adequate supply but we're talking about cars that were made in vast quantities, it's really only certain option packages that were actually ever rare. I've sort of lost my enthusiasm for most of them but with age comes change. In American cars I now sort of like the early 1960s Oldsmobiles or Dodges. I wouldn't have been caught dead in one as a kid!

 

[BobHufford]

I'm remember one particularly "poor" winter when I had to start my '73 VW Bus by rolling under it with a claw hammer and arcing across the solenoid terminals. It was bad enough in the cold and slush, but the one time I left it in gear ...

 

[scottyrocks]

Another thing the Alfa has suggested to me: the future may hold a market of the sort of simple cars many of us grew up with. The thing is just a fun riot, it's really a blast to drive. Not fast on today's scale but it's ... elemental. Constructing a new car with a similar feel and either simple technology or hidden technology could be an up and coming market. Already Toyota/Subaru F-86/BRZ and of course the nearly classic Miata play on this turf.

It's funny an old friend of mine and I were talking about how new cars were so fast (VW GTIs out performing Shelby Cobras) that we now felt free to investigate older cars we'd have never considered when we were younger because their performance was so low (Citroens, old VWs, ect) we'd always been into muscle cars and the like because they were still some of the highest performance vehicles around including what you could buy new. Now it's like a whole new automotive world is suddenly attractive, all we had to do was accept slowness.

I am all for this. Most of my dream cars of today were the even then not so fast cars of my youth - MGB and Midget, Triumph TR6 and Spitfire, and the venerable VW Beetle and Karmann Ghia. If I could own but one of these before I pass, I would be happy.

Guys on the automotive discussion boards I frequent don't understand not having fastfastfast. I've always liked cars that weren't bullets. That's just me.

 

[BlueTrain]

I've had my share of cars that wouldn't go very fast. Even 40 years ago I took my car on long trips and speed, if not power, was important. Remember, it's a good cruising speed that counts, not the zero to 60 thing. They were all designed to be driven on the same roads, only some were designed to be driven faster than others.

Style, on the other hand, is whatever you make it out to be. It's hard to get a lot of style out of a cheap car and the little Fiats didn't really have any, although some models were produced in versions that were much nicer looking, like the old 850 models. Sometimes a certain car becomes associated with someone or something in particular in your own mind and that becomes the overriding factor in what you think of certain cars. I associate Volkswagen Fastbacks with college professors but I only knew of one who had one but it stuck. Most cars have very mixed associations, so mostly they get ignored. But I never knew another person who owned a Rover sedan and I had two. So in my mind, at least, a Rover sedan is me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Around here being able to go up a hill without shifting down is more important than speed any day of the week. Especially if you get stuck behind a logging truck while going up that hill. Zero to sixty is irrelevant for me -- I drive on a 60mph road maybe twice a year.

With the exception of the Plodge, I never bought a car because I liked the style. I always bought the cheapest manual-transmission car I could find with a reasonable expection of a few years' worth of inspection stickers left in it. I'm at a point now where I'm having to think about replacing my current "winter beater," and the pickings for a car that meets my specs are pretty slim -- so I'll likely have to grab the first one that comes along, regardless of whether it's a queasy color or has a ridiculous face on the front end.

 

[BlueTrain]

I drive on a 60mph highway everyday. The speed limit isn't that high but that's how fast the traffic goes, when it's going.

Anytime you go to buy a car or nearly anything else, once you decide on what you want, the specifications, in other words, plus the budget restrictions (always a consideration), then the possible choices dwindle down to just a few choices. Even then you may not like the choices. I guess maybe we rarely get to have what we really want. We have to settle for what we can have.

 

[MikeKardec]

IGuys on the automotive discussion boards I frequent don't understand not having fastfastfast. I've always liked cars that weren't bullets. That's just me.

Now that I'm no longer enamored with acceleration for its own sake (I confess to drag racing in my youth) I've discovered that having a car that handles nicely is what gets me going. But my version of handling is not what car magazines and manufacturers want to sell. They imagine all driving is done under ideal circumstances, so low profile tires and low slung cars are their preference. That just doesn't cut it on many of the most interesting roads. You have pot holes and washboards and drain channels and the like. In my reality several inches of rubber between you and the road and several inches of suspension travel are helpful and a compliment to performance. Back in the days when cars ran 70 series tires they knew what they were doing. They valued predictable or progressive handling as opposed to high Gs on the skid pad. Cars were made for real roads both good and bad and with many of the European cars, acceleration was matched to handling ... all you needed was enough to have fun digging yourself out of a corner that you had had to brake to get into.

I'm not saying I wouldn't want to bump my Alfa from +/- 150 horsepower to 200if that was easily possible, but many cars today are just insanely powerful. The amazing thing is that they get pretty good MPGs too!

 

[BlueTrain]

For a laugh, look at some YouTube videos of Swedish car rallies.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't even have to leave my driveway to hit a pothole, let alone my street. If I ever got stuck with one of those low-slung Aurora-slot-car rubber-band-tire things, I'd figure out a way to put 6.00 x 16s on it, simply as a matter of self-preservation.

 

[MikeKardec]

I don't even have to leave my driveway to hit a pothole, let alone my street. If I ever got stuck with one of those low-slung Aurora-slot-car rubber-band-tire things, I'd figure out a way to put 6.00 x 16s on it, simply as a matter of self-preservation.

As soon as I wear out the bogus run-flat monstrosities on my daily driver I want to go to a smaller wheel (these days that's not so small though as the breaks have gotten bigger) and more tire. But these newer cars no longer have room for a spare and it's impossible to discover where that space went, a decade older version of the next model up is actually smaller externally yet has both more room inside and a full sized spare! Progress is not rreally progress but an obsession with "potential." My DD can supposedly lay down some serious lap times on a track (and it's a station wagon) but all the things that make it a racer for the idiot who will never race it make it less effective on the street and even less of a street racer ... if that's what you are inclined to do. So fulfilling its ultimate potential is messing with it's ability to do its actual job.

 

[BlueTrain]

One of the problems with buying a vehicle is that you have to select one that will do most of what you want it for, which is not necessarily what you will be doing with it everyday. Most pickup trucks, even the smallest ones, fit that category. And at the same time, most pickup trucks will be inadequate if one of your requirements is to be able to carry four people at once. So now we have four-door pickup trucks (crew cabs) or extended cab pickups, which reduces their utility as pickups. Likewise, if you have a boat or trailer, you need something that can tow them, and the bigger the boat, the bigger the truck has to be. But once your boat is so big, then you just leave it at the boatyard. All of this is presuming you only have one vehicle, which is a rarity, now that a vehicle is a real necessity. You almost can't live in the suburbs without a car.

 

[MikeKardec]

One of the problems with buying a vehicle is that you have to select one that will do most of what you want it for, which is not necessarily what you will be doing with it everyday. Most pickup trucks, even the smallest ones, fit that category. And at the same time, most pickup trucks will be inadequate if one of your requirements is to be able to carry four people at once. So now we have four-door pickup trucks (crew cabs) or extended cab pickups, which reduces their utility as pickups. Likewise, if you have a boat or trailer, you need something that can tow them, and the bigger the boat, the bigger the truck has to be. But once your boat is so big, then you just leave it at the boatyard. All of this is presuming you only have one vehicle, which is a rarity, now that a vehicle is a real necessity. You almost can't live in the suburbs without a car.

It's true although I walk just about anywhere I need to go on a regular basis (market, restaurant, movies,) I enjoy it a good deal more than sitting in traffic. I guess that comes from living in an OLD suburb. When I was young and apartments were plentiful I used to move to be close to work. It was kind of exciting, almost like being in a new town every couple of years. Now I regret some of the time I spent doing that, I could have experimented with some time near the beach or somewhere not so work related.

 

[BlueTrain]

At one time, a small town of, say, 7,000 to 10,000 people could be much more city-like than the suburbs. It had city characteristics. Everyone thought the traffic was bad and the parking was inadequate. Depending on where you lived, you could easily walk to most places you needed to go, although it was at least three miles or more from one end of town to the other. It makes a difference where you start counting, though. Also, carrying home a week's worth of groceries might be a problem. But two or three blocks away was the bank, two or three drug stores, two or three hardware stores, the 5&10 cent store (G.C. Murphy), the A&P, two men's shops and two women's shops. There were also two theaters, a bakery, a couple of barber shops, one elementary school and what used to be the high school, which had been demoted to become the junior high school. Three or four blocks in another direction were the railroad shops which at about 1,000 employees, was about the largest employer in town. The second largest employer was a laundry, of all things. That was pre-wash and wear. Every last one of the places I mentioned is gone now and in most cases, even the buildings are gone. The railroad shops were moved to Roanoke, the elementary school was demolished, part of the old junior high school was demolished following a fire but the remaining part is a grade school, having been demoted once again. The downtown business have been replaced by other business, invariably chains, at the county mall or a close-in strip mall. The real boom in that town started, I think, in the 1890s and most of the buildings on the main street dated from before WWI. So it could be said that the good years lasted about 70 or 80 years.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That was certainly true here. Maine's largest city has never had more than 70,000 people in it, so by our standards anything over 5000 people counts as an "urban setting." Where I've lived for the past twenty years was a city of almost 9000 people in the Era and was a major industrial and commercial center, with thriving manufacturing and processing industries, and an impressive downtown shopping district.

It was also, overwhelmingly, a city geared to pedestrian traffic rather than cars -- the streets were narrow and except for the main roads in and out of town, remained largely gravel or cobblestone until the 1950s. There was no public parking -- all downtown parking was on-street and metered. As automotive traffic increased, efforts were made to try and adapt, most notably by turning the entire downtown area into a network of one-way streets. This worked fine for locals, but it's been confusing tourists for the past sixty years.

Finally in the 1970s, entire downtown blocks -- entire side streets, even -- were demolished to create parking space, which helped lead to the city's downfall. These side streets were primarily occupied by working-class residential housing, and when they were torn down, those renters had to find somewhere else to go -- driving rents up and people away from the city. Then in the '80s and '90s, the manufacturing and fish processing industries collapsed. Without the year-round support of the people who had worked in those industries, the downtown shopping district collapsed. By the mid-90s, Main Street was a ghost town of boarded-up storefronts occupied largely by drug-dealing biker gangs.

The city has since turned itself into a tourist mecca with nearly fifty downtown art galleries occupying most of the storefronts. Only four downtown businesses survive from before the implosion of the 1990s -- the theatre where I work, a greasy-spoon restaurant, a bank, and an insurance agency. The population of the city has dropped by nearly 2000 people from what it was in 1950.

The public parking lots built in the 1970s remain in use, but at the height of the summer tourist swarm, they're woefully inadequate, and there is now talk of demolishing a hodgepodge of old industrial buildings on the waterfront to build a shiny new parking garage. That'd be several blocks away from the downtown district, but it looks like the best solution to the six-month traffic problem here. Maybe then people from Connecticut will stop blaming me for there being no parking lot at the theatre.