sonora2sonoma

By
Tim Konrad

The fifties were a fun time for an 11 year-old boy. Each fall, when the new cars came in, I would run down to the local car dealerships in excited anticipation of what new design changes awaited me.

My “go to” place was always the General Motors dealership because they manufactured Oldsmobiles  and that was the brand of car my dad always purchased. Also, because my dad bought his cars there, the sales staff humored me and put up with my many questions.

My interest in cars began several years earlier when the 55′ models were released and my parents deemed me old enough to go to the showrooms downtown by myself.

The Chevys in particular were very cool, with their fins sticking out in the back. The Oldsmobiles, too, were stylish, with their rocket ship looks and their classic-looking two-toned lines. The Chrysler Corporation cars  were more daring in design, sporting, beginning in 1959, the longest and most flamboyant fins on the backside of any of the American automobiles available.

The Chrysler dealership folks, however, were a little less welcoming. Housed where the Opera Hall stands today, when I would visit there, I always felt like I was in the way, which took the joy out of the experience and led me, over time, to avoid that dealership.

Called the Opera Hall Garage because their showroom had originally been an opera hall, the Chrysler showroom was dingy by comparison to the Oldsmobile dealership, similar to how the Russian pavilion at the 1988 Vancouver World Fair was dingy and grey-looking in comparison to the colorful and lively exhibits hosted by the majority of the other countries who participated.

The Russians erred significantly in the preparation of the glossy-paged print productions for their pavilion. Lavishly illustrated and nicely produced, in French only, someone must have failed to take note of the fact that Canada’s official spoken language was English and not French.

My fascination with cars began at an early age. The earliest car I recall my parents owning was a black, pre-war Chevrolet sedan, followed by a 1949 or 1950 Oldsmobile. The Chevrolet featured the rounded corners typical of such vehicles in the late 30s and early 40s.

A far more interesting car to my young sensibilities was the 1947 Fraser coupe owned by my Uncle Jack and Aunt Verna. Ahead of its time, it featured a rumble seat in the back that could be folded out to reveal a bed.

The pickup truck my father drove when I was little had a short bed in the back, with a rumble seat that he would never let me ride in no matter how much I pleaded with him to do so. My hopes of someday getting to ride in that highly desirable perch were dashed when my father replaced that vehicle  with a 1953 GMC long-bed pickup truck. I don’t recall being allowed to ride in the back of that truck either, but I do remember riding in the back of someone else’s pickup, along with a bunch of other kids, to a summer camp above Coulterville when I was eleven. 

The afternoon was hot and sunny and I was bare-headed, having just received my annual summer “buzzcut” crewcut a day or two earlier.  With no hat, and with a couple hours’ travel with no shade, the top of my head was one huge mass of sunburned scabs the following day. 

Each year, when the new cars were announced in Detroit and the local car dealerships geared up to show the new arrivals in their showrooms, I could hardly wait to go down and see what had changed from the previous years’ models. I did this for several years with such regularity that all the salesmen knew me when I would show up at their showrooms to gather pamphlets detailing the accessories accompanying the various models on display.

As noted earlier, the Oldsmobile dealership was always the most welcoming, since it was there that my father purchased his Oldsmobiles and his company’s GMC trucks.  One year, the dealer gave me a model of the previous year’s Oldsmobile Super 88 coupe that just happened to be the color of the 55’ model my father had just purchased from him. By contrast, the Chrysler dealership folks always eyed my visits with what seemed like suspicion. I never understood why they did this; perhaps they had little patience for kids. At any rate, the reception I received from them pretty much insured I wasn’t going to ever become one of their customers.

As enamored as I was of cars, I was equally fascinated with how they ran, and was envious of people like my older cousin George, who not only knew how to fix cars but had also modified an old Model T Ford in his garage with a modern V-8 engine. George was, in this as in many other ways, someone I looked up to much as one might look up to an older brother. 

Knowing how to work on cars was a good way to save money when I embarked on my driving career, as American cars of that period weren’t reliable the way they’ve been since the large-scale influx of Japanese cars began in the 1970s. Prior to that time, American auto manufacturers were rumored to have employed a term known as “planned obsolescence” in auto making. By using sub-standard parts in their cars, so the story went, the vehicles were more likely to break down and require repairs, thus necessitating the network of parts suppliers and automotive garages that proliferated at the time.

Whereas today’s automobiles are just getting broken in at 100K, in those days, a car with that many miles under its belt was regarded as nearing the end of its usefulness.  

In my own personal experience, auto repairs constituted a significant ongoing budget expense. Having been forced by necessity to drive second-hand cars, whose propensity to break down was more likely, a visit to the auto shop every 6 weeks or so was largely expected. The principal offender was my 61’ Chevrolet Impala convertible, a car bought on impulse that found a number of creative ways to malfunction during the relatively short time I owned it.

A close contender was our 1959 Rambler station wagon, a car that never functioned properly, regardless of the lengths to which I went to correct its many deficiencies. Inconceivably arcane things broke on that car, resulting in remarkable repair expenses. The fellow I bought it from, Mike Symons, likely held a celebration after I relieved him of his responsibility for its maintenance.

The third offender—a 1954 Ford sedan—was happy to provide its share of opportunities for the enrichment of our mechanic. But the vehicle with the most moxie when it came to creative engagements with auto repair professionals was my 1961 Riley One Point Five, a Peter Max-looking cartoon of a car that exuded the sort of childish optimism displayed by the Little Engine That Could.

My copy of this obscure vehicle was a  small, grayish car, bedecked with smiling chrome and regulated by two SU carburetors that seemed forever out of tune. Being English, the car’s eccentricities were only exacerbated by its temperamental nature. Its highly specialized propensity to malfunction found expression through such markedly outspoken actions as consuming axles as if they were hors d’ouvres at a free-for-all buffet.

The English, as observed by Geoff James, the father of one of my buddies growing up (an Englishman, coincidentally) , had the right idea when it came to the proper employment of suspension devices in their vehicles. Whereas the Yanks, so Geoff said, used spring suspension in their running gear and torsion bar suspension in their upholstered seats, The Brits did the opposite. This gave English cars more control on the road while ensuring a firm base upon which to sit. The American vehicles, on the other hand, had more cushiony and arguably more comfortable platforms on which drivers could rest their butts, but at the expense of the tight, more responsive handling afforded by torsion bar suspension.

The only American car I ever owned from that period that had a torsion bar suspension was a Plymouth Valiant from the early 60s; by comparison, all my other cars handled more like bathtubs full of water. My father’s 1955 Oldsmobile Super 88 coupe was a prime example of this. It also was my hands-down favorite of all the cars my parents owned while I was growing up.

The General Motors cars of the mid-fifties were all splendid-looking examples of the auto makers’ craft, the 1955’ and 1956’ Chevrolets being among the most sought-after by classic car enthusiasts. Two-toned green, my dad’s 55’ Olds was built for looks, style and class, and what it lacked in handling, it made up for in power. 

From a young age, I wanted to learn how to work on cars but, try as I might to get my father to teach me, he always demurred. His default position was that cars had changed so much since he was young that he didn’t know how to work on them anymore. Naturally, I was never satisfied with that answer, not only because it signaled defeat of my initiative, but also because it rang hollow, sounding to me more like an excuse than an actual reason.

Looking back on this today, I still recall the disappointment I would experience when my entreaties would be met with some version of the same old tired answer. Why it never occurred to me back then that I could have found other sources to learn how to work on cars spoke more to a lack of imagination on my part than it was a reason to indict my dad for failing to teach me.

Recalling the story my father told of how he once fixed a broken clutch on his old Maxwell by replacing the worn part with a piece of leather from the tongue of his work boot, his lament of how cars had changed since his youth had some resonance. On the other hand, discounting the introduction of electronic ignition, the basic workings of the internal combustion engine hadn’t changed all that much from when he was a young man.

At any rate, regardless of the reasons, having lost out on the opportunity to learn about fixing cars from my father has long remained one of the regrets of my childhood, with implications I’ve felt throughout the intervening years. I suppose it’s reasonable to ask why I haven’t found other resources with which to acquire mechanical skills; the answer is, I confess I don’t know exactly why I haven’t done this, considering I have done similar things in other areas of learning. I think I just wanted to have that connection with him as something we could have shared together. Perhaps I even wanted to have that connection more than I wanted to learn about fixing cars.

To be continued: