With the ’62 Lancer registered and insured, tuned up and shod with tires from 1990 rather than 1963 or so, dad and I started having fun with the car when he wasn’t busy commuting to and from work in it.
The weather didn’t stay below zero, and air conditioning was not something dad was willing to go without in his daily driver, so Bob (he who’d sold me the ’64 Valiant) installed a Mopar Airtemp setup out of a ’64 Dart. Just like this de luxe unit, except ours was the plain model without the chromed faceplate, without the backlit controls, and without the round side air outlets:
The under-dash evaporator unit wasn’t quite compatible with the ’62 dashboard; it blocked the glovebox from opening more than a scant couple of inches. The ’62 originally would’ve used a bracket that spaced the A/C box down away from the bottom of the dashboard, but none of us knew that, so we just lived with the blocked glovebox. The original-type horizontal filter-dryer couldn’t be had, so an upright one was bolted to the inner fender; for years it got in the way of spark plug and oil filter changes. All plumbed in with flared copper lines and a couple of hoses; that’s how it used to be done when Freon leaks were a shrugging matter.
The system cooled very well, as those Mopar under-dash units were known for. It stands to reason: they had a powerful fan and a very thick evaporator. And they drew in only interior air; there was no fresh air supply, so the same air kept getting cooler and cooler (and staler and staler). No fan shroud was installed on the radiator, nor a larger or more-bladed fan—I don’t know why not; Bob had those parts—so at red traffic lights it became a matter of habit to punch Neutral and goose the gas a bit to pull more air across the radiator. Also to quiet down the compressor drive belt, which at idle speed with the compressor engaged made hair-raising noise like a yappy little dog.
But the car had cool air inside, good enough for dad and me to set off on our very first road trip. And boy, did we jump in with all four feet and all four tires! Dad was a travel-planning wizard; I’ve often wished I were even half as good at it. We’d go up to Wyoming (Yellowstone), to Oregon (Salem to meet the owner of the Slant-6 club, Sandy to see Wildcat Auto Wrecking; Bonnevill Dam) on our way up to Seattle (dad’s folks)…and then back to Denver. That’s roughly 3,200 miles (5,120 km).
Our first day involved about a 550-mile, over-nine-hour drive from suburban Denver to Yellowstone. That’s well more than nothing in a rather loud car with a bench seat. But let’s hear it for bench seats; we put a battery-operated cassette player just like this one—I’d saved up $27, I think it was, to buy it at McDuff Electronics when I was nine or ten—on the seat between us and switched off picking tapes. Dad’s favourite was Horowitz in Moscow.
I probably brought along some Beatle tapes; I had a real thing for the Beatles at the time. The tape player’s single 4″ speaker was just about adequate, given the road and engine din.
By and by, we got to whatever lodge it was. There were two restaurants in the place. We looked at both, and dad proclaimed “Been a long day. We made it! Let’s go to the fancy one.” Yes, it had been a very long day, especially for him—I was still too young for a licence, so he did all the driving!
Yellowstone was marvellous. We saw Old Faithful, of course, and were as amused by the sea of camcorder lenses following the geyser as we were amazed by the geyser itself.
The boiling-mud Paint Pots and steaming, brilliant blue and orange pools and hissing, fulminating fumaroles were apparently routine sights to the big and little wildlife ambling around, but it was our first time seeing them—what a knockout!
The whole thing was especially spectacular as this was not long after severe fires had been through; we didn’t know how much there’d be to see, but there surely was plenty. The Lancer drew crowds, too, in the parking lots; we arrived back at it from a walk round the Paint Pots to find two tourists standing behind it and discussing it animatedly. One of them, in an accent I couldn’t place, tried sounding out the DODGE callout on the trunk lid: “Dode-ghhey?”.
The car did fine, pretty much. The cheap chrome tailpipe tip I’d installed, the kind held to the pipe with two screws, came loose somewhere along the way; it hit the pavement with a ching-ding-denk! and was gone forever. That A/C belt did its yappy-little-dog thing every time we forgot and let the engine drop to idle speed with the compressor engaged. Above idle it did fine, though, and on the long, hot stretches one of us would pull the vent knob under his side of the dash every now and then to let in some fresh air.
No smartphones, no internet, no Yelp, no Google Maps—we had our AAA TripTik strip map and state-by-state guidebooks with restaurant listings. Some towns had longer lists than others, but virtually every restaurant had (steak, chicken) after its name and address, though a few had (chicken, steak)—that was almost exclusively what passed for variety. So when we were approaching Boise, Idaho and found a (Basque) hiding in the list, that was a natural pick. Basque food? Never tried it! The place was called Oñati. It was at the junction of Orchard and Chinden streets in the back of a not-too-reputable-looking tavern. Our meal there went well beyond a welcome respite from (steak, chicken); it was objectively just astoundingly good. I don’t remember what I ordered as a main course; dad ordered lamb shank, a favourite of his. There were numerous side dishes and a terrific flan for dessert—dad asked how it was made, and the waiter started and ended his answer with “Start with 72 eggs”. The place no longer exists, for the chef went back to Spain, but file this away anyhow; it’s not the last I’ll be writing of Oñati.
We rolled on into Oregon. At a scenery stop, I discovered the kickdown linkage was hitting the transmission cooler line, which blocked the throttle well short of full open (also no kickdown action). That made the car’s performance up the hills all the more impressive. We made our way into Salem and to the home of the owner of the Slant-6 Club, and in his driveway we bent and tweaked the cooler line to get it out of the way of the kickdown.
The owner himself…well. I mean, I hadn’t gone into this totally ignorant or anything; I’d spent a great deal of time on the phone with him—once a conversation was started, it was nigh on impossible to end. And of course I’d read his editorials in the Slant-6 News; these were angry rants about rectangular-rather-than-round headlamps; social and legal disapproval of cars with smoky exhaust and used oil dumped in the ground, and restaurants other than Wendy’s. To him, Archie Bunker wasn’t a caricatured embodiment of mealymouthed bigotry and ignorance on a weekly sitcom called “All in the Family”, he was a stand-up guy, a real American and real man who said funny, clever things and told it like it is on a weekly documentary called “All in the Family”.
Onward. Wildcat Auto Wrecking was (and is) a giant collection of old Mopars up on a mountain in Sandy, Oregon. We didn’t actually need any parts, but I’d read about this place described in terms kind of like heaven, Valhalla, or Sto-vo-kor, and I had to see it. I bought the six chrome sergeant-stripes off the tailfins on a ’61 Valiant V-200; I think one of them is still in one of my toolboxes. That wasn’t the only yard we visited on the trip; there was one thickly paved in pea gravel, where the yard operators drove visitors out to look at particular cars, and I think I mooned over a ’61 or ’62 Valiant there, too, though I don’t recall buying parts off it.
Bonneville Dam was as impressive as it had every right to be. We stayed long enough that the parking lot had emptied out by the time we got back to the Lancer. Even better than than any part of the dam, dad let me drive the Lancer around the lot. It was a driving lesson of sorts, adding the first bits of practical experience to my already-extensive theoretical knowledge. What a thrill to be able to actually push the buttons and handle the steering wheel and make the car go and stop! Even dad’s clipped, almost military announcement that I’d just plowed into two cars—we were pretending there was a car in every space—couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm.
We drove up into Washington, up to Seattle. Pulled in where dad had grown up, at grandma and grandpa’s house: a magical avant-garde midmod they’d put up in 1951-’53, with a spectacular panoramic view of Mount Rainier and Lake Washington. Grandma had been creating grand feasts in that kitchen for many years, and this visit continued that tradition. Grandpa, for his part, had long been catching salmon for the said feasts. Dad, too, was an avid salmon fisherman when he got the chance. Not much salmon to catch in landlocked Denver, but out here…! Our next stop after his folks’ house was camping on the Olympic Peninsula. Lots of magically green hiking in the rainforest! We got up well before sunrise—even the Lancer’s starter sounded like it was objecting to such an early getup—and headed out onto the water with a group (on a boat, not in the car).
I caught the first fish of the day, a sizeable salmon. That was a fine and fortunate thing, because very soon after we got it in the boat, I got thoroughly, violently, desperately seasick. Look at the horizon, breathe deeply and slowly, take small sips of water…none of these sure-fire remedies helped. I had the usual amount of experience with stomach upset, but I hadn’t known—not even a corner of a clue—that it was possible to be this sick. One in the group was smoking one cigarette after another, and the wind kept sending the smoke at me. I wanted to toss his smokes and/or his ass overboard, if I could’ve mustered the strength, which I sure as all hell could not. Head back to shore? Not til the quota was caught; there was a whole, paying group here. Dad used all his expert tricks to haul fish out the water to rack up the count; I think he caught three or four. Later that day, after what felt like decades, we finally put in back at shore. About twenty seconds after stepping on solid ground, I was fine. I wrung an essay out of the experience, which I think got me some points in a writing class the next year in school.
All in all, it was a terrific trip and I still fondly remember the bits I remember. By and by it was over, and we were back in Denver. We gradually made improvements to the Lancer. Its chalky paint got a professional polish job, which left it shiny but noticeably thin in places. The cloth parts of its cloth-and-vinyl seat upholstery quickly wore without support from the dead foam below, so new foam was put in and covered with cloth which wasn’t the original stuff, but was at least passably close to the right colour.
I found a new old stock seat improvement kit and bought it…
…along with a new old stock Mopar windshield washer package. The latter contained everything needed to equip a ’62 Valiant or Lancer: a sturdy plastic bag-type fluid reservoir, a cap with a built-in check valve and dip tube, bag bracketry, a rubber squeeze bulb pump for installation inside the car where the floorpan becomes the firewall, a pair of nozzles, hoses of the correct lengths, and full instructions. That was an easy and fun installation. There was a perforated rectangle in the firewall insulation; removing it revealed two dimples in the sheetmetal, placed and spaced to accept, once drilled, the mount screws for the rubber bulb.
While tinkering around under the hood one day, I figured out the yapping A/C belt when I saw there was an adjustable idler pulley meant to set the belt tension. Just a V-groove pulley with two bolts through its bracket. Both the pivot bolt and the slider bolt were loose, so there wasn’t much belt tension, and with each of that giant cast iron lump of a 2-cylinder A/C compressor’s very peaky torque loads, the belt would slip a little: Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Not much room to get at the bolts, but I managed, and I was very proud to be able to do a nice show-and-tell for dad: start the car, let it idle, turn on the A/C, and the only extra noise was the compressor’s normal chugga-chugga-chugga; I’d managed to silence the yapping.
I had to get up early every weekday, because they hadn’t yet figured out that high school-age kids really need to sleep in—they aren’t just being lazy—and dad started his day early, as well. I tried to get up in time to hear him start up the car to head out. The Lancer lived on the left side of the grudge, and the floor was angled juuuuuuuuust right so he could release the parking brake and the park lock, wiggle-waggle the steering wheel a couple times, and the car would roll backwards out the grudge all on its own. From upstairs near the washroom window, I’d hear the BOOM! of the parking brake release—that Popular Mechanics test of the car had mentioned the loud release—then the »cleck!« of the choke closing, and then the morning cry of the Highland Park Hummingbird (i.e., the Chrysler gear-reduction starter) followed by the growl of the 225. Not only did I get my daily hit of those sounds I loved so much, but it’s also how I kept an ear on the condition of the car. Was the crank time excessive? Did it stay running on the first try? Was the fast idle too high or too low? Any misfire or other unwelcome sounds? That kind of thing.
On weekends dad and I we sometimes loaded both our bikes into the car—my 1986 Raleigh 12-speed and his much more interesting original-owner 1954 Norman 3-speed—and head up to Waterton Canyon or someplace else for a bike ride.
We’d had a whole lot of fun on the road trip with the AM radio’s extraordinary power to pull in far distant stations, but the options for daily listening were just about nonexistent beyond KRZN (“your one-and-oldies station!”). I found a local ad for a ’73 Dart being parted out, and called to ask if it had an FM-AM radio: Yes it did, and the woman who answered the phone was very glad I’d called, she said, because god had told her just the night before that someone would be calling to buy the car’s radio. I…uh…okeh, sure thing. But god had someone else in mind, I guess; that car had a Radio Shack item that wouldn’t suit. Not too much digging later, an FM-AM radio from a ’70-’76 A-body was found somewhere (the yard, maybe?).
It was in more-or-less usable condition, though it wouldn’t accept the Lancer’s faceplate and had to kind of be shoehorned in behind the dash, which required lowering the A/C unit. This was not so easy or fun as the windshield washer kit had been, but eventually we were successful and FM tunes could be had.
That radio stayed in the car awhile, but eventually I discovered a guy named Gary Tayman. The Lancer’s original radio came back looking exactly like it had when we sent it, only now it could do magic tricks: turn it on, let it warm up for five or 10 seconds, switch it off and immediately back on, and voilà: FM! The lack of an FM dial wasn’t really a problem; we just tuned until we caught the station we wanted, then set a pushbutton. We might’ve brought a portable radio with an FM dial out to the garage to help out. But wait, there was more! Tayman also installed a line-in jack at the end of a cord, and a pushbutton A/B toggle switch at the end of another cord. I suppose a really complete installation would’ve involved mounting the jack and pushbutton to some inconspicuous but accessible place under the dash, but we just left the cords coiled up in the glovebox. When we wanted to listen to tapes—or CDs, later—we just opened the glovebox the small amount allowed by the non-native A/C, dug out the cables, clicked the switch, and plugged in our Walkman or whatever it was, and voilà again: personal tunes through the single dashboard speaker! De luxe.
Now, my mother had a talent for cakery. When I was six I had a real thing for vacuum cleaners, to the degree all I wanted for my birthday was my folks’ old spare blue Sunbeam vacuum (which was a hell of an easy out; they simply declared it mine and it stayed in the utility closet right where it always had been); that year she made me a blue Sunbeam vacuum cleaner cake:
And a decade on, for my 16th birthday she made me a green 1962 Dodge Lancer cake. The resemblance was maybe less spectacular than that of the vacuum cake, but there’d been no tailfins or compound curves to try to replicate with the vacuum cake, so all in all I think she did a creditable job. The green icing “6” figures around the perimeter were an allusion to the engine.
I’d enrolled in the AAA driver education program, getting practise in on horrid Chev Cadavaliers and gaining praise for my driving from Mrs. Wilmoth and Mr. Brady (who’d been my elementary school art teacher). The Crimson-Runs-the-Highway types of films had mostly gone out of fashion, but we did see “Room to Live” (summary: use yer damn seatbelt!). Some of the other movies were more mundanely instructional: how to safely merge and change lanes, what to do at four-way stops, how to gauge safe following distance, and otherwise like that; while the other kids scoffed at the outdated cars and fashions depicted, I perked up at the ’71 Dart feature car.
Eventually came the big day of red letters and a green car: time to take the licence test! I breezed through the written exam, passed it easily, and then came the driving test itself. The grizzled veteran examiner, clipboard in hand, said “Let’s go” and nodded toward the door. I led the way. When he saw what car we were headed for, his demeanour changed. “Wow, my aunt had one of these!” I don’t know that he was paying a lot of attention as I demonsrated the functional brake lights and turn signals. I do know he was smitten with the car. Pushbuttons! Is this a Slant-6? Aluminum, did they really? Oh yeah, turn left at the next lights. He had me drive around a two- or three-block area, said “good job”, and gave the car a last walkaround. And I got my licence!
Cake is grand, of course—yay, cake!—but I was still in want of a running, driving car. My folks had nixed my idea to bring over an Australian Valiant, so I kept up my subscriptions to Hemmings and Cars and Parts and pored over each new issue. It was always a pretty quick and empty pore-over; there were never many ’60-’62 Valiants or Lancers, and I certainly wasn’t seeing any of what I really craved, which of course was a low-miles, high-specs creampuff like dad’s Lancer. Good job my dogged tunnel vision slipped a little, or I wouldn’t be able to write next week’s instalment!
Thanks for another great Saturday morning read. Great storytelling and I loved your trip with your father. Also had a Lancer radio at one time but not the car. Bought the radio at a flea market. Also has a couple of Darts and other A bodies in the family over the years.
Your Dad sounds like a gem of a guy, who gave a lot of time and gave you room to explore your automotive passions on a car not many fathers would have chosen to drive as a daily. My father had many good qualities, but he would never, ever have let me pick something so unusual for him to drive. I did get a little smirk when it became clear that he enjoyed the couple of times he got behind the wheel of my 59 Fury in the late 70s.
That Lancer sounds like a real gem too. I love that car in its high-trim version. When I had my 59 Fury in college, there was a guy in my dorm who had a Lancer sedan. We bonded over the pushbuttons, but I don’t think I ever got a ride in it.
I clearly remember the Jiffy Jet – my Fury had that setup, probably from the factory. It worked just the way it was supposed to even at 20 years old. But cloth seat upholstery from that era was indeed another thing. Mine only survived because it was covered in clear vinyl, which prevented both direct wear and stress on the seams where it was sewn to the vinyl bolsters. Without those seat covers, not many original upholstery jobs survived even light use after 20 years. We forget how fabulously durable cloth seat upholstery has gotten. When is the last time you saw a seat with torn seams or abrasions through the fabric.
Dad was a genuinely good, decent, kindly man. An uncommonly honest and ethical one, too, sometimes to his own detriment; lawyers are called “sharks” not for nothin’. He had his shortcomings and flaws and blind spots and scars, sure, but he always did his best, always. Never, not even once did I ever see him make less than his full, best effort. Sometimes it wasn’t good enough, but that’s an entirely separate question. So of course he died of cancer-out-of-nowhere, a month and five days shy of 58 whole, entire years old.
The Lancer was a real gem, and dad genuinely enjoyed it. The inversion of the usual dad-teaches-son-about-old-cars thing appealed to his sense of quirk, I think—I wound up teaching him how to drive a car with a manual transmission!—and although it presented no shortage of old-car issues, the two of us had a lot of fun with it.
(And yeah, I’m all about the high-trim versions. Moar chroam!)
Great story.I really enjoyed it. Life is capricious but you and your dad made the best of it with the Valiant. Memories for a lifetime.
Thanks kindly; glad you like the story. This isn’t the first time dad’s Lancer got called a Valiant—during that Yellowstone trip, one morning dad went out to do some photography while I slept in a bit. Later over breakfast he told me he’d parked it near some train tracks and got out to take pictures, wandered a bit, and a railway man had hollered “Whoever owns that old green Valiant, move it or lose it!” He didn’t quibble over nameplates.
I owned a 69 Valiant Signet, and when I saw the photo of the Lancer’s instrument cluster I was struck by how Chrysler kept to the same, closely related design for nearly the complete run of the Valiant and it’s ” sister ” cars from Dodge.
I got my first AAA membership from my father not long after I left home, but never used it and let it lapse. But back about 10-15 years ago, when I stopped buying new or almost new cars, I re-joined. I do remember the old Trip-Tics, I think you called your local office for AAA and requested them, and depending on how busy they were you got it in 24-48 hours. I don’t remember the food and/or lodging recommendations tho.
BTW, took my car to a AAA rated tire store 5 years ago, they must have figured that my being a senior citizen made me ripe for a scam and tried to tell me that I needed a new rack and pinion steering assembly.
But I think that I will try out the 21st century version of their Trip-Tics soon.
That instrument cluster with the rectangular speedometer originated with the last, major Valiant restyle in 1967, and lasted throughout the entire remaining ten year run. The only difference was in 1970 when it got the wood-grain applique.
The Dart kept the pointer-and-scale set-up through 1969, and the only other deviation was the Duster/Swinger 340 received the previous A-body Barracuda round instrument rallye cluster (optional tachometer) for 1970 and 1971.
From 1972 on, with the exception of a seat-belt warning light, the cluster was identical on all A-body cars.
“Pointer-and-scale”…as opposed to what other kind of speedometer on pre-electronic-dash Mopars? The ’61 Lancer had a horizontal speedometer. The ’62 is shown in this post, and the ’63-’65 Darts had similar panels: round speedometer, smaller gauges nearby. The ’66 and ’67-’71 Darts had horizontal speedometers, except with the “rallye” package.
The ’67 Valiant cluster was configured similarly to the ’70-up Valiant/’72-up Dart cluster, but it was not the same. In the later A-body years, the seatbelt warning light was one addition. An emissions warning light was another.
The Valiant instrument cluster cover changed a few times from ’67 thru ’76. Those changes included losing the flasher switch (it was moved to the steering column) and changing the finish from black plastic to the woodgrain applique in 1970, and then the later, aforementioned addition of the seatbelt and emissions warning lights.
But the instruments themselves are identical throughout the run, down to using the same font, as well as the headlight and wiper switches. They all almost certainly interchange.
No, sir. ’67-’69 Valiant gauges are not the same as ’70-’75 Valiant/’72-’75 Dart gauges—here’s a pic. And for ’76, the A-body (finally) got an external-shunt ammeter. From the driver’s-eye view it looked the same as the previous item, but the gauge was different behind its face.
And thus begins my epic search for auxiliary seat cushion springs. I had no idea such a thing existed. I love my Valiant (also a ’62), but after 60 years, the bench is a mite tired of supporting my ass.
Odds are against finding a NOS kit. There’s a partial kit here, which you could use as a pattern to make up more of the helper springs, but good auto upholstery shop will have ready access to “ladders”, new foam, and other parts, supplies, and techniques to greatly improve the support of an old bench seat—without need of hunting down parts from six decades ago.
I’ll second Jim’s comment about your father. All those pictures of you two, and the body language.
Another wonderful read. I love that sweet Lancer. What a gem. And your description of listening to it in the morning, for signs of health (or not), was delightful. All those sounds were familiar to me, but I wasn’t quite as attuned to them. The sound of my father’s slant six Dart backing out of the garage meant that we could all relax a bit, until we heard it come back. Good thing he worked long hours.
I’ve written in this series about some of my mother’s defective behaviour, and yet here in this piece we see she also spent time and effort doing nice things for me. That was the problem, she was totally unpredictable. Her footsteps on the stairs could mean she was coming to holler, mock, demean, and hit me with a wooden hanger or a belt for some transgression she’d blown far out of proportion (or imagined completely)…or it could mean she was coming to announce a fresh batch of cookies. Sometimes the two were separated by an hour or less. So I can relate to breathing a little easier when your dad drove off.
As my expertise (real and imagined) and my mobility grew, so did my actions in response to what I would hear in the mornings—there’ll be more stories in future instalments.
An excellent Saturday morning read and it gives me the itch to roadtrip again soon…The 6 tribute on the cake, well, it takes the cake!
Was the Seattle house the one you ended up moving into eventually? I thought you had mentioned something along those lines once…
The Lancer looks excellent, I realize it’s since 30 years later but at the time it was already almost 30, and a pretty rare bird in that condition. In Denver.
The Seattle house is a sad, sore subject now and for the foreseeable future. I bought it from my grandparents’ estate ten years ago. We lived there part-time, first split with Toronto and then with Vancouver. We brought the house and gardens into beautiful condition. But living in two places was unsustainably expensive and taxing, not just in the monetary sense (though also that; property taxes on the Seattle house did grow to crippling levels).
Four directories of photos of the place here. “Before” is its paintwork from sometime in the ’60s until 2015 or so; “After” is…after. “Washroom Vitrolite” shows the green glass walls in the washrooms. “Toxics Gallery” is a parade of the garden and home chemicals grandpa sequestered in the basement and garage because he wasn’t about to pour them down the drain, and household hazmat disposal didn’t exist yet.
We could’ve made it work as a one-and-only, and we started in on our plans to move there permanently, but then the 2016 election dumped on the scale a big collection of additional, insurmountable reasons why living in the States rather than in Canada would have been an unsound, unsustainable decision. I had to sell the property. It went to a developer who bulldozed it and is putting up two McMansions; I’m sure two sets of McPeople will pay millions of dollars for the privilege.
Me, I’m grieving this death in the family, and I’m the one who signed the death warrant, which makes it worse. We bought a house up here, a good one in a good location, but I’m still having a hell of a hard time adapting: You’re not my real house!. I’ll get over and on with with it, eventually, sorta—most of me will, anyway—but it’s going to be awhile.
Wow, nice house, thanks for the pic links! Seems like a great location, having several times had designs on moving to the area, both in the early ’90’s, mid 2000’s, and then again before we moved here a decade ago. Went back a couple of summers ago and it’s still great, but…different now, especially the downtown areas.
The only way to look at the house being replaced with two in its place is that now two families can enjoy/use the space instead of just one earlier, thus allowing 100% greater occupancy in the same space. Imagine if every property could have two dwellings on it, while the immediate area sees more crowding, it also makes for a closer community and removes/reduces traffic overall as people end up closer to where they want to be in the first place. Doesn’t help your feelings I know, but…
I am totally onside with increased housing densification—yes, even in my own back yard, for all those reasons and more.
And you’re right, it doesn’t help with my grief.
I did hear from the builder that he was in deep admiration of my grandfather’s specifications and build quality; the house took twice as long and cost twice as much as planned to demolish. (Good!)
Thank you so much, Daniel, for your wonderful description of both your trip and your dad. He seems like a very kind man.
Just like Jim, I am itching for a road trip. I am trying for a Rocky Mountain Romp on the Victoria Day weekend in May. I can picture in my mind storming up the road towards Roger’s Pass.
You’re welcome (and thank you!). And yes, he was.
The pandemic has me not even thinking about unnecessary travel, and my present car, an ’07 Accord, saps any potential joy out of the driving part of a road trip much more efficiently than it burns gasoline. The COAL for this car, far in the future, will be short and caustic. But I’m kind of stuck; I have no idea what to replace it with.
Great read, sounds like my kind of road trip! I visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton for the first time in 2017, as part of seeing the total solar eclipse with my wife in Goshen County, Wyoming (southeast of Casper). We flew into Denver and out of Billings, MT. For those of you who haven’t seen these parks, it’s totally worth it.
Nice that you were able to go with your father and without your pesky mother! The Archie Bunker character sounds like a hoot — the only incongruity is that the TV Archie would WANT to dump his used oil wherever he pleased.
As other commenters have noted, the Lancer appears to have been in spectacular condition.
The Slant-6 Club guy was very much in favour of dumping his used oil wherever he pleased, because (1) that’s how everyone used to do it, so it should be allowed and socially approved forever, and (2) all this babble about how it was “toxic” and “bad for the environment” was a bunch of hooey, just like that empty furor over lead in gasoline and those stupid health warnings on cigarette packs, and (3) that way he got to own the libs. Repeatedly, in the case of a car with smoky exhaust, because then he could make them put up with it if he could get ahead of them in traffic and prevent them passing.
In a much-too-diplomatic word: he was a jerk.
Thanks for a great read, I’m so enjoying this series. I was always smitten with the sci-fi Valiant styling, but these days I prefer the Lancer.
You’re welcome, and thank you!
The Popular Science advice on sinking oil in your yard SHOULD serve as a valuable reminder that media ‘science’ moves under your feet. Thank you for sharing an interesting story about how cars and fathers help many of us to become men.
Well…no. This used oil disposal technique was a suggestion sent in by a reader; nothing explicitly or implicitly scientific about it, and it does not serve to debunk media ‘science’, with or without sneer quotes. The Popular Science of that time was full of non-science content. It was competing directly with Popular Mechanics and the smaller imitators (Mechanix Illustrated, Science & Mechanics, etc), so there were vehicle road tests, stuff-to-build-in-your-woodshop articles, stuff about the new ’65 boats, and otherwise like that.
You’re right. When a claim loses all plausible deniability or possible rationalization, it stops being science.
Wildcat Auto Wrecking was highlighted on Motor Trend’s “Junkyard Gold” series a couple years ago. I’ve never been there, but I bought my Dart wagon from them (as an eBay auction). I think I got it for a fair price, and they were fairly honest about it, too…and very helpful in getting things transferred into my name, which can be a bit of a labyrinth in Michigan (at least it was in 2013). The only possible complaint I could have is that “runs and drives” meant “just enough compression to fire” and “buckle up for some clutch chatter.” 🙂 Hey, they did make it clear it was a project!
Never did any road trips until I was in my 20’s. Your story makes me want to travel again.
As kids we only got a very rare “day of driving” to see the countryside and pick nick by side of the road or next to a river or lake.Dad would just go in random directions until thoroughly lost and try to make it back by dark.
I nearly spit coffee out of my nose when I saw the map book. Back in ’93 while road tripping to Mexico City we came across a road block that was done by the Mexican DEA with support of the army. Army trucks and jeeps blocking the road. Soldiers with guns drawn and Mexican federal police in full body armour. We were lined up behind the car, patted down, passports and visas checked, car searched for weapons and no hits from the sniffer dog. Sister in law being Mexican spoke for our group. The question was Only truck drivers and drug smugglers use these roads. If you are simply tourists then what are you doing here? She directed him to look through the map book from CAA and the other travel planning documents which he browsed through. We had told CAA that we wanted lots of scenery and to avoid toll highways as much as possible. We were told to relax. He apologized for the inconvenience, thanked us for our cooperation and sent us on our way.
I could picture the next traffic stop. Only truck drivers, drug smugglers and misguided Canadian tourists use these roads. What are you doing here?
We had a neigbour who would pour his waste oil into a hole in the ground. Antifreeze went down the drain since it mixes with water anyways.
Daniel: What an EXCELLENT reminiscence! I really enjoyed reading about you and your Dad’s road trip. My Dad was much too busy working to keep our family fed and sheltered, so no epic road trips. he was, however a member of AAA, and I’ve utilized the TripTiks on more than one occasion. I think that they are digital or electronic now, via your cellphone. Looking forward to the next ‘adventure’ read. By the way, you may have mentioned it, but what ever happened to the Lancer?? 🙂
Digital TripTiks? Sorcery!
What happened to the Lancer will be the subject of a future instalment.
Brilliant, touching article on many levels; thanks and well done.
As has been said by others, that Lancer was a gem. I’ve really enjoyed reading about it and the adventures you had.
In 1979, after the second OPEC embargo put gas prices *gasp* over $1 a gallon, my Dad bought a ‘62 Ford Falcon, 170 six and a three-on-a-tree. My 13-year-old self was thoroughly appalled. If he had to buy a cheap 60s economy car, couldn’t it have been a cool Corvair or at least a Nova? These were the days of intense brand loyalty, and I was fiercely devoted to Chevrolet and our beloved, but gas-guzzling ‘64 Impala, less so the even more gas-guzzling ‘70 Townsman wagon.
I thought that Falcon was the dorkiest car to have ever come out of Detroit (or Dearborn), and was thoroughly embarrassed to be seen in it. I named it Frumpy Fred (think Fred Mertz) and disparaged it regularly, to the point of actually pissing off my very even-keeled Dad.
I did drive Fred a few times and eventually came to (somewhat grudgingly) respect that dorky little car. One time, I was late for work and drove Fred 80 MPH down the freeway, then noticed a distinct burning smell when I got to work. I had driven the whole way with the parking brake set (no dash light, unlike the Impala). Didn’t seem to hurt the car, and my Dad didn’t find out about it until I was in my 30s.
Another great example of wordsmithing .
Keep ’em coming Mr. Stern .
-Nate
A lovely read. Thank you, Daniel.
Thank you for the great read Daniel. You reminded me of my first trip to Yellowstone and how wonderfully bizarre some of its features were. I did the trip when I was 20 with 3 other buddies in a van we fixed up (E100) for the cross country trip (from CT). It was the first time any of us had been west of the Mississippi.
Hello Dan, I enjoyed your story about the Lancer and wonder if you have written about the Dvaliant that we worked on in my shop? I remember you speaking fondly about your father and we all, well most people, have fond and touching memories of parents and family that have long since passed. I’m still into the MOPARS and I ‘supremely despise’ the article written about Chrysler’s TC by Maserati.
Someone should interview an owner with a decent one and not get into all the negativity. After all Lee A. tried to build a ‘World Car’ out of his ‘K’ car platform cars and did a darned good job of it in my opinion and that of all the members of TC America. I’m planning a cross country trip in September to our 2021 TC National in my 291,311 mile ’89 TC.
I like the photos as well of the young kid I knew back then. That is how I still remember you, with a little less hair.
Relive the past for $3500k down. Of course, restoration will add a bit – probably quite a bit.
https://lasvegas.craigslist.org/cto/d/north-las-vegas-1962-dodge-lancer-owner/7292324760.html
With one of these in my garage, I didn’t think so.