[Part I is here. Part II is here.]
After I went off to university, dad carried on driving the Dodge every day, to and from work and wherever-all he wanted to go. Everyone loved it—people waved at him with an open palm or an upraised thumb (not the other kind of finger) in traffic. In parkades and at gas stations and curbsides and at red lights they’d ask what year it was, and he always went “Guess!” I came home on holidays and saw to whatever it needed; in between I provided guidance by phone and newfangled email.
After two years at the University of Oregon, I decided I wanted better academics. I think I was actually after better excuses; I remember myself as a lazy, mediocre student. But since then I’ve had several of my UO professors say I wasn’t, and when I look at some of the work I handed in, it’s really pretty good. And there was some kind of a squeeze on that made it harder to fill up a courseload; I think the state was slashing education funding or something like that. So I can’t say what the real story was with me. Maybe it had nothing to do with academics; it could easily have been an attempt at running away from my closeted self (this didn’t work; wherever I went, there I was). Whatever the real reason/s, I decided to take a year off from school and see about transferring elsewhere.
I drove D’Valiant back to Denver by way of Ventura, spent two or three weeks with a temp agency learning I wanted to never work in an office space with coworkers, and got a job as a cater-waiter. The day after my last assignment at that job, and a few days before I started at the wrecking yard, the Lancer went in for a repaint. Its original paint, dull when we got the car in 1991, had been polished to its last possible thinness, and dad finally decided to spruce it up. No Earl Scheib or Maaco slop-job, either. Here’s dad just home after picking up the car from the paint shop.
That pic was taken before the car’s original windshield took a rock. I still remember the ’60-’62 Valiant windshield is a NAGS № DW-591—National Auto Glass System—and the new one had a blue-green sunshade strip at the top. Neither windshield was cleared very effectively by the 12″ opposing-sweep single-speed wipers!
The car’s first- or second-ever muffler went soft at some point, and a much less underspecified exhaust system was installed: 2¼” headpipe (instead of 1¾”), a muffler that I wouldn’t buy again, and a 2″ tailpipe (instead of 1½”). The car had a quietly authoritative mutter at idle, and sounded spectacular revving up through the gears. A highway onramp manually shifted with the buttons, 1-2-D, with the windows down: ohhhhh, yeah! But the muffler giveth, and the muffler taketh away; there was an obnoxious drone that would slice right through you, which came in at about 55 and didn’t quiet down til a tetch over 70. That wouldn’t do. We had a resonator put in the tailpipe and that helped some, but it wasn’t long before we just had to go back to a regular ol’, normal ol’, boring ol’ stock-type muffler. Not the miniature wheezer specified for the car; we (i.e., I) picked one for, I think, a late-production 318 A-body. It matched up to the upgraded pipes and quieted things down quite a bit, but no more rapture-spec onramps, sigh.
Bitchin’ wheels!
Shortly after the (first) repaint, it finally came time to replace the tires we’d put on back in Autumn 1991 when the car first arrived from California. They were Arizonian Silver Editions—a Discount Tire house brand, P185/80R13s on the original 13 × 4½” wheels. They’d held up quite well, but finally came due. I plotted for a set of Cragar S/S chrome 14 × 5½” wheels and P205/70R14 BF Goodrich Radial T/As, and I might’ve stealthily borrowed the car one day to have this upgrade swapped on. What did dad think? He came outside, took a walk around the car, and for the first and only time I ever heard, exclaimed “Bitchin’!” At my suggestion he had good quality Llumar window tint applied. Not limo-dark or full-mirror or anything like that; it was much more subtle, but from the outside it seemed to reflect a greenish black. Ohhhhh, yeah!
Mostly my memory is pretty good for what got done to which car, how and when and where and by whom. But, like certain other historical records, this tape has something of an 18½-minute gap, a jumbled mix of blank and scabs. Dad was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma not very many months after that home-from-the-paintshop picture was taken. It knocked us all sideways; he had no known risk factors and kept himself in excellent health, though I daresay multiple decades of keeping his emotions lockboxed had something to do with it. Nothing even a little bit like this had happened in our family. My unstable mother especially did not cope, and it fell to me—24 years old, with no prior experience of real loss—to keep her propped up and putting one foot in front of the other. So I can tell you this repaint was the car’s first of two, but I don’t recall why. I can tell you dad and I made another road trip in the green ’62, to Grand Teton (we split the driving that time), but I can’t recall when. Sorry about that.
Jud McCranie photo from Wikipedia
For awhile, in between all the trips to doctors and specialists, dad carried on driving and working and biking, determined to show the world he would not let this drag him down. But gradually it all grew to take more effort than he could muster; his bike and his Dodge stayed in the garage more and more. Except when I would use the car to escape my crazed mother; she was perpetually enraged and in need of a target. Dad was obviously not an appropriate target, though that didn’t stop her, even when he had no voice; more than once she screamed and berated him while he sat there with pad and pen responding in longhand—I still have some of the pages; what’s written on them, ah, strongly suggests she didn’t even have provisions for a hinge. Sister was conveniently off living her life in New York, occasionally playing seagull—fly in, make a lot of noise, crap all over everything, fly out—so she wasn’t available to kick around.
And then there was me. Mother developed a habit of emitting showers of sparks and flinging molten lava and boiling bile and flaming poo at me, then kicking me out the house at whim, at any hour of day or night. I had keys and standing permission for two friends’ apartments for when I suddenly had noplace to sleep (or finish sleeping).
She’d always ring my phone the next morning: Hi, sweetie, how’re you? When do you think you’ll be home? The worst of it was…no, actually, there was nothing such as the worst of it. It was all the worst of it. Dad saw what was going on and couldn’t do anything about it; he had no strength and couldn’t afford to attract any more of mother’s unhinged wrath by telling her to be a goddamn grownup. One time (at least) she refused to drive him to the hospital for an appointment, so he dragged himself into the Dodge and drove himself. When he got back, I asked him if it was at least nice to go for a drive. He grimmaced and shook his head.
At some point very roughly around this time—that memory gap is telling on me again—we took the car down to Sedalia, Colorado, to a shop called Persistent Enterprises Restoration. It was aptly named; the owner, Joe Schubarth, held himself to very high standards of craftsmanship. Some rust got taken out the sills, the car got repainted again, the engine got rebuilt with a few strategic improvements here and there but nothing even remotely extreme. The mildest Chrysler Direct Connection camshaft (an optimised version of the marine/’67-up export 2bbl/’71-up domestic production cam), electronic ignition, that kind of thing.
You can see here the new paint was a more saturated, slightly bluer green than the original. That was my fault, not the painter’s.
It got a set of ’66-’72 factory disc brakes and (finally!) a dual master cylinder, a 2-barrel intake and carburetor—I went through several before winding up about 90 per cent happy with a very nice NOS Bendix Stromberg item meant for a ’66 318. The worn ball-and-trunnion front U-joint went away in favour of a heavy duty cross-and-roller conversion, that kind of thing. The factory reversing lights were the same ones used with amber lenses on Australian ’62 Valiants, so I got a set of those lenses, added American ’62 Valiant reversing lights under the bumper, and reworked the wiring to match. I still have the work order, and for the amount of work done, the amount of money charged was unreasonably low.
My folks had the resources to marshal a team of outstanding doctors and go through with all the treatments they suggested, but all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Dad died in March 2000, thirty-six days shy of 58 whole, entire years old; he didn’t survive the bone marrow transplant. I left the hospital that day in his Dodge and drove downtown to get away from mother and be with people who cared. I kept my composure, almost Spocklike, until I got to a red light on Lincoln Street. The guy in the car next to me called out “Hey, what year is that?” I reflexively called back “Guess!”, and immediately lost it; I could barely see my rest of the way where I was going.
The ugliness didn’t stop. There was a meeting round the dining room table to plan his memorial service. Mother tried to exclude dad’s parents and his sister from speaking (she’d always hated them for imaginary reasons), I stood up for them, the clueless sycophant of a rabbi took mother’s side and said “Now, Daniel, we probably shouldn’t have too many speakers”, I reminded him what his job wasn’t, mother banished me, I got in the Dodge, and as I was backing out the driveway, she flew out the front door and hollered YOU GET BACK INSIDE RIGHT THIS MINUTE! Um…no. I punched Drive and headed downtown for the night.
The service itself was something of a happening. So many people attended that the synagogue was quickly overwhelmed; another synagogue graciously made itself available on instant notice. I parked the Dodge in the front-corner space of its car park, and it stood there all glittering green and gleaming chrome to signal this was the right place.
The ugliness still didn’t stop. Some time later, mother dangled the keys in front of my nose, snatched them away, and hissed That car isn’t yours now, it’s mine now. I get to decide what happens to it. Maybe you can have it, and maybe I’ll get it crushed while you watch. Don’t believe it? Try me. By and by (and by), she resumed emulating something approaching human decency, and I wound up with the car. I prepped it for the trip as best I could, seeing to neglected wear-and-maintenance points throughout the car. I drove over to Bob’s house and had supper with him, his wife, and their 18-year-old kid, who’d been six when I first met Bob, yipe!
We removed the Lancer’s leaky 3.23 rear axle with the worn-out brakes, and swapped in an unleaky 2.93 assembly with new brakes—a ’64-up item with the bigger and more available wheel bearings. This would ensure I could stop, and the taller ratio would get me better gas mileage. Then all that really remained was to fix the turn signal switch so that those behind me, too, could see my left signals (got done); adjust the valves (didn’t get done), and maybe fix that manifold leak (didn’t get done either). I arrived back at mother’s house late that night, sweaty and covered with grease.I’d be driving a lot at night, so I put in a set of the best-in-the-world headlamps in that size, the Cibié CSRs (no longer made, sigh).
Then I packed the car as full as I could with belongings and parts, shipped what I couldn’t fit, and discarded what I couldn’t ship, which was a lot, but what price distance?
I’ll tell the story of this unusual starter, but not now.
I pointed the car west and went away. Stopped in Wisconsin to drop off some interesting starters and alternators at the home and shop of my much-aforementioned topical wizard. Took another ride across the lake on the SS Badger. On the Wisconsin side I had to show the ferry staff how to operate the pushbutton gears so they could load the car onto the boat. On the Michigan side, I was standing in queue to debark when I heard the Dodge start up—it couldn’t have been any other car in the hold—and then the »chuk!« of the Torqueflite engaging against the engine’s fast cold idle, and a few moments later I saw it driven onto the dock. Because of course the Michiganders knew how to operate a pushbutton Torqueflite!
It was 4 July, 2002, and I was depleted, but I still had two hours and half to go. It’s not very often a car without head restraints is safer than one with, but this was one such time; if I’d had something to rest my head on, I might very well have fallen asleep. As it was I had a head-jerkingly real indication that I needed to pull off and have a catnap. I took a couple of those, and eventually reached my destination. Slept for about 12 hours, maybe more, before setting about emptying the car and the trunk.
I didn’t have a what’s-next plan for the car. It settled into its new life largely sedentary, but not entirely so. I kept insurance on it (Hagerty) and a Michigan year-of-manufacture licence plate, of sorts; what are the odds I’d find a 1962 Michigan plate in good shape with legend AL-6225, kind of like Aluminum Six 225? I mean really, now, what are the odds? Such a plate would’ve looked just like this one:
Far from abandoned, the car was in loving custodial care. It got taken out in parades and to fairs.
It got patrolled by an orange kitty.
There’s a nap for that!
It got improved and spruced up and doted on. New chrome-look (mylar) lockstrip for the windshield and backglass:
Out with the old…
…in with the new!
(detail of new)
Heat hose, summer far-from-city; dressed so fine and a-lookin’ so pretty:
It got joined in its barn by a steadily-increasing trove of parts and accessories I bought and shipped there; I still had a raging case of elevated collectserall.
You name the part, and the odds are good I had at least one spare for it. Trim and emblems, front and rear bumpers, heater box assemblies and components, instrument clusters, steering wheel, a new carpet set. All manner of mechanical components and gaskets and maintenance and repair parts. I imported stuff from Australia: a backglass venetian blind.
A super de luxe trunk mat, much nicer than the ones in the American cars.
An exterior front sunshade, which I had painted to match the rest of the car. A set of weathershields: two-piece greentint plastic attachments for the front door windows, much more substantial than the trim little stainless Ventshade items we could get on this continent, though I also had a NOS set of those. None of this stuff got installed, it just got, y’know, collected.
I imported stuff from Argentina, too: a set of clever aluminum frame-and-mesh devices that attached to the top of the window glass so the windows could be down a couple of inches for ventilation without making the car a completely easy theft target. An extra-flat 2-barrel air cleaner (I never did manage to find a suitable air cleaner that would fit the 2bbl carb and clear the hood and clear the A/C compressor; what was on the car was a bodged hackup of a stock 1bbl cleaner).
A NOS front-3 exhaust manifold for the Argentinian Dodge Coronet R/T—this was somewhat like the American Hyper-Pak front exhaust manifold of 1960-’61, but more compatible with things like A/C and P/S. None of this stuff actually wound up going on the car, either.
And that was the strange sort of semi-stasis the car stayed in for most of two decades. I got to see it and drive it on the occasion I visited Michigan. It was always a fine thing to drive dad’s car—despite the two repaints and various other major refurbs, it still smelt the same inside, and of course it sounded and felt the same. It ran just great; with the slightly upgraded cam and the 2-barrel carburetor it pulled like an unladen freight train from smooth idle to 70 mph with plenty of pedal left; really, it felt like a well-tuned small V8. The unboosted disc brakes were perfect, and the 20:1 nonpower steering box—oh yeah, that was another install at Persistent Enterprises—was ideal; they all should’ve come that way. 4½ steering wheel turns instead of 5¾, with a lovely balance of effort and road feel.
The transmission had somehow managed to evade the rebuild it really needed; at the very least it wanted some seals and gaskets so it would quit leaking down and out, but that never got done. Whoever would drive it just had to add some transmission juice if the car had been sitting for more than a couple of weeks, which it usually had. Oh, and you had to know how to go under the hood and twiddle the bodged choke just right; we never got around to sorting that out.
Years passed, and then more of them, and still more. Bill and I moved out West; the Lancer stayed in Michigan. I ran mind-movies of parking it at the house in Seattle—boy, it would have looked keen in that driveway, just as it had in 1991 when dad and I made our first road trip! But I never brought it out. There was just always too much going on, and if I were to move the car, I’d have to figure out how and where to move the mountainous collection of parts, too. It gradually dawned on me that it was time to find the car’s third owner. That was a complicated, traumatic, and slow realisation for me, but it helped that I’d figured out that I could remember (and miss) dad just as –easily– far from the car as near to it; he didn’t live there.
But I wasn’t about to let it go to just anyone, and I wasn’t going to sell it for cheap money. I’ve said it before: having automotive tastes far off the bell curve means selling well takes a lot of patience. In this case it required enough years’ worth of patience to warrant their own COAL instalment, so…tune in next week!
Great car.. crazy history..that’s all too familiar .. you have to ask why…
4 valiants later I moved on
Cool looking car, I like it
Now look here, Mr S, I don’t approve of the mags – it isn’t a Hot Wheels toy model, you know – but with those mentally removed, you may have finally convinced me about the rest of this shape. I have always had mixed feelings, liking it some times and at others seeing it as faintly silly, but, in these fine colors and in such condition, it really is a properly handsome devil. And a unique one.
A word on the Australian bits. The screen sunvisors do work, a bit, but my lord do they create an unholy row at speed (and they hit the fuel use too, narrowing an already high-pressure aero spot, I think). Venetians on the back are a bit less useful, and I’ve never had one that didn’t rattle like a set of maracas if so much as a mozzie was run over, which quite outweighed their aesthetic appeal. But the side window protectors are fully useful, particularly given the lack of flow-through vents of the day, though they did make mirror adjustment a triple-jointed exercise. Every second car had one here, well into the ’80’s too.
Quite a searing piece you done here today, Sir. Lots of heart and blood on the page, an honesty (again) to be admired. And all arranged there with the skill of a good novelist.
I must ask the question, though I’d understand completely if you didn’t answer it: does your mum read any of this? And has anything died down to a kinder form in old age for her?
“Mozzie” is Strine for mosquito, right?
Yes, the nasty little pricks (which, adjectivally and as colloquial nomenclature, they respectively have, and are).
You’re probably right about the wheels; they might be laughin’ a bit too loud, in the Billy Joel sense. I think I fixated on them after missing out on that green/green ’60 Valiant with these same wheels. In a do-over, I’d use 14 × 5½” plain steel wheels with these ’63 Plymouth wheel covers.
Y’know, I never actually drove or rode in the car with the venetian blind installed, come to think of it, so I don’t know how badly it rattled. I can certainly believe it, just given its construction. Sturdy for what it is, but thin metal slats against metal bracketry near glass, yeah, that’s gonna rattle. And I think the main reason why I never prioritised installing the sunvisor was fear of wind noise. The factory items had a centre bracket to stop the visor cookiepanning in the wind (a technical term I just made up), but the recent-production item I bought had only the left and right brackets.
It’s very unlikely my mother will ever read any of this. One of her performative modes of manipulation is poor-helpless-little-old-me: she’s driven a long series of different automobiles since about 1957, thus demonstrating ability to learn and adapt to whatever which controls and displays might present. Nevertheless: she had probably the world’s easiest-programmed VCR from 1988 (when she was all of 46 years old) until the early ’00s. The biggest button on the simple remote said “PROGRAM”. Press that button and the rest of the procedure was guided onscreen, step by step, in plain English: “What time do you want to start recording? Enter time using number buttons.” “What channel is your show on? Enter channel using number buttons.” and so on. Every time, she put on a big, dramatic production about how confusing it all was, and she couldn’t do it, and “show me how” (which really meant “do it for me”). She’s the same way with the internet; it doesn’t matter how easy anything is made for her, she decides she “can’t do it” as a means of getting attention.
And I’m certainly not going to send her any links. One of the things that sucks about parents like her is that anything I say—even if I never actually said it!—can and will be used against me, whenever it’s convenient for her. It took me a very long time and a great deal of pain to learn that Look what I did/wrote/made/achieved, mom! is not an option for me, for it will be vandalised, lit on fire, shit on, mocked, scorned, inappropriately shared, and/or thrown in my face, sooner or later, every single time.
So no, the odds are she won’t see any of this. But if she somehow does, okeh; I’m not afraid of her any more (that took many years of hideously difficult deprogramming).
And—not often enough, but sometimes—her grossly (in both senses) defective behaviour blows up in her face. Around the time she did her little power play with the car keys, threatening to have the car crushed in front of me, she called me a “son of a bitch”. Time stopped, and »poof!« a little angel appeared on one of my shoulders and a little devil on the other, just like in the cartoons. The angel said Let it go. This isn’t safe; you’re at the top of a staircase. Water off a duck’s back. Just let it drop. The devil gave a bronx cheer and said When are you ever going to have this chance again? GO! He had a point. I calmly pointed out the implication of her calling me a son of a bitch—hi, have we met? I’m your son—and she lost coherence for a very fine brief moment. The veins in her neck and temples throbbed visibly, but they held; she lived to carry on doing what she does best, bless her heart.
I held flimsy hope time might turn her into a sweet, harmless little old lady, but no. Occasionally she puts on a terrific performance of giving the appearance of having moments of clarity in re her effects on others, but it never gains any real traction; it’s just gas.
She is a shining example that one can be psychoemotionally disordered and a bad person; the two conditions are not mutually exclusive, and the latter makes it just about impossible to forgive on the basis of the former.
Thanks for another great instalment and being prepared to share some nasty family business.
Justy Baum is right about the venitian blind rattle, the one in our 85 Cressida surely did, but as a teen riding on the velour back there it was welcome.
I note your comment on the distinctive sound of the car dropping into drive. I think all the readers here nodded along with that one, even if we don’t get quite so worked up side marker lamps (Australians say what?).
Australians say “side marker lamp” (or “-light”), mostly in re big trucks—because they’re not required on other vehicles. Actually, Australia for many years had an interesting big-vehicle side marker light specification: each lamp had to provide amber light forward and red light rearward. But there I go getting worked up again!
As to the nasty family business: this is the first time I’ve written publicly about it. Hadn’t really planned on it, but decided the only way to beat back the hush-hush taboo about psychoemotional illness and its destructive effects is to normalise talking about it.
I feel it in me sometimes. It’s always in the back, hiding in the dark. Waiting for a chance to show itself and ruin everything.
It is my mother. Part of her lives in me. She has a special room in there corded off from the rest. It has warning tape around the door but the door is not locked. She will sneak out if you don’t pay attention.
So no getting drunk. No getting high, or doing anything that will make your eyes bleary and let you take your attention off that door.
Leave the hall light on and the door closed.
She must remain alone in the dark.
She is the dark.
The price for peace is eternal vigilance.
–
Since part of your mother is in you as well, Daniel, you deserve much props for using her for good instead of evil.
–
Talk about everything. Evil wins when good people do nothing.
I smile when I hear my dad (or his) in my voice. I shudder when I hear my mother in my voice. I have worked and worked and worked to maximise the former and excise the latter; it’s my version of Purr More, Hiss Less.
I can’t relate to anxiety people seem to feel about not drinking—what’s a valid excuse; what will others think? Mine’s really easy and no word of a lie: My mouth is plenty big enough as it is; don’t nobody need it getting no bigger!
I used to have a friend in California who said Medical marijuana saves lives; I smoke it and my mother gets to keep living.
Wow, this was really real. Having done it a time or two myself (and only with great struggle), there are few things I admire more than someone who can pour the self so completely into a piece of writing as you have done here. And beautifully.
All of us hereabouts associate people in our lives with their cars (and the other way around) but few of us have long term relationships with people who, in turn, have long term relationships with cars, so that all of the emotions get turned up to eleven on the intensity dial.
This has been a beautiful story about a father, a son and the car that did far more than just provide transport. I will never be able to look at a Lancer again in the same way I did before you began writing about yours.
Daniel, I can’t say more or better than what J P has said.
Thank you for sharing.
Marvellous car, marvellous/sad story. You got everything possible out of your relationship with the car, and with your father.
As Peter Egan wrote “it’s such a nice car, but it’ll still be nice if someone else owns it “.
Thank you. Hadn’t heard the Egan quote, but it’s very similar to my own realisation that I still like old cars just fine—in somebody else’s garage!
What J P Cavanaugh said. I couldn’t have said it better. Plus 1, +1. Thanks to both of you.
Samee for me. Thanks a los, JP and Daniel. And ZL for your Dad.
I never get over how much better the Lancer looks than the 1st generation Valiant, and wonder how differently sales might have been if it had been the Lancer that was introduced as the 1960 Valiant.
The Valiant, with its superior engineering, was a much better car than the Falcon, and even with a higher price, could have been more of a contender in the compact wars if it only looked better (as the Lancer does).
I’ve always preferred the Valiant front clip and the Lancer rear clip.
I have a hard time picking between the two. The original ’60 Valiant really works for me in almost every detail (the ’61 not quite so much; the trim and detail changes made for change’s sake were almost all unimprovements). And the ’61 and ’62 Lancers likewise work for me in almost every detail.
Really I think leading with the Lancer wouldn’t’ve improved first-year Valiant sales. It is surely an unconventional design that got people talking and created some amount of polarisation, but from period media it doesn’t seem like many people were put off by the car’s design or styling.
Rather, people were still avoiding Chrysler products in reaction to the godawful build and materials quality of the ’57-’59 cars, and the Valiant was as new as a new model could possibly be, with zero track record and a bunch of what could be talked about by any number of engineers and still be considered untested novelties by the buying public. Likewise, no amount of advertising the car’s 7-step dip-and-spray rustproofing process could allay that skittishness, and the road tests of the day describe pretty sloppy, thrown-together build quality on the ’60 Valiants. Yes, they had a long list of engineering and performance superiorities versus the ’60 Falcon and Corvair, but so did the Volvo. More people bought Falcons and Corvairs than Volvos, too.
Daniel, you have again written a captivating story. I lost my dad in 1997, from cancer as well. Dad had a terrible lifestyle. He drank like a madman for far too many years and smoked at least two packs of Export Plain cigarettes every day.
My mom also struggled with mental illness and never received the care or the medications- she needed. Her specialist visits always ended with her being asked to leave.
Dad could manage Mum but I am sure it was a factor in his death at age 63. I still miss him terribly.
Thanks and condolences on all of it.
I’m laughing not because this is funny—it’s not—but because it brings to mind that hoary old joke: How do you clear a room full of Canadians? You ask them to please leave.
(Also: How do you know you’re at a Canadian party? There’s one pretzel left in the bowl).
((Also also: How do you know you’re at a Canadian party in Quebec? There’s one pretzel left in the bowl, and it has been smashed so nobody can have it)).
Or as Clarkson once put it,
“He invited us to get out of his office.”
I’m gonna miss this series when it’s over.
Seconded.
Thanks, Peter and Jim. Me three!
Daniel ;
You are a very good son, I know both your parents are proud .
I remember these cars when new, I didn’t much like the looks but they’re in fact really good cars .
I too know about getting some special old vehicle 100 % fully sorted then deciding to let it go, I look back and sigh .
-Nate
Thanks, Nate. Yeah, in retrospect it does seem like I got a fair number of my cars shipshape…then sold them! Dear brain: what’s the matter with you?
Daniel, what a tour de force of a story! I had wondered what had become of the Lancer; now we know of its ascent to even greater heights. I love the styling and the green paint, the latter of which is hard to find on late-model cars with the notable exception of Subaru.
I’m so sorry of everthing you went through with the untimely passing of your dad. Your mother was terrible, but I enjoyed the reference to your sister as a seagull during that sad time. I assume your mother’s threat to crush the Lancer was because of jealousy of the relationship you had with your dad?
I’ve never had the pleasure of driving a pushbutton transmission Chrysler product from that era. The ones I happened to drive all had manual transmissions. What was Chrysler’s main impetus in dropping the pushbuttons in favor of the clunky lever? I’ve read that some didn’t like the buttons because they had to look down to make sure the proper one was selected.
Packard and Ford also pushed a few pushbutton transmissions. Ford’s was particularly unreliable, installing it in the hub of the steering wheel in the ’58 Edsel probably didn’t help matters.
Chrysler’s penchant for the peculiar in the early ’60s wasn’t helping them, and the downsides of complexity and the lost ergonomics of manually shifting a column automatic wasn’t helping matters. The Lyn Townsend era at Chrysler was initially all about making cars in the image of General Motors – they sold what the public favored.
The mechanics of the push button were simple. Each button had different length extensions that pushed directly against the shift cable causing it to move different amounts to select the correct gear. The number of parts were probably double the lever system…
Each one I drive in the AP5 worked well..
Park select was a sliding lever to prevent mistakes.
Thanks! (Didjya get my email?)
When I think of Subaru, I think of Confirmation-Bias Orange, that colour I’m sure every XV Crosstrek is painted even though I fully well know they come in other colours, too.
I guess over two decades on, I can go ahead and admit to having hastened the end of one of my sister’s visits because she’d demolished my last nerve and I just literally could not even any more. She worked for Bloomberg News, and back then there was no cloud and much less of an internet; remote work meant carrying a company laptop loaded up with company software—without which, no work was possible. I had an insanely strong magnet bought from American Science and Surplus (which I described here). This was described in their cattledog as “at least 200-pound pull, possibly 300 or more; we can’t test past 200” along with warnings I still remember: “Do NOT get your hand or any other part of your body between this magnet and any piece of ferrous metal; you WILL be crushed and severely injured”. They weren’t kidding around, either; this hold-in-the-hand-sized magnet was just ridiculously strong and could do all kinds of magic tricks. I waited until sister left her company laptop unattended, then approached it with the magnet at arm’s length. There was a loud SNAK! sound of the hard drive’s heads being dragged across the plate and smashed up against the inside of the drive case, and the computer was immediately both very blank and very dead. She had to fly back to New York. Too bad, so sad.
As to why my mother threatened to crush the Lancer: over the decades I have (mostly) learnt to stop looking for a reason for anything she does or says. There isn’t one. There’s always an excuse, and in our case she always blamed it—whatever “it” was—on me. Very similar to the classic abuser’s line: I tole you I like my eggs MEDIUM! These are HARD! Why do you keep making me hit you?!
I highly recommend you find a pushbutton Torqueflite car to try out; it’s good for you in the same way as looking at pictures of fuzzy kitties.
Why did Chrysler drop the pushbuttons? Many myths are thrown around; the real explanation is here on CC.
Yes I did receive your email, thanks! It was a delightful surprise, and I will reply.
Ah, I did read the JPC story on CC back when it was posted, but I had forgotten about it. We have so much on CC, such a treasure trove, so thanks for the reference.
“Sister was conveniently off living her life in New York, occasionally playing seagull—fly in, make a lot of noise, crap all over everything, fly out—so she wasn’t available to kick around.”
I hope you don’t mind that I broke out laughing at this. I’ve lived this, just change the home base of the gull. I’ve usually described it as swoop and poop, but your description better encapsulates the entire experience.
Having a few VIPs in our lives is perhaps all we can really ask for. I’m glad you had your father.
And, your father’s Lancer is easily my favorite first gen A-Body, and your stewardship of it is a great story – thank you for sharing it! The Venetian blind was a fun addition, I recall seeing a few of these in aging early ’60s cars when I was a tot. Another bit of automotive ephemera that was probably slain by air conditioning.
I don’t have the URL handy, but one of the engineers for the Ford Oz “Barra” engine said the team called it the seagull engine because it was going to shit all over the competition.
Please laugh at will! I can’t claim credit for that seagull line; I read it years ago—don’t remember where—and shamelessly lifted it.
I’m glad I had my father, too. Of course he had his imperfections, flaws, blind spots, sharp edges, pointy corners, shortcomings, and fuckups, but he was by far the most decent, honest, thoughtful people I’ve ever known, and it is a whole hell of a lot easier for me to believe he did his best with what he had than to think that of my mother.
Venetian blinds, front sunshades, and weathershields lasted so much longer in Australia because for many years tinted glass was illegal there.
All I can add is: Thank you for sharing these superb stories. So much to take in, so much to relate to, and so much to appreciate, most of all your dedication to making this COAL series in a class of its own.
There’s so much here that I couldn’t even begin to unwrap it all, so I will just say that your lead-in photo is absitively posolutely stunning! But then that color… gorgeous!
Thankya, TAC!
One of the odd things about the original Valiant/Lancer is the windshield, which looks like it’s mounted like on some cheaper European car of the time. No other American car had that. It’s just one of the too many conflicting kinds of details on them. Of course I still like them anyway too.
Exner (I guess) also liked the cowl to sweep up to the windshield back then (but not before) as also seen on the 1962-63 B bodies, fixed on the otherwise same basic body 1964 version. The 1953 Lowey Studebakers also had a version of this, also fixed a few years later, twice (except never on the many Hawkish variants).
By “fixed” I infer you don’t like the upswept cowl. I do!
More good work Daniel. Was the 7th picture on page 3 taken in Glen Arbor?
Thanks kindly. Very good odds about the photo.
This was an outstandingly gripping chapter in your amazing COAL series, Daniel. Heartfelt thanks for having the courage to write this and share it with us.
Feature length article, in depth level researched and reported, magazine quality photo composition, just another excellent piece on a great looking car.
I think I understand your fascination with the later Spirits. It is as if you were picking up after the Lancer with something newer, safer, easier to keep in tune, and more appropriate for the times, while honoring the link to the old green car.
Maybe not, and it is all random, but I prefer to think that it is. Because it all really goes back to that long-ago link to your Dad, and the Spirits were a way to keep that thread intact, at least in a small, subtle way. As if you could have had some opportunity to say “newer, interesting, and a bit unusual and special” to him, just as the Lancer was, and have him try to guess which year.
The links between certain cars, certain people, and one’s own past is a fascinating subject to me, as it definitely plays out in my own life.
Another fine article. Thanks for sharing.
Does anyone else see a fat version of the Toyota logo in the Motorola phone ear piece?
Your having to explain the push button transmission to the ferry crew reminded me of a similar experience I had. In September 1974 my brother and I took a trip from Toronto to Thunder Bay in my 1969 Alfa Berlina 1750. It was a great trip and on the way back we took the ferry from Manitoulin Island to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula. Now there is a large drive-on ferry, the Chi-Cheemaun, that can carry 140 cars, but I caught the last year of the older ferries. We were on the Norgoma. Being an older and smaller ship, the crew loaded the cars and you didn’t even get to talk to them. You just left it in the lot with the keys in it. The Alfa was old enough that none of the switches were labelled and the shift pattern was not shown anywhere. This was a concern as 5-speeds were extremely rare in those days, especially in rural Ontario. I found a scrap of paper and drew the pattern on it and stuck it by shifter. It did the trick as the car made it on and off safely.
I was actually lucky to have made the trip. Lake Huron can get very rough and it turns out the ship had not sailed for several days before we arrived, due to rough seas. It was actually the roughest ride I have ever been on. Standing on the front deck it was pitching so severely you had to hold on to the railing to avoid becoming air born. The new ship is much larger and smoother.
Coming into this late as usual, as a weekday workday CC lurker, I just had to chime in and agree with JPC and well, everyone. This is a fine piece and a wonderful read.
The bit about your father’s stifling of his emotions was particularly of interest to me. My own father also passed, at 62, of lymphoma. He and I had a relationship more akin to your and your mother’s, but I still tried to “sensibalize” his fate. Ironically or not, his condition was determined when his dentist, a longtime family friend, noticed an odd growth in his mouth, which was biopsied, etc., etc…and we know the rest. Dad also had a strong tendency toward stifling most emotions. Most, that is. Anger and frustration came easily and often in the form of ridicule, belittlement and biting sarcasm. In my efforts to make sense of it all I found it poetic and prophetic that it all started from a tiny speck in his mouth, as this was the source of so much vitriol and venom. But your take on the pushing down of so many feelings puts a new perspective into play. I suppose an inability to express what was truly going on inside could still be applied to my own father’s ending as well.