Almanac Memoir: Unstylish cars – a certain satisfaction

A CERTAIN SATISFACTION

 

By Bernard Whimpress

 

‘I always wondered what sort of shit-heap you’d drive, Bernard.’

 

A few years back a mate was here for Writers’ Week in the Festival of Arts. A writer. We agreed to catch up for coffee so I picked him up at the Intercontinental Hotel. He greeted me, thus.

 

‘That’s not bad coming from a bloke who doesn’t drive at all’, I replied.

 

Nearly 300,000 ks on the clock.

 

 

 

 

It’s was a white 1989 Toyota Camry Executive and I upgraded soon after.

 

Upgraded to a dark red 1993 Toyota Camry Executive. From a twenty-five-year-old car to a twenty-one-year-old car. The Toyota I got rid of had done 185,000 ks when I bought it for $1100 and all it cost me was a radiator, a couple of batteries and a few tyres, not bad for seven years. ‘They last forever’, everyone says. I hope my ‘93 lasts forever or near enough.

 

I hope the ‘89 gives the bloke I’m giving it to a couple of years of life.

 

Still, he had a point. My mate, the writer.

 

I’ve always had old cars.

 

Maybe the reason I’ve always had old cars is that I took my time starting to drive.

 

In South Australia you could get your licence at sixteen; I was twenty-six. Ten years of catching buses and trains armed with paperbacks by name authors, intellectual pretence to ward off boredom. Ten years of bringing to mind all the numbers and routes of the Adelaide public transport system – the makings of an anorak! Ten years of reading jokes on the back of bus tickets – some of them weren’t so bad! Five years of missing out on dates entirely. Five years of missing out on pashing girls at drive-ins.

 

Anyhow …

 

Anyhow when the time came that I’d like to drive I needed to buy a car.

 

I didn’t want a Holden or a Ford or a Chrysler.

 

Everyone drove a Holden or a Ford or a Chrysler.

 

I wanted something different but I also wanted something cheap and therefore something old. Maybe the slogan of ‘British is Best’ rang louder than that of ‘a car for Australian conditions’ because I favoured English cars. Gutless English cars – initially a Morris 1100, then a Hillman Minx; twinset-wearing, euchre playing, ageing women’s cars, certainly nothing ball-tearing, penis-extending.

 

Nothing like that attempted seduction scene in the Brando–Woodward movie, The Fugitive Kind, where Woodward (the passenger) drapes her bare left leg across the driver of one of those big-finned V8 American heaps and Brando mumbles, ‘Would yer mind movin’ yer leg over the other side of the gear shift.’

 

My cars were cars without style. Cars to get me from A to B.

 

But then …

 

I was lucky. Pete had more of an idea, knew about aesthetic lines and good engineering. We examined better model English cars – Rovers, MG Magnets, Wolseley 444s, cars that at least respectable men might once have sat behind the wheel of – accountants, school-teachers, middle-level public servants. Men who wore shirts, ties, slacks and sports coats, elbow-patches even, if not berets and cravats.

 

Riley Pathfinder

 

 

 

 

The Riley Pathfinder cost 295 bucks.

 

‘If you don’t buy it, I’ll do so myself. Riley’s shit on Wolseleys, they’re as good as Jags, they were brilliant at Brooklands in the 30s, you’ll have yourself a real car.’ When we went to the showroom where the Riley was it was the cheapest car by far.

 

I was sold.

 

Second-hand Bentleys were five grand and a Rolls Royce seven. I admired the Bentleys and Rolls but was told they did something like five miles to the gallon. Then again, if you buy a Roller you don’t think about the price of fuel.

 

I was on a budget. Three hundred bucks take five.

 

The year was 1976, the navy-blue Riley was 1955. Twenty-one years old but it exuded class: wood panelling on the dash, genuine leather seating just like a Jag. We took it home. Then took it for a spin round the block. The engine seized.

 

I bought another engine with grass growing through it for 90 bucks. The toothless old guy selling, grease-grimed, flannelette-shirted, faded jeans, scuffed desert boots, said ‘I can see you’re a trifle impecunious.’ I was impressed with his command of language. The word fitted me to a T.

 

Gary was down on holidays from Papua and had nothing better to do. For the next month he and Pete spent their days installing the engine and getting the car ship-shape. It purred after that, took me where I wanted to go, to Melbourne two years later, and for a while after that.

 

Then it died.

 

I couldn’t afford to keep it alive so the body was disposed of to the local Riley club. Twenty bucks they gave me. I said I wouldn’t mind keeping the badge off the grill. ‘As a memento’, I added, but they struck a hard bargain.

 

‘The badge is the best part of the car.’

 

Volkswagon Beetle

 

 

 

 

Col reckoned I needed something practical, something would get me around, was economical.

 

Col was a VW enthusiast, drove Formula Vs, had half a dozen Beetles of his own, and sold me one of them – a green 1962½ ? for $500. The ½ was important he said ‘for those in the know’. It was sixteen years old (or sixteen and a half) but VWs just keep on going. They appreciate being driven hard.

 

I drove it hard around Melbourne for the next couple of years and on several trips home to Adelaide, sometimes reaching the top speed of 80mph. On one of these trips I noticed an engine knock and pulled into a workshop in Bangor, just outside Ararat. The mechanic said not to worry about an engine knock. ‘All Vee Dubs have an engine knock.’

 

It kept on running and proved a sensible vehicle. For a cheap buy it also had a couple of nifty features: a red-tinted front windscreen which eliminated danger when driving into a setting sun, and a reserve fuel tank offered another 40 ks travel when you ran out, always useful.

 

Then I took my one and only truly executive job.

 

Citroen DS19

 

 

 

 

I edited a magazine on the staff of a major sporting body. I wore suits, jackets and ties because I liked wearing suits, jackets and ties but I never quite got around to polishing my shoes. Not quite the complete exec. And while I shaved, it was often using a Bic disposable razor sans shaving cream while stuck at stop lights in city traffic. The effect was undesigner stubble. This was in the early 1980s and pre George Michael. I was before my time.

 

My idea of a replacement car was to buy another of an earlier vintage, a DS Citroen from 1959 which meant that it was twenty-one years old. No one advised me to buy a Citroen and I hadn’t heard that back when it first appeared the philosopher Roland Barthes had enthused that ‘it had fallen from the sky’. Nor had I heard that an American advertisement had stated ‘it takes a special person to drive a special car’ but I liked the line.

 

I also liked its lines and for $800 reckoned I was buying something exotic and collectable. I envisaged owning the DS for a few years and selling it for ten grand down the track. It’s the one and only time I thought of a car as an investment.

 

I would be disappointed.

 

Three water pumps in two years and a cracked head put paid to that. Repairing the head cost me $400 and the mechanic apologised for the job costing half the price of the car. ‘Here, have a stubby’, he said, offering me a Coopers Pale Ale. It eased the pain considerably.

 

When it was running the DS was very roomy, very comfortable and the hydraulic suspension always brought a comment. As it was pumping itself up it lifted its tail first which caused a work colleague to remark, ‘It’s a poofta’s car.’ No comment. It was a car I couldn’t afford to keep although it came to a swifter end than expected.

 

I lived on a steep hill in Torrens Park and parked on the road outside my flat. I always put it in gear and turned the wheels into the kerb. Always, except once. Five minutes after I’d dashed inside came a knock at the front door. ‘I think your car’s run away.’ It lay 100 metres down the hill, a crumpled mess against the (broken) brick wall of a carport. I approached owner of the house somewhat sheepishly, imagining I’d receive a barrage of abuse.

 

‘No worries’, said a cheery singleted bloke surveying the damage. ‘I was going to knock that wall down this weekend and your car’s done half the job for me.’

 

Chrysler Sigma

 

1982 was a year I finally signed up for one of the Big Three – Holden, Ford or Chrysler.

 

The silver Chrysler Sigma cost $4000 and was only four years old. It passed a Royal Automobile Association inspection, belted up hills at a rate of knots, and did what it had to do while transporting me from being an eligible bachelor to a happily married man.

 

It broke down once, overheating outside Yackandandah, so that wasn’t a bad run.

 

It’s the only car I’ve ever traded in. After seven years’ service it gave way to the only vehicle for which I’ve paid a five figure sum.

 

Ford Telstar

 

The gold Telstar cost $10,000 in 1990, was three years old and a sensible family car. It had central locking, was solid, dependable but handled like a truck. It carried me around for most of the decade before and after blowing up an engine in Dimboola. It also delivered me back to single status. Whether I was desirable was a moot point.

 

This sensible family car was an unlikely target for a joy ride and yet it was stolen once from outside Adelaide Oval while I was working on a Sunday. After three weeks I’d just about given up recovery I received a call to collect it from the Police Pound at Ottoway.

 

It was a sad visit but amid a host of burned-out wrecks the Telstar was merely covered in dust the cops had applied in the hope of picking up finger prints. I was relieved to find the engine still ran OK – maybe it’s hard to thrash a Telstar! I was more offended to find half a bag of what had once been hot chips stuffed down the back of the rear seat.

 

The same sensible family car was pinched a second time from out front of my flat in Toorak Gardens. It was found next morning a kilometre a way in Linden Park. My full set of golf clubs were on the back seat and there they remained. There’d been a party across the road the night before and I guess someone (or more) couldn’t be buggered ordering a cab or walking home. They had a quicker ride from A to B.

 

Mitsubishi Magna

 

A maroon Magna was the replacement. Eight years-old, it was passed on as a gift, ran well enough, had the big plus of power steering and central locking, and kept me going for four years. Yes, it did crack a head one Christmas Day at Tintinara when I was off to Melbourne for the cricket but that was a minor hiccup.

 

The reconditioned replacement lasted a couple of years before giving up the ghost the very day I was moving from Toorak Gardens to a house on the western side of the city. I could handle the move to the wrong side of the tracks but the car couldn’t. It then sat in the driveway for the next five years before being hauled away for scrap metal. At least I didn’t have to pay for the privilege.

 

Holden Apollo

 

A ten year-old blue Apollo came for two grand. It had the advantage of a gas tank in the boot so that it could run on either gas or petrol. Despite the potential savings I used the gas once on a trip to Broken Hill but little thereafter. It ran for three years before going the way of three of its predecessors by cracking a head. It was broken up for spare parts.

 

Toyota Camry’s I and II

 

 

 

 

The 1989 Camry you’ve heard about already. It gave seven years service.

 

The 1993 Camry now seems like luxury as Monty Python might have put it. To call it a shit-heap, to think of any of my cars as shit-heaps would be disloyal.

 

Older vehicles, yes.

 

Let’s say I’ve had a certain satisfaction from them all.

 

 

 

We’ll do our best to publish two books in the lead-up to Christmas 2021. The Tigers (Covid) Almanac 2020  and the 2021 edition to celebrate the Dees’ magnificent premiership season(title is up for discussion at the moment!). These books will have all the usual features – a game by game account of the Tigers and Demons season – and will also include some of the best Almanac writing from these two Covid winters. Enquiries HERE

 

To return to the www.footyalmanac.com.au  home page click HERE

 

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