Definitely not a “Car Guy”

Paul Boutin wrote a piece at Slate titled “I Hate My Classic Car”. It was about the 1963 Studebaker Avanti which he bought a few years back because the Avanti had “seductive powers”. Both he and his wife got rid of their “dull late-model sedans” when they got the Avanti and they drove it “once or twice a week from their downtown San Francisco home.” I guess they used transit for all other travel, he doesn’t say.

But despite the “seductive powers” of the Avanti, he now cannot stand driving it and he wrote a nice lenghty piece about why “it is a good thing they don’t build them like that any more”.

Proving once again, that if you aren’t a “Car Guy” you should become one or just stick to your “dull late-model sedan”, because Boutin couldn’t be more wrong.

I don’t do car stuff as much as I used to, mostly because it is an expensive hobby/habit. And when you are trying to balance your love of automobiles with an equally enthusiastic love of firearms, also an expensive hobby/habit, you don’t get to turn the wrenches as often than you’d like. I started out with small block Chevy V8s in high school, but that soon turned into high strung foreign inline four cylider engines which evolved into equally high strung inline six cylinders. With my domestication, the high strung engines and their accompanying vehicles were traded for more practical modes of transportation, with only occasional dalliances into the realm to 10000rpm mills, all of which took place someplace other than my garage.

None of which I regret. During my gear head years I was woefully unarmed, owning as few as only two firearms and buying my practice ammo when I went to practice. Having switched my outbound cash flow to firearms for a few years has given me a collection of boomsticks I am quite happy with, though I am always looking for something.

Nowadays I am attempting, rather successfully in my opinion, to balance the two. I may not buy a new firearm as frequently as I used to, but my household of two owns six vehicles, all but one one of which run reliably, and half of which are nearly as old or older than I am.

But enough about me, lets talk cars.

In my driveway/garage are three vehicles older than my next youngest sibling. The “newest” of which is a 1977 Ford F-250 4×4 known as Grimm. Followed by Fred, a 1974 F-250 Camper Special. And then the wife’s baby, a 1963 Ford Galaxy Country Sedan wagon (which she hasn’t gotten around to naming). Thirty, thirty-three and fourty-four years of age, respectively. Fred is the one that doesn’t run reliably. The valve train on his passenger side head is shot to hell and I just haven’t gotten around to replacing it as of yet. I can and have taken him out and about, but no trips of any length.

While 1977 doesn’t sound all that old, other than the four-wheel drive system, there only a few mechanical differences between Grimm and the wife’s wagon. Power front disc-brakes being the foremost. Mechanically, there is nearly nothing on these cars a shadetree mechanic couldn’t repair himself or remove for professional repair.

But just because I can, doesn’t mean I always do. My three newer vehicles are nightmares to do just about anything other than routine maintainance with. If you open the hood of my 1997 F-150 and can even see the sparkplugs without moving/removing something, you’re more talented than I. The wife’s mid-90’s front wheel drive commuter sedan is even worse for being able to get at stuff. I keep them well maintained, but otherwise most repairs are left for the pros. It is worth my cash to not have to deal with the hassle of putting a new timing belt on a front wheel drive vehicle. My local shop lets me pick my preferred parts and I get the benefit of their 25% off retail discount from their supplier. It was worth the $100 spent on labor to be able to sleep in that weekend and wait for a phone call. I’ve never been a fan of “pullers” (aka: sidewinders or east-westers). I’ve owned two of them, found them to be completely unsafe to drive at speed and an incredible pain in the ass to work on, and I sold them. Every other vehicle I have owned has been a rear wheel drive, longitudinally mounted “pusher’ as God intended them to be. Jesus cries when you drive a car with a transverse engine.

And that is where older cars have it over newer ones, in my opinion.

Boutin has many complaints about his Avanti: The brakes fade quickly, it overheats and leaks coolant (and power steering fluid) almost constantly, it is hard to start in the morning and the noise level in the passenger cabin is set at loud.

The Avanti has one of the earliest disc brake set-ups on the planet. There are upgrades for that which can be bought from probably a half-dozen catalog parts companies, or you can cobble something together such as his mechanic did. After fourty-plus years, engine seals need to be replaced to stop leaks. He says he put a new radiator in the car, but there’s more to an engine cooling system than a radiator and a couple hoses. Same goes for the power steering pump. I’ve never worked on an Avanti, so I don’t know about the model being “known for it”, but I’d imagine there’s a fix for that as well. A new carburetor would probably solve his having to open the hood and “hand choke” it when it is cold out. The cabin noise issue he has is only an issue because he hasn’t installed some modern insulation material.

Boutin seems to want this fourty-four year old beast of an automobile to perform like new, with no upgrades, no modernization, no worries. I’m sorry, but that will never happen.

He says that he now feels spoiled by the Honda Civic (a “dull late-model sedan if I’ve ever seen one) he owned for 10 years before purchasing the Avanti and I have one question for him: Exactly how reliable and maintenance free would he expect it to be in fourty-four years?

Technology has improved in the past fourty years. He sings the praises of computer controlled fuel-injection on even the cheapest of modern cars. If he wanted fuel injection on his Avanti, he could buy it in a kit and have his cobbling mechanic install it. Easy enough to do if he actually wanted to fix his cooling problems, because the engine would be out of the car being rebuilt, just like his Civic would have to have done to it when it started overheating and eating oil.

What Boutin likes best about the car is the reason he bought it for and is the best reason why old cars are better than newer ones: It’s “seductive powers”.

Old cars had style. Chrome, fins, artistic side molding, roof lines, you name it. GM would base four cars off the same body type and you could tell them apart from 100ft.

These days, damn near every car, and even some of the trucks, coming off the factory lines these days looks like a used bar of soap. High down the centerline with sloping sides and noses. Blech! They have to do this to get the aerodynamic function they need to meet their fuel mileage requirements. Some of them you have to search out the maker’s badge to tell who made it. And I’m not just talking the Toyota/Lexus, the Nissan/Infinity, the Ford/Mercury/Lincoln and the every GM sedan problem. Not too long ago I saw a Mazda that I had previously sworn was a Toyota and a Subaru I thought was a BMW. WTF?

As for modern car being more reliable that older cars were when they were new, that is relative. The Avanti may need to be “hand chocked” when parked uphill in cold weather, but at least he can get it running. He doesn’t have to have it towed because the Crankshaft Position Sensor went kaput again. A bad tank of gas would make the carburetor run rough, but it would run. A bad tank of gas in a car with fuel injection can mean a major repair. With modernization, the number of systems has multiplied onehundredfold. You need a computer that costs tens of thousands of dollars to be able to diagnose most of the multitude of available problems with today’s vehicles. On the Avanti you only need to find out if it is a problem with air, fuel or spark, which is easily deduced in about 10 minutes.

The cars of yesteryear were made with the best technology they had at the time, just as today’s cars are. If you want your car from yesteryear to run like a car of today, you have to spring for the upgrades. In fourty years, when the Civic he mentions reaches the age of the Avanti he whines about, it to will need to have upgrades to make it run like the cars of fourty years from now (if it runs at all).

Maybe I just can’t understand why some upper-crust urbanite from Shakey-town feels he needs to complain about his fourty year old car that he refuses to upgrade unless his safety is in jeopardy.

Or maybe I’m just being sentimental. I upgrade the things that need to be upgraded on my older vehicles. The Wife’s wagon car will be getting a front disc brake upgrade soon rather than later. But other than that, I like their loud exhaust notes and their other little quirks. It makes them unique and it makes them mine.

It is what makes me a Car Guy.

One other bit of this love affair that I have with older vehicles is that now that the wife has “The Bug”, she now understands why I keep demanding that our house have at least a 20×20 shop. With a large roll-up door. And a lift. And available air tools. And a body rotisserie. And……