Just a Wee Blether…

About nostalgia for the glory days of cars

A few months ago I was travelling in the same car as a friend of mine from the American Midwest. We turned a corner and passed by a stunningly restored old vehicle, gleaming red body, white roof, the type you see in 1960s movies – some so big they look more like boats than cars.

“62 Chevy”, he said immediately. “How do you know that?”, I replied, a bit stunned by this show of instant automotive knowledge. “How do you know it’s not a ‘61 Chevy, or a ‘63?”

“Ah, it’s the rear lights,” he chuckled. “I’d recognise them anywhere. ‘62 it is.” I’m not 100% sure to this day if he was winding me up, but I suspect not, I think he knew exactly what he was talking about. So I took his word for it, and declared myself suitably impressed.

This kind of classic or vintage vehicle recognition is not unusual over here. After all Americans have had an obsession with cars, to the exclusion of almost all other forms of transport, since the early days of the 20th century. And they had a lot to be proud of, these big old cars – Chevrolets, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Ford Mustangs, Ford Thunderbirds (or T-Birds), Dodges, Lincolns, Cadillacs and many more – were things of beauty.

For families all over the country the car that sat in their driveway or parked at the roadside was a status symbol. Now car buffs are buying up those same old 50s and 60s vehicles, lovingly restoring them, in some cases spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on them, and cruising round the freeways and highways of the United States.

They are classy old vehicles. One person I know is restoring a ‘little red Corvette’, another is a collector who has nine old Chevys worth many thousands of dollars. If you drive on the back roads of America, you see old banged up cars just waiting to be picked up and turned into someone’s dream car. The car pictured is a Thunderbird (year unknown) lying in a state of disrepair behind a classy wedding venue in Florence, Arizona.

086

What was different about these cars – compared with the ones on the road nowadays – is that they all had individuality. Here you could tell a Chrysler Imperial from a Chevrolet Impala, a Plymouth Barracuda from a Pontiac Trans Am. Just as in the UK you could tell apart a Hillman Minx, a Riley Elf, an Austin A40, a Vauxhall Victor, and a Humber Sceptre.

When I was young I used to travel with my parents from my home in Ayrshire to visit relatives in Lochaber. In those days the roads were narrow and windy, we crossed on the Erskine and Ballachulish ferries – there were no bridges – and if the queues were long the journey could take anything up to seven hours.

I often used to pass the time with a book and kept a note of all the different car makes that passed us going in the opposite direction. I kept score, the winner was always Ford, closely followed by Austin, Morris and Vauxhall. There were a good few Volkswagens, Wolseleys, Rileys, Hillmans and Fiats. And the beauty of this little exercise was that I could tell what they were from quite a distance.

That has all changed. In the US most cars are built to three basic ‘shapes’ – SUV, sedan and hatchback. When you see an SUV coming towards you it is impossible, until you see the logo, to tell if it is a Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Honda, Dodge or Mazda. Not that I keep a note any more – but the romance of car design is well and truly dead. Unless, of course, you can afford a high end vehicle like a Porsche, Jaguar, Lotus or Ferrari.

I reserve a certain amount of awe and wonderment for my buddy in the Midwest, and others like him, who can rattle off the make and the year of an old car when they pass by. He grew up in an age when the car was king. Fifty years from now I don’t think the youngsters of today will see an old vehicle and say “2015 Ford Focus”.

At least the car enthusiasts, on both sides of the Atlantic, keep alive the memory of these classy and stylish old vehicles with their restoration work. Let’s hope they keep up the good work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *