dagblog - Comments for "Where Has Teen Car Culture Gone?"

Oh, you certainly wouldn't

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 28 May 2018 03:55:00 +0000

Oh, you certainly wouldn't have befriended *me* to fix your car unless you wanted to hear *how* to fix it more than actually seeing it fixed - there were lots of greasers for that - both the sincere nice guys and the outta control bad boys, but around the block everyone had their car up on blocks 'ceptin me - I had the old junker that'd just keep running no matter what (though at 110 it'd be bouncing all over the road like a balloon on 4 wheels, almost a feature to spice up the drive to the lake.

I remember pulling into the driveway once, needed something inside, heard someone outside honking, looked out and saw this eery glow from under the front two wheels, reflection off the pavement - car block so dirty and rancid from backfiring and leaks, had caught on fire and fused the horn leads as a blowing glowing tribute on its way out - and that was the end of my Olds 98 that'd seen me to New Orleans to see the Stones and a year of pizza delivery and through the valley I'd biked to school the years before and out to rivers and lakes and just... freedom, AM radio blasting loud, taking the train tracks at a hop, just 16 and that's the way we do it, unh-huh, unh-huh, until Radar Love comes on, and then you know of a few red lights that won't be missed... and I suppose it knew i'd be going off to school soon and didn't want to be left behind, so like those Indian brides that self-immolate, my car did much the same. Sayonara, mon amour.

Remember another time pissed at some lousy gas station attendant, insulting or something, so hit the gas and peeled out squealing, hit the curb and popped both left tires, pop-pow, coasted across the main road thwop thwpp thwop thwop, and sat there like an idiot wondering how I was gonna change 2 tires with one spare. A metaphor in there, no doubt.

You definitely win the first

barefooted — Mon, 28 May 2018 01:15:53 +0000

In reply to Just serendipity that my

You definitely win the first Mustang award! Very nice (rust and all) ...

I was out of high school and heading directly to more work; college wasn't in the plan. My older sister and her husband found the Mustang in a local lot and it became my first foray into what it meant to have a loan payment - I felt quite grown-up. I managed to hit a deer (lived in a very rural area) and royally screw up the front end a year or so later, but luckily was dating a car repair guy who not only fixed it cheap but painted it a British racing green, to boot!

Your point, though, of how women in general are treated by repair shops is well taken and certainly acknowledged. And not just there - even trying to buy a car can be an exercise in doing research and careful due diligence so that the salesman doesn't take advantage of your "female ignorance". Grrr.

Just serendipity that my

artappraiser — Mon, 28 May 2018 00:41:03 +0000

In reply to Oh, but .... the Mustang.

Just serendipity that my first was the original 1965 one bought in like 1971 with a lotta miles on it for a few hundred bucks. Nobody thought it a classic yet. I think VW bugs were considered cooler small cars at the time, any kind of foreign car was cooler if you weren't a "greaser". A 3-speed, learned to drive stick on it, hate automatic to this day. Just like this one, blue, add a little rust

Had already started college, so I didn't actually get the full freedom thing in high school.

But yeah, it was the same thing as getting your first grown up bicycle, another step to freedom.

Earned the money to buy it driving the parents second car beater to waitress jobs, the 20-ton Ford Station wagon, as embarrassing as that was, that also gave a sense of freedom, as you could drive that thing 100 miles an hour and feel completely safe, like going down the road in a huge rock. But I had to schedule using that, that's the difference. No total freedom.

Story leaves out the part of loss of freedom when as a female teen you would buy old junky used cars and they break down and the mechanics were all crooks so you had to make friends with guys like Peracles who might be able to help you fix it, whether you wanted to be friends with him or not....

Oh, but .... the Mustang.

barefooted — Sun, 27 May 2018 23:03:40 +0000

In reply to Where Has Teen Car Culture Gone?

Oh, but .... the Mustang.

“Get rid of the Mustang?” asked James D. Farley Jr., Ford’s president of global markets, when I asked him this week how the Mustang had survived. “The Mustang is like Rocky: It survived the 1970s fuel crisis, the glam 1980s, the move to S.U.V.s. It’s made it through every round of cuts.”

For me, the Mustang’s reprieve came as welcome news: I took my driver’s test in my mother’s 1967 turquoise Mustang notchback. On the rare occasions I was allowed to drive it, it conferred instant status and triggered unabashed envy among my high school classmates.

eta: My first car was a used late 70's model; not the best of the bunch and a cringe-worthy Ford green, but I felt like, cool, man!

The neglect the steady

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 27 May 2018 22:34:00 +0000

In reply to Where Has Teen Car Culture Gone?

They neglect the steady tightening of drunk driving laws, the ability of police to search anyone in a car whether driving or not, and the greatly increased insurance costs, along with the big jump in the price of gas. But yeah, the motor was always the focus - if you can't trade up carburetors or tweak timing, or move to a fatter piston, well, what's the point? changing tires & oil is like chump change. Also, smaller cars = much less satisfying sex.