2009 PIAS - Part 3: The Quondam
2009 Portland International Auto Show
To finish off the show, we visited the "100 Years Of Cars". I was happy to see these venerable creations, but clearly was getting tired.
Honda Civic
My sister had one of these. I'm not really sure how she got it; dad probably bought it for her. What I remember is driving it 7 hours from interior of BC down to Vancouver, to deliver it to her after she had run away to live with her dickhead boyfriend.
I didn't fit in the car, and developed a terrible kink in my neck trying to drive it without bouncing my head off the ceiling. I should have slouched more, but by the time the neck pain developed, slouching made it worse. And, man, was it gutless. And the handling was absolutely dangerous at highway speed - especially the way I drove.
While it was an adventure, in much the way that anything can become an adventure when you're young and stupid, it was still a bit of an ordeal. I felt like it was a fairly significant favour to do for my sister, with whom I did not have a particularly close relationship at the time. Consequently, when I showed up at her place, her nonchalant manner of having merely received something for which she was entitled... well, it grated. And it was the primary image I was left with regarding her for some years.
I think I ended up feeling sorry for the car. I left minutes after arriving.
Buick
I can almost see grim men with suits stepping out of this voluptuous beast, tagging their heads with their fedoras before smoothing down their jackets to hide their M1911's.
Studebaker
File:IMG 0183 1933 studebaker.jpg
Studebaker is one of those iconic names that I instantly recognize without really knowing any particular vehicles related to the marque. It's like knowing heroes, but not the wars in which they fought. What made the name so famous, but the actual car so ephemeral?
Maybe it is the fault of elves.
Ferrari Vignale
File:IMG 0185 1953 ferrari vignale.jpg File:IMG 0199 1953 Ferrari Vignale.jpg
A Ferrari what now? Apparently Vignale was a design house and coachbuilder that did limited-production runs. Maybe the volumes were even lower than they anticipated, and they felt that they should use up their extra bumpers.
Volvo
My mom's 1984 Volvo is the definitive Volvo in my head, and it underscores the broader understanding of Volvo's as being box-shaped cars. I can still remember when I found out that there existed non-boxy Volvo's. Craziness. It's like having rounded bricks - what was the point?
So, too, this pre-box example seems like some sort of garish missing link that part of my orthodox car-devotion wants to deny as heresy.
Luckily, I'm not one of those people cursed with the delusion that the world is supposed to make sense.
Ford Thunderbird
File:IMG 0188 ford thunderbird.jpg
As a boy, I was given a model of a 1956 Thunderbird to build. I hated building it, mostly because my novice skills were made obviously inadequate to the potential beauty of the shape. Nevertheless, I adored the car. Later, I did a series of Ford Thunderbird art projects in public school, and donated the collection to a local gallery. Which, apparently, paved my way for being offered a scholarship at the Emily Carr school of art and design.
Of course, I didn't end up going to Emily Carr - I wanted to be a proper engineer. Nevertheless, the lessons of the Thunderbird's beauty are still with me.
Detroit Electric
File:IMG 0189 1917 detroit electric.jpg
Nineteen Seventeen, electric vehicle. Face it: we suck. This variant of automobile should have already come; its advantages are obvious. Still, we flounder, as we wait for someone to allow us to buy our Chevy Volts.
I heard once that Jay Leno, the Prince of Cars, had an old electric vehicle that he would sometimes drive around. I wonder if it was one of these.
Ford Model-T
File:IMG 0192 1922 ford model t.jpg
It's kind of like the Eve of modern cars, really. "Tin Lizzy"? It's hard to imagine a more humble beginning.
Rambler
I stand corrected. This is by far the most humble example of an automobile that I've seen in person.
I find myself horrified at the thought of what it would have been like to drive one of these. It's not like the roads were particularly flat, or even that there were all that many roads. You would have been bumping through fields and struggling with ruts while controlling the vehicle with an inverted-looking rudder and some oddly-placed levers.
It would have been hard to imagine such contraptions replacing horses.
Ford Model-A
File:IMG 0194 1929 ford model a.jpg
If I'm not mistaken, the Ford Model-A is the car in Farley Mowatt's "The Dog Who Wouldn't Be". The first book to have the distinction of being one which I have read and completely forgotten everything in it. I think I was too young, and that I read it too fast, or something like that. By the time I realized that I didn't remember more than vague snippets, the whole plot and the characters were lost to me. Now I barely remember the title and a couple disjointed tidbits.
I actually spent a few years in denial that I had forgotten the content of the book. I was so confident in my seemingly-eidetic memory that I thought that I was unable to summon every detail simply because I wasn't thinking about it hard enough. Now that my eidetic memory is a lamentable shadow of what it was, there is no denying the decay. Maybe I should finally re-read the book, so that I can forget it anew.
Nash
File:IMG 0195 1932 nash.jpg File:IMG 0196 1932 nash ornament.jpg File:IMG 0197 1932 nash ornament.jpg
This car seems essentially unremarkable - save for its hood ornament. What a gloriously lascivious shape to discover on a car built during Prohibition. I wonder what sort of car the designer might have ultimately come up with if he - and I'm reasonably certain it was a he - if he spent the same kind of attention to the body design.
Dodge
The sign in front of it calls it a "Businessman Coupe". Perhaps it meant to appeal to door-to-door salesman. All I can say is that I was struck by the large number of bodies that would fit in the trunk. That, with the pleasant yellow paint job, makes me wonder if maybe, given the right circumstances, being a hired killer couldn't be a fun job.