"Giddiyup, Giddiyup 409"

Our oily Guv. Newsom just announced that his unelected, 16-person Air Quality Management District Board just decided, all by its lonesome, that California should prohibit all gas-powered cars after 2035.

And I just read that Elon and his Gang raised the price of their fully-automated, completely self-driving Tesla option to a whopping $15,000.  Mr. Money believes that some of us are so indelibly stupid that we'd pay him to do the driving.  Of his little grossed-up go carts.  Which routinely drive their owners into rivers and lakes and over small children.

Are we Americans now so indifferent to cars that we want somebody else to do the driving?   

What has happened to our society that we don't relish the freedom, the joy, the absolute religious experience that comes from driving down life's freeway?  Fully in control, the wheel in our hands, wind in our hair, totally uninhibited by anything.  I grew up in that era.  An era where we dreamed of our 16th birthday so we could take that right of passage known as "driving."  The freedom it offered.  There was nothing quite like it.  There still IS nothing quite like it.  It was intoxicating!  And now that I've framed the subject quite nicely, I thought I'd offer something a little different for your reading pleasure...

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I had to pay extra for the seat belts in my first brand-new car.

That was waaay back in the winter of 1962 and I'd just ordered my new, 409 horsepower, 409 cubic inch, Impala Super Sport, fitted out with two four-barrel carburetors, a 4-speed transmission and a 3:70-1 posi-traction rear axle.  It was my nineteenth birthday present to myself.  And my brand-new car came equipped with a Beach Boys record on the charts...

I had turned into a fair country pool player in my yout (what's yout?).  I learned at the age of 13 that I could use a pool cue to separate other nice folks from their money.  And I didn't hustle.  No, I explained to all future donors that I was the best they'd ever seen, and if they didn't believe me, I'd gladly charge tuition to the "College of The Chuckmeister" to show them.

BTW, "Chuckmeister" was my professional name...  

I was the best I'd ever seen by the age of 16.  I was "on the road" at 17, visiting dirty dive bars and dimly-lit pool rooms, enriching myself at others' expense.  So you'll understand that I thought everybody carried a gun and wore a money belt.  And I was raking in the cash.  Living past the age of 40 was not in my plans.  Nor my expectations.  And I just loved fast cars.  VERY fast cars. The fastest!  Nothing else would do in my home town with several AHRA drag racing national record holders.  So I thought I'd join the ranks of the uber-fast boys in Chillicothe, MO, by ordering up the very fastest thing you could own back in 1962.  

Did you know that these beasts were delivered with 7:50-14" General Jet-Aire tires?  They had a contact patch of about 4."  Four inches wide, 409 horsepower.   That's the width of your palm.  Simply put, this car would lay rubber from a dead stop to 150 miles per hour.  So easily would it burn rubber that I sold the back tires to a recapper exactly one week after I bought this baby, for the princely sum of $1.25 each.  Because '62 was the first year for thin-line whitewall and the recapper thought he could make some money.  Otherwise, he said, they were worthless.  Brand new tires.  Trashed.  In one week... 

Annnd, ummm, I also learned that day that only ONE of the two four-barrel carburetors had been hooked up during this first, rubber-melting week.

Oh yeah, it was Honduras maroon in color with a black bucket seat interior.  Perhaps the very best way to order this beast, as evidenced by how much they now bring at auction.  I saw one fitted out like mine just bring $85,000 at the most recent Barrett-Jackson auction.  And it wasn't completely restored.

Anyway, I'd owned several cars up to that time, but they were all used.  And I was bitten with the need for speed, and a brand-new 409, while the song was still on the charts ("Giddiyup, Giddiyup, 409!"), was nothing short of intoxicating.  So I was just reviewing the Moroni sticker from that car.  And believe it or not, I'd ordered seat belts as an extra $7.00 option on a $3,835.25 car.  

Hard for us to believe today, but that was back when the cars were made of tin, more or less, and they just plunked enormous motors in them and shoveled them out the door.  Oh, the Cadillacs and Lincolns were made heavier, but not safer!  The brakes were all terrible, they had no air bags, and no "crush zones," and your chances of living through a serious accident was pretty well nonexistent.    

And by "serious," I mean any speed above about 55 mph.

A car that made it 100,000 miles was a rarity back then.  Most expired at the 60,000 - 80,000 range.  And then took a one-way trip to the junk yard.  They were viewed back then the way we view toasters today.  Just buy them, drive them into the pavement, trade them in.  We called it exercising the "greater fool" theory, as the next poor fool was stuck with it.  Or just leave them out in the back 40 to rust away to nothingness.  We just beat the crap out of them.  That's why these "muscle" cars are so hard to find in good condition today, and therefore, so relatively rare.  And why the term "barn finds" came into existence.  Now you know.

As a matter of fat, heh heh, you could expect to see at least one car along the side of the road, with the hood up, on every single trip you took.  Why?  They had a complete model change every single year, preventing them from ever getting anything right.  Each edition, or model year, was the very best the engineers and designers could do with a limited pile of money in 12 months.  With the greatest emphasis on design.  making them beautiful!  And they were!  If you're now aged you may not know that our car makers didn't stop annual redesigns until the mid 1970's.  Finally permitting them to focus on getting key components...right.

My opinion here, but a rational one.  Just think, today the design of most models last 4 or 5 years, or even longer before any major redesign.  Tesla's from 10 years ago look just like the ones today.  That saves $Billions of dollars!  And those $Billions could be invested in safety and reliability and performance and comfort and handling, and, and...  

And they were hyper-unionized back then.  All Jimmy Hoffa and the AFL-CIO, and pay them more for less work.  Everyone was warned to never buy a car made on a Monday or a Friday.  The workers were all hung over on Monday, the theory went, and anxious to get to their cabin on the lake early on Friday. 

The cabin they bought with their super-high union wages. 

And on either day the stuff they made was crap.  Is all of this news to you?

I should emphasize that this was before the Japanese hired one of our best "time-in-motion" manufacturing experts from MIT and developed the "just-in-time" industrial revolution in the early 'sixties.  Then the Hondas started coming off the boat, and the people started learning that Hondas last forever, when they were theretofore used to disposable cars.  And so did Toyotas!  And Suburus!  And Mazdas, too!  The Japanese Revolution was upon us!  And the Germans began eating our lunch as well.  The percentage of autos made by American companies went from almost 80% in 1950 to a current 32%!  And every Detroit auto CEO who oversaw this tailspin into irrelevance retired a $Multi-Millionaire.  Why does any GM or Ford or Chrysler exec ever get a bonus?  They learn slowly, don't they?

I even bought a little bitty Honda Civic station wagon as a third car for my burgeoning family back in 1972.  It was ugly, cheap, refined and absolutely free to drive, as it never broke down.  In more than 100,000.  And I treated it like it cost me.  I beat it like a red-headed stepchild.  What a shocker!  

Oh yeah, I wish I still had that 409.  It would do 12:20's at 109 mph in the quarter.  That was mui fast back then.  And my next car, a 1963 Max-Wedge Plymouth 426 in white with a blue interior.  4-speed, of course, with a 4:10 Detroit locker.  11:11 at 121 mph.  Some of you will know what all of this means.  

And my 1965 Oldsmobile 442, 4-speed, 400 cu. in., dual exhausts, black, black interior.  And my 1966 Chevrolet Corvette coupe, 427 cu. in., 425 hp., in Goodwood green, green leather, with all four of the most desired options.  They were: Off-road steering, off-road suspension, off-road brakes and the off-road exhaust system.  Don't know why I ordered a radio, as you couldn't hear it.  The 3" exhaust tips emptied right below my left hip, in a cacophonous display of a "f... you!" to anyone not inside your cocoon.  This car would bring $500,000 at auction today...

But then a funny thing happened on my way to frolicking about aimlessly forever; I got drafted.  I got sent to Europe to save your backsides from communism, which ended my tire burning for awhile.  You'll note I was successful, and within a year I owned 5 cars.  But that's another story...

The remainder of the 127 cars I've owned will have to be dealt with later.  And trust me, I remember every single detail of each of them.  But for now, thanks for taking this look back with me.  Trust me, it was more fun to live it than it was to recollect it...