From A Blue Condor to Sports Cars... Part II

From the Gold Bug to the Grey Ghost

Or

From A Blue Condor to Sports Cars... Part II

I think it is about time that I completed the story of how I finally moved from big American iron to European, albeit British...and to this date they can't seem to have figured out that they really are more a part of Europe than anyplace else in the world...sports cars.

In a Part I I had finally gotten something sporty...a 61 Corvair Monza, gold in color, with a manual transmission. Don't get me wrong, the 57 Bel Aire convertible was as sexy as it got for high school or even college, but after losing that to a monster and plain 59 Chevy I really did want something that handled better and was smaller...more like maybe an MGA. But dad still was not ready for a furrin car for me...so we, or rather he, settled on the Corvair.

It was a pretty neat little car, with an air-cooled flat six over the rear wheels pushing out 110 horses, and though it was a three speed, the shifter was on the floor where it belonged, rather than as some ridiculous appendage sticking out of the steering column.

I don't know how it happened, but my best buddy Tom got even luckier, dropping into a silver Corsa convertible. This baby had 180 exotically turbocharged horses and a four speed, and was even given the European model name of “Spyder.” Even the Monza model was often called the “Poor Man's Porsche” in the motoring press. Of course I had to make mine a bit less drab by adding a racing stripe down the middle of the car, and wiring in a tach fit into a center console I built myself. This was the first time I actually worked on any car, and even taught myself to set the timing, change plugs, replace points, and do oil and filter changes. I was way beyond the old man's steps now!

I was now in my sophomore year in college, living with my ex-dorm roomie and a buddy of his in a hellhole in downtown Gainesville. Tom Stark was tall, gangly, and among other claims to fame, had helped build the huge Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral while working a summer construction job. The building is still in use after spitting out the Saturn V moon rockets for which it was designed, as well as the Space Shuttles.

I met Tom through Donnie Russell, who had more middle names than I have fingers on at least one hand. He was a Filipino, of mixed Spanish Catholic and Tagaloc ancestry...which made him quite an exotic oddity in North Florida. Donnie...everything Anglo Tom was not. Short, dark, and with a nose Bob Hope would envy. 

When I first enrolled at the University conditions in the dorm were quite crowded, and I found that the room for two I was assigned to had been crowded with three of us. The other kid was a redneck from a hick town also called Stark...or maybe I am mixing that up with Tom's last name, though there is actually a town called that in the state. He had gotten to town first and laid claim to the single bed, leaving Donnie and I with the bunk beds the school had crammed in. I really didn't want to be sleeping under someone but I was saved the fight when Donnie cheerfully took the bottom bunk.

Bad idea...every time his alarm went off in the morning it startled him awake and he sat up before realizing he was in a bunk, smacking his forehead on my bed above him. For the first two weeks he had a deep bruise on his noggin.

Mr. Redneck took one look at Donnie, who introduced himself to me by asking me to call him “Jungle Bunny,” and within a week disappeared from the room. I never saw him again. But Donnie and I, and then as Tom was introduced, became good friends, so it was only natural that we agreed to move off campus for our next year. Since the kids lived near the Cape and thus half as far away from school as me, they chose the place...a run down two bedroom apartment with a “sleeping porch” and a fridge that was made when General electric was a private. The porch was brutally hot....until winter, when it was frigidly cold.

But I had my Corvair, which I dubbed the “Gold Bug,” and an apartment, so all was right with the world. Until the thing broke its crankshaft one night on I75 just outside of Ocala on my way back to school from a weekend in Miami. I was beginning to think my life with cars was star struck, but I really think it was that dad's heart was in the right place but his ability to judge and pay for well maintained vehicles was suspect.

When we first got the car we took it into Luby Chevrolet in Miami, and dad unwisely told the shop to “do whatever is needed” on the car. When he got the $90 bill I thought he was going to croak. But when the crank broke and the car was towed to (I'm not making this up...who could invent a name like this?) Turnipseed Motors as the closest place for a rebuild, of course he blamed me for the failure. But I was doing a steady 70 at the time, and never really overstressed or over-revved the motor.

Tom and I could have plenty of fun with our cars without doing that. Like just ripping round and round the gas pumps half a dozen times before declaring a winner and settling down to actually get fuel. Great giggles, though it all seems embarrassingly silly now.

Once the car was rebuilt I did not keep it long. I think dad believed it was jinxed and I had finally had enough of his choices. I sort of “demanded” I be allowed to buy a sports car, and said I would make the payments, though I think by then I might have been a Junior and working as a dee jay and also picking up scholarship and loan money for things like tuition. I was pretty much paying my own way through school, so he could hardly say “no,” though he did draw the line by vetoing a TR3...he thought the cut down doors would get my knuckles restyled in signaling for turns.

So what I could afford was...a grey 1974 Mk II Austin Healey...Sprite. Though small and marginally powered, this baby had everything you could want, including a lack of comfort, a top you had to hold to the windscreen with your left hand to keep from blowing off at any speed above 50, and side curtains which, if closed against the rain, would bend out at the top and sluice water directly into your lap. Add to that the joy of it dying if you plowed through a puddle too fast, and only restarted after sitting for 30 minutes while the carbs dried themselves out, and I was in heaven.

Of course, I no sooner drove it off the lot and a few miles up US 1 from South Miami towards home that the shifter refused to select any gear. Towed back to the dealer, an argument between dad and the salesman obviously ensued...finally resulting in some semi-satisfactory agreement on the repairs.

And speaking of how good it was in the rain, one night on I 75 (I spent LOTS of time on that road) it was coming down so hard that everyone had pulled to the shoulder, as you could not see the hood of your own car in front of you. There were puddles on the highway going uphill! The only thing moving was one semi...and me. I knew if I stopped the engine would die, and with that wonderful top and side curtain setup, I was also likely to drown.

God I loved that car.

1974 Mk II Austin Healey Sprite
Picture it in Dove Grey