For a few months in the mid-1980s, I had a bathtub-white MGB Roadster, a 1975 with a rubber bumper. (MGB enthusiasts prefer a proper chrome bumper for some reason.)
I don't remember much about the circumstances surrounding its acquisition, only that it was cheap enough I could pay cash. It was never intended to be my primary vehicle. It was a project, or at least that's what I imagined it would be. Over five or 10 years' time, I was going to restore and rehabilitate to loving glory what had been a hard-used vehicle.
I didn't have any experience restoring cars, but figured I could learn. By then, I had already owned a dozen or so cars, done all their routine maintenance, and had a basic understanding of how they were supposed to work. I bought a Haynes Manual and an official MGB factory repair manual that included a catalog of special tools that might be needed to work on my MGB. I would, at odd moments, take them out and pore over exploded diagrams of the gearbox and drive train.
The only problems with the car were cosmetic. It ran well enough and was fun to drive even though, like all MGBs, it wasn't particularly fast or quick. (The Mini Clubman station wagon I'm driving now would blow it off the road.) The paint was worn, and in some places had acquired a sueded texture. Its split seats needed to be recovered, its threadbare carpet replaced.
Its soft top was deteriorating, with a plastic rear window that had gone cloudy and yellow so that you couldn't see out of it. I wanted to replace that top with one that had a real glass window. But this was before the Internet made it possible to find the most esoteric piece of gear with a few keystrokes; although I looked, I never found one.
So I only drove the car with the top down, though was religious about starting it and letting it run for a few minutes every other day.
One winter morning I went to the garage and got in, turned the key, and flames shot out from under the hood. By the time I got the fire extinguisher from my apartment and put out the flames, restoring the car was impractical. My insurance company wrote me a check that just about covered what I had paid for it. My friends joked about British electrical systems.
Later I would realize that having the car burn up wasn't the worst thing that could have happened; maybe it saved me from acquiring expensive specialized tools and spending money in an effort to recreate a driving experience that wasn't all that special. A mid-'70s MGB wasn't a great sports car, but an economy car that looked like a sports car. It took more than eight seconds to reach 60 miles per hour and got nearly 25 miles to to the gallon. It was almost practical.
Had I kept it and restored it, I might have bought a tweed flat cap and (involuntary shiver) driving gloves. I might have joined a club.
But it burned up, so I moved on.
When I tell the story about how my MGB caught fire, I usually try to make it funny, a parable about a callow young man who didn't have any idea of what he was getting into, who dodged a bullet when his temperamental crush abandoned him. I say it like I didn't really love that car.
I still love it. I'd have it back tomorrow if it texted an apology. I miss it, the same way I miss my '76 Chevy Nova SS, '79 Audi Fox, '85 VW Rabbit GTI, '43 Willys Jeep, and all cars I somehow ruthlessly discarded. They're all gone now, junked, crushed into cubes, shredded, sorted, smelted and recycled--often into new cars.
It's surprising to learn that the automobile is the most recycled consumer product in the world, with 95 percent of all vehicles reclaimed, compared to 74 percent of newsprint, 51 percent of aluminum cans and 22 percent of glass.
So every new car carries bits of metal from earlier generations of automobiles. My old cars still prowl the roads, having been atomized into dozens or hundreds of later makes and models. Nothing lasts forever, yet everything is immortal, for matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
It's an entirely artificial process, driven by desires created by people who need to sell us 17 million new cars per year. They figure out how to make an appliance--a machine for social distancing, a mobile device--a sexy signifier of social status. And we buy into the idea that a car can be cool or uncool, that what you drive (for we all have to be drivers, not mere riders) tells a story about the kind of person you are.
We would have been better off if we'd resisted; it would be nice to take a train to Fayetteville or El Dorado or Memphis. It would be nice not to have our cities bisected into wards by belts of superhighways. It would be nice to be able to ride a bicycle downtown without having to be hyper-vigilant about texters at the wheel. It would be nice if a car ride was still an occasional thing, a genuine adventure instead of a chore.
But we live in a constitutional republic, where the way we live is decided by those who are smart and deep-pocketed enough to hire the most effective lobbyists. So we are in a constant churn of consumerism, always thinking about acquiring our next mobile device.
Maybe it's just as well I never learned more than basic automotive maintenance. These days, when I pop a hood, the engine looks like a transistor radio. It's just as well that I never acquired expensive tools to go along with obsolete skills.
But I have never denied the romance of things; just because something is inanimate doesn't make it unworthy of love. Guitars are dead wood and steel strings, yet there is something sacred in the vibrations we coax from them. You know when a car suits you within moments of getting behind the wheel; you feel it tug and drag and decide if you can work with it. You know if it fits, if you can wear it.
Or maybe that's all superstition.
It doesn't matter. Faith might be nothing more than the irrational rejection of evidence to the contrary, but almost all of us prefer it to facing up to nihilism. All of us will be be gone soon enough, and why are we here if not to remember old lovers and old cars and the sweet illusions we once held?
pmartin@adgnewsroom.com
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