Today’s COAL chapter focuses on the first car that was truly mine and mine alone. Having spent my early – high school – driving years behind the wheel of my family’s diminutive Fiat 128 “Little Car” it only seems fitting that my next ride would end up at the other end of a pendulum swing. From the 1900 lb., 157” long Fiat to the 4200 lb., 221” long LeSabre. I was now driving twice as much car.
I started college in the Fall of 1979 and for unknown (including to me) reasons I decided to ship myself 600 miles south to Emory in Atlanta. Prior to this point, I’d been to Atlanta a couple of times on family vacations. It seemed like an ok place if one could judge from my memories of Six Flags and Pittypat’s Porch (the former being an amusement park, the latter a tourist-trap restaurant questionably themed around pre-immolation-by-Sherman Atlanta). In other words, I knew next to nothing about Atlanta yet decided that it would be a fine idea to spend the next four years of my life there. Ah, youth…
With all of the confidence that my inexperience could muster (i.e., a lot), I committed to Emory and my parents drove me there in the Big Car (Town and Country).
The first opportunity to return home was Thanksgiving, and I flew. I re-united with my high school pals that weekend – they were all going to school in the northeast – and started to feel the initial pangs of “being too far away” from home and friends. This was exacerbated by the fact that Atlanta in 1979 was far from being the world-class city that it is today. In 1979 it was still quite provincial and lacked all that had fascinated me about living in DC — restaurants, museums, screenings of obscure foreign movies, etc. On campus there simply was very little to do besides frat parties and I suppose studying (neither of which excited me). If I was going to survive in Atlanta, I figured I’d have to find a way to explore the surrounding area and just where I could get via public transportation (buses and the 6-station, just opened, MARTA subway line).
Naturally, my parents heard my kvetching, and after paying for two round-trip plane tickets between Atlanta and DC, my dad hatched a plan. He suggested that I take a car back to Atlanta after I came home for Spring break. A car could be had for about the cost of a couple of plane tickets, and if he was going to be paying for the tickets otherwise…
The car he had in mind was 9 year old Buick in “Platinum Mist” (silver) for sale by from some guy at work. It had around 72K miles, the “small” 350 V8, a set of cockeyed aftermarket bumper overriders, and relatively few factory options beyond air conditioning. Even today it seems to me that he got a screaming good deal at $395.
Well, maybe, maybe not. He got the brakes done on the day he bought it because the gas station/inspection place recommended that. And like that, I had my own wheels.
As with most schools, Emory freshmen couldn’t have cars on campus. But asking around, I learned that if I parked off campus, alongside the road that led up to the Centers for Disease Control HQ, I’d be fine. There seemed to be no restrictions on long-term street parking, and that road was always lined with students’ cars. True, there was an active railroad track that you had to cross to get from campus to your car. But aside from the periodic train (which moved slowly enough that you could often jump on and then through) this wasn’t an issue.
I drove the Buick non-stop from DC to Atlanta that March. I guess I was drawing upon my recent experience driving out west because even as an 18-year-old, the idea of a 10-hour drive never concerned me. I loved to drive, and so off I went.
With the car within reach, but parked safely across the tracks, I started to spend most of my spare time driving around Georgia and doing a lot of things that most Freshmen didn’t do…such as going to Kroger’s on a weekly basis to buy groceries to feed myself (since I’d opted off—after my first quarter—of the truly horrid college meal plan). The Buick gave me freedom that I now suspect was exactly what the college didn’t want Freshmen to have; because that spring, rather than creating a lifelong bond (through captivity) with the college and its students, I basically succeeded in living/experiencing an independent life by fleeing campus as often as possible.
At the end of that first year, having developed some clearer thoughts about what I wanted out of my college experience, I loaded up the Buick and headed back up the east coast. I didn’t return to Atlanta for maybe another ten years…by then it was for a business trip. So there.
Back then, Emory had some kind of nutso academic calendar where its school year ended almost a month before most schools in the northeast. I used that month to find another college for the fall. In September, I started school in Massachusetts and got on with the rest of my life.
Amherst, MA center – circa 1981. The famous Ren’s Mobil is in the background.
The college to which I transferred had few issues with student cars on campus. Or, for that matter, few issues with almost anything. In fact most students, most weekends, left campus for Boston or NYC, each only a couple of hours away. Many hitchhiked; there was generally a line of students along the Rt. 9/I-91 south ramp each Friday afternoon. More took the bus, but nearly everyone was happy to have a friend with a car. I was happy to be the guy with a car…a great big giant car that could take at least four companions (six at least once) so if we split the gas, no one ever had to pay much for their weekend travel. I had high school friends in NYC and was making new friends in the City, so I always had some reason to go and somewhere to stay. I was in the City (we called NYC simply “the City”) most every other weekend. When not in the City, there were trips to the Cape, Connecticut, Rhode Island, etc. on one person’s pretense or another. I always found a way to make a weekend out of it and ferried all of us back to campus for Monday.
It was great.
My school also had the majority of its students living in on-campus group apartments. Each apartment was responsible for its own grocery shopping. While there were usually a couple of kids in each apartment who had cars, I without a doubt had the largest car for carrying a group of people plus all of their groceries. Therefore regular grocery shopping trips were also enabled by the Buick.
Oh and two full kegs fit in the trunk. Just for what it’s worth.
As befitting any college friend, in the same league as a favorite dog—we also had lots of dogs on campus, some of whom also regularly rode in my car—the Buick was given a variety of pet names during its college years. It was the Oriental Pleasure Palace (a princely pavilion enhanced by a piece of theatrical gel glued over the map light, and turned on during late night drives to bars, etc.); The Car for the Man Who Knows Who I Am (a paraphrased nod toward Chrysler’s famous pitchman for cars that answered his “demands”); and of course, the Low Rider. That last name acquired after we somehow (Somehow? Yes, you know how….) hatched the idea to spend an evening slowly driving around campus with giant speakers wired into the car’s aftermarket stereo:
In my case, the low rider effect was accomplished through several people dancing on the hood, thereby lowering and bouncing the car. No permanent dents resulted. Light girls, heavy steel. It’s all good.
We had a blast. It filled an evening—at least that’s how I remember it—and was something that other college friends could not have pulled off with their Corollas and diminutive first-generation Civics. The little cars of that era were indeed tiny compared to the mighty LeSabre. I recall being encouraged once to push a Civic sideways across a gravel parking lot when its owner had the audacity to intrude upon the Buick’s parking spot. Those bumper overriders came in handy after all!
While I loved any and all opportunities to drive, the miles added up quickly on the Buick. Naturally, this proved to be a rolling learning experience. When I first got the car I took it to dealers and gas station mechanics for service such as tune ups and oil changes. But despite this regular maintenance, the Buick accumulated a constant stream of annoying problems. Things like broken alternators and voltage regulators (which generated one memorable drive home from the CT coast with virtually no headlights), vaporizing exhaust systems, and a whole range of fuel system problems. These sucked up a disproportionate share of my small campus job income. Therefore, like so many before me, and despite my very limited mechanical skills/knowledge, I started down the road of DIY.
I have no recollection what I was working on here in the trunk (probably something electrical).
Working on your own car as a college student, at least one in the early 1980s in the Pioneer Valley of Western Mass, wasn’t difficult. There turned out to be quite a few garage spaces back then that catered to the do-it-yourselfer who lacked their own tools and driveway.
“Our Philosophy”
This one which I frequented at UMass Amherst emphasized what we would now call STEM skills, with a dose of some bastardized variant of Marxism.
By 1981 when a radiator hose burst and the Buick dumped all of its coolant somewhere in Southern Vermont, I had enough confidence to attack rebuilding the top half of the engine at a self-service Womyn-owned auto service collective (fish, bicycles, men, who needs ‘em?) in Northampton—the UMass workshop being a more expensive towing charge; hitchhiking back and forth between campus and the over the course of the three days it took for me to do the work.
On what in retrospect seems like automotive life-support, the Buick soldiered on through its next 50K miles and my 3 years of college. At the time, my philosophy was that since I didn’t have the money to buy a replacement car, and no real income to get a loan, and I had sort of figured out how to keep patching this one up, I’d just do that. In retrospect, I believe that was the same logic that my parents had employed with several of their cars (the Plymouth and the Simca) as well. I suspect we weren’t the only people at the time thinking this way. I wonder how and when things changed.
Nevertheless, looking at the pile of receipts from my Buick years, I’m astounded by the frequency with which certain jobs were required. Exhaust systems and tune-ups seemed to require nearly constant attention. It appears that I installed about four exhaust systems during my ownership. Those things must have come pre-rusted from Midas. In contrast, I just did the first exhaust work on my current car at 212,000 miles. No, they don’t make them the way they used to.
I graduated from college in 1984 and got the only job I seemed to be qualified for: selling toys and greeting cards in a local variety store. Then again, in 1983, in the midst of Reagan’s Recession, any kind of job for a 21 year old was a good thing. Even better if the job came with a built-in after-closing happy hour where employees could indulge in illicit (then, not now) activities with the boss and talk about his car that was way cooler than mine.
From the looks of it, definitely cooler, but not really much bigger.
Really, I know I could have made them look this good.
It was also during this time that I spent weeks trying to figure out how to rescue a pair of 1956 Fleetwood Series 75 limos that were slowly sinking into the ground at an abandoned used car lot in Northampton. The first of many cool vehicles that have gotten away.
My big American car phase—and the Buick specifically—was still ongoing when I got married shortly after college. So the Buick was part of that (although a brace of Dagmar-clad formal limos would have been even better, I’m just saying). I’m not sure why I don’t see too many decorated cars related to weddings nowadays. Maybe destination weddings have diminished the number of people who drive away from the reception in their own cars. Not so in 1984. Anyhow, my friends decorated the Buick for us.
For some reason, they chose spray snow as their writing implement. (“We couldn’t find any shaving cream!”…but somehow they found spray snow in May?) Guess what? That stuff doesn’t wash off of cars. And so the Buick was now proudly tagged “Luv Mobile” for the rest of its motoring days. I preferred TCFTMWKWIA.
The rest of its motoring days were not long.
By this time, the Buick’s floors were definitely resembling those of the Flintstone-mobile. I patched them with simple aluminum sheets, pop-riveted in to get it through MA inspection – which at the time focused almost exclusively on rust damage. That worked for maybe a year, but not longer. My wife had a much newer vehicle (a truck!) that could get us around. But the need for two vehicles was keen. Fortunately, my move from the greeting cards/toy store to something somewhat more respectable (sorry, Cadillac Steve) occasioned a radically different vehicle. Next week.
I still think it’s a car for the man who knows who I am
Fellow Buick owner here, though mine is a hobby car. Great story. A lot of metal for the money. Like my $200 Aussie ’63 BelAir.
Ah yes, the famous MD state inspection. For $18.50 (which was the state mandated limit), all anyone ever got for the most part was a quote to fix something that failed. When I had one done in 1977, they actually found nothing wrong and passed it. One of my co-workers was amazed and asked: “Didn’t they align your headlights?” Apparently that was the most common repair that required little time and offered some additional income for the shop.
Yep, it wasn’t until relatively recently that I have felt that I could approach the annual vehicle inspection process without having to pay the piper for some kind of nickle-and-dime failure. I had the requisite headlight alignment thing happen more times I can count.
Nowadays I am reasonably confident that when I take a car in for its sticker it will actually get one (and not the “Rejection” sticker). I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve been driving better cars or if the laws/procedures around inspections have changed so that the need for “headlight adjustments” are less common. Probably both.
The need for headlamp aim inspection is greater than ever before, because today’s headlamps are much more sensitive to misaim—a little too low cuts seeing distance way too short; a little too high blasts everyone else with vicious glare. But in most places, not only is periodic headlamp aim adjustment not required, it’s also damn difficult to find even if you want to!
Great story on so many levels! I am a few years younger than you (51), but these cars fill my childhood memories. Hard to believe how many of these ’71-’76 big GM’s were around. There was one (or more) in every driveway it seemed.
And, it’s amazing how recently a car (an American car, at least) was pretty well used up at 9 years/75,000 miles. Sounds like the original owner bailed just in time, though none of your repairs were extremely expensive or unusual for the times. You didn’t mention the old pre-electronic ignition; I remember my Dad fooling with our cars and a timing light on the weekends.
There is still an old timey muffler shop in my small town. I often wonder how they stay in business….I can only recall one muffler replacement in my 35 years of driving, and that was on a Mercedes S Class that was about 15 years old, near 200,000 miles. Just put a cheap non OEM muffler on (it was the rear silencer, actually) and paid the shop extra to put the extra bends in the tailpipe to make it look original-ish.
The modern stainless exhaust systems have been an amazing thing. I MacGyvered a rear exhaust hanger I broke from hitting my 94 Club Wagon’s tailpipe on something, and figured it wouldn’t have to last much longer because the car probably had 60k on it by then and the system would soon be shot anyway. I got rid of it at 145k with the factory system (and my hanger) still working flawlessly.
There’s an old-timey exhaust shop near me that I’ve recently visited with both of the daily drivers in my house; but both of those cars have +/- 200K miles on stainless exhaust systems, and just needed minor work around where the headers/cats go into the main exhaust. In other words, rusted joints and hardware between stainless sections.
So it really is all about the stainless. You virtually never see a car nowadays dragging its muffler whereas this was pretty much an everyday sight back in the day.
I remember my father telling me in the early 60s that he considered mufflers and batteries as “service items” to be replaced every 2 years. This was in Toronto, so lots of salt and cold weather. He was an automotive engineer, so he did know what he was talking about.
As one just a couple of years older, your story resonates like crazy with me. $350 was indeed a screaming deal for a good car. I never shopped in that price range because most of them were rusted piles of junk. $7-800 seemed like the price of admission for a “good” older used car back then. And that recession – I graduated college in May of 82 when it was really bad, which pushed me over the edge to head for law school the following fall.
Ah yes, exhaust systems. I forget how many I put in, but I know I spit a lot of rust out of my mouth over several years. Cheap carbon steel pipes, a muffler and a few clamps and the job was done in the driveway. I know I put at least 2 systems on my 71 Scamp.
Between my roommate and I we had a series of decent to huge size cars in that period. I finally settled on the 71 Scamp which I bought in 1980 and kept the last 2 years of college, all 3 years of law school and into the beginnings of real life. Simpler times.
I enjoyed reading your story, $395. was a good deal for a 9 year old Buick LeSabre. Your car brought back memories of my drivers education class. They had new 1970 or 71 LeSabres for our use. I remember they would do burn outs, not intentional of course,lol. They were nice cars, my Dad bought a few Buicks for my Mom to drive when we were kids.
Excellent! You and your fellow drivers ed graduates must to this day be champion parallel parkers. That generation of LeSabre would be a mighty barge to train novice drivers in.
One of the cars that I’ve always kind of wanted and never got. I just love the extra wide front end treatment especially. And everything else just seems to marvelously decadent as well. Your experience sums up exactly what I envision, well, without the large pile of repair bills, that’s sobering and would be annoying. Thanks for another highly entertaining recollection!
Fun times, it would seem. Just a few years later in ’86 when I departed for college (8 hours away from home…because…see above) the student parking lots were crammed full of Corollas, Civics, Rabbits and the like. I can remember only a few domestics in fact, and even those were little 4 cylinder runabouts. I guess the age of the Big Car had passed as college transport. And yes, the 8-9 hour trip from Norfolk, VA home to Northern NJ seemed like no biggie at 18, and it seemed like with 2 or 3 people in the car we could make a round trip for something like $20 a person, including snacks and the (outrageous!) $9 toll for the Bay Bridge Tunnel.
Your experience mirrors mine in regards to being the guy with the “big car”…in high school I had a 84 Sedan deVille (the car was 21 years old at this point), then in college a 97 Suburban. The Suburban was really popular since it could hold 7 with enough room in the back for whatever we needed (or came across). All of my friends had smaller cars, so I usually drove – this suited me fine as I have a weird thing about driving everywhere.
Still am the big car guy…we have the ’03 Suburban, the ’17 XTS, and the ’88 Brougham. The Suburban comes in handy when home improvement projects come up…or I have to DD a bunch of people from the bar.
Pittypat was the aunt of Scarlett O’Hara’s first husband that she lived with in Atlanta during The Wauh.
The ’71 B bodies had vent louvers between the backlight and trunklid that caused water problems. The next year, the cabin vents were moved to the door jams. Good of GM to fix it quickly, but why wasn’t it discovered earlier?
My college roommate (from Jasper County SE of Atlanta) had an old Corolla that I had to push start the first year if we wanted to go anywhere. It was the dealer-installed A/C that drained the battery.
We got 8 in the ’74 Fleetwood I had senior year. My DTS is so small and nimble.
There were a great many flaws like this in the ’71 B-bodies. The heating and A/C systems were poorly designed and let outside air leak in past the heater core and A/C evaporator, rendering the systems useless in hot or cold weather, too. This, according to DeLorean’s book (“On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors”) was discovered in plenty of time, but those who discovered and squawked about it were ordered to mind their place, and sign off on the system anyway. Shut up! We’re General Motors! They’ll take what we produce and they’ll like it!
What’s really fun about this: the HVAC system in the new ’91 GM B-bodies had exactly the same problem: poor design allowing outside air to bypass the heater core and A/C evaporator. Maybe they eventually sorta fixed that one, too, the way they eventually sorta fixed the ’71 system. Tra-la.
They pretty much did. Midas’ exhaust scams weren’t exactly the same as SCAAMCO’s transmission scams, but they lived on the same block. One of their main ones involved poor-quality, short-lived parts with a “lifetime warranty” that covered only the parts; you still paid for labour. And paid, and paid, and paid again.
Another very enjoyable read.
I love how you saved up all of your receipts. It’s very graphic proof of just how drastically better newer cars are.
I have to say though, that it makes me even more appreciative of how reliable and low cost VWs were back then. I never replaced a muffler in any of them, although they did rust out eventually. But it was just a muffler and not a whole exhaust system. And other than typical wear items, I just didn’t experience much else going wrong with them.
The one exception was king pins on my ’64. I bought it in Maryland for $400 (in ’73) and the seller had to have it inspected. the king pins failed and they had to pay something like $160 or so to fix it. They were not happy about that, as it really cut into their take on the sale.
I should also add, I am amazed you have receipts that are almost 40 years old! I have moved so many times over the years, I can’t imagine keeping up with them. I used to keep a three ring binder for each car’s receipts, but then that started taking up a lot of room, so I would trash the ones I had sold or traded. I scan everything and keep it in the cloud now, so I guess I’ll “always” have everything from now on.
I don’t see many student age kids driving around in big old beaters today, and there is
something, maybe unimportant, that has been lost. The closest thing I have encountered
as of late was a guy who appeared to be in his late teens, piloting a ragged AMC Eagle
loaded with friends.
A 20 year old beige Camry is a better vehicle in every possible way, but I bet none of
them have nick names.
Hampshire College, huh? Have you been keeping up with events there the past few years? (It was one of my older daughter’s top four choices in spring 2014, but during our accepted-students campus visit, it became apparent that cigarettes were de rigueur among the majority of students.)
That Buick is nicely proportioned from any angle, isn’t it? Would have caused you even more problems, I think, if it had been the hardtop; more chance of side windows going out of alignment.
Most of a decade ago I was in Savannah, Georgia for a conference. There was a much-lauded Southern restaurant about a 20-minute walk from my hotel—past the White Way cleaners—so I went and tried it. Had to line up to get in; it was very popular with local residents.
All the food was Southern (see attached; not shown: biscuits, cawn bread, banana puddin’, cherry cobbluh).
All the diners were white.
All the servers were Black, and dressed up as a 1950s storybook version of house slaves. Dubya tee eff?!!
None of the other diners showed any hint of astonishment about it; they all seemed to be revelling in getting their fix of the old days. The White Way cleaners looked a great deal dirtier to me on my way back.
That is some shocking bland appearing food. It reminds me of going to Po-Folks
restaurant as a kid, where there were two ways of preparing all items: either cooked
to death (for days, by appearance and texture), or heavily breaded and fried. The
post meal nausea induced by fare and the Florida heat was intense.
Spices—like emotions—were for ethnic people.
My Southern grandmother said people who liked spicy food were usually heavy drinkers.
Pittypat’s is still around, although as one could guess, according to its website the ownership — now “woke” — is working to craft a somewhat different message from the one that predominated for most of its prior history (and was very much as you described the place in Savannah).
I will say though that your picture of the spread really makes me want some sweet tea. Always in those plastic tumblers. I think I should probably skip the rest of the carb-gasm.
Bless your heart.
Who owned the restaurant?
Wonderful story! I’m about ten years younger than you, but also made the unusual (at the time) decision to head South for college… in my case from Philadelphia to North Carolina. But your story reminded me my biggest criteria: That freshmen could be allowed to have cars on campus. Like you noted, most colleges didn’t allow that, and I remember calling many college admissions offices asking that very question. Eventually I finally found one that suited my needs. Lucky me. And I spent many hours just randomly driving around town.
Oh, and I’m sure you and your wife must have been very pleased with the fade-resistant Just-Married heart on the hood!
Exactly my point. Once I was able to start randomly driving around town, I very much grew to appreciate the place by truly experiencing its geography and culture. College campuses are largely designed it seems to prevent students from doing just that (given that so many are largely identical and strive for some sort of generic ideal of …. something collegiate).
Cars are one way for us to get out into our environments and experience them at ground level. Not the only way, for sure, but one that is accessible to many of us.
I started to experience this at my first college, but developed the experience intently once I got out of the first place into the second. Which may be why I still live in MA.
I really do enjoy your writing style, Mr S.
In another land far away, I’m a tiny bit jealous that a university student’s beater could be an extravagantly large – and to my eyes, voluptuously elegant-looking – Buick. Mine only ever got as large as a ’66 Ford Falcon six, and I couldn’t really afford to fuel even that (which was ok, as, with manual steering and the skills of late teenage, I couldn’t park it anyway).
My parents were married in 1959 on a day of 105F, and the chalk-scratched letters on the black enamel of their 1948 Morris Ten continued to advertise their “Just Married” status for another two years after the happy event until the horrid little car expired.