Years ago, I was paid to help a neighbor clean out his garage. It was an old, ramshackle building with a dirt floor and over the years it had been filled with an amazing amount of crap. At the very back, under a canvas tarp, I found a long neglected late 60s Honda CB750 in fairly rough condition. When I asked about it, my neighbor told me how, as a younger man, he had purchased the bike new and travelled the highways and byways of the American West for many years before finally coming home a settling down to start a family. To him, it was an icon of his youth and a time of freedom. To my young eyes, however, it was just a neglected old bike covered in dirt and cobwebs, found forgotten, alone and unloved and condemned to spend its remaining years as a lifeless touchstone of another time. It struck me as a particularly sad end to a life of service and I decided then that no vehicle of mine would ever languish its remaining life away in a barn or under a cover.

It was the arrival of my third child that sparked my family’s need for a bigger vehicle. Up to that point we had been fine with my Chrysler and the Pontiac Torrent I had purchased for my wife after our return from Japan. Both cars had a pair of car seats in the back for our two older kids, but neither proved to be wide enough to add a the necessary third seat. It was obvious we needed a minivan and I soon began a long search that netted us the Ford Freestar that I have written about on these pages before. With my wife firmly ensconced in her new mommy mobile, the low mileage Torrent that had previously been hers became my daily driver and the Chrysler slipped to the side of the drive where it sat snug and secure under its cover as the Buffalo winter swept towards us.

The following year, whenever the weather looked nice, I rolled the Chrysler out of its spot from time to time for various work-related jaunts around Western New York. I took it to work on the nicest days and at other time used it for those few, infrequent errands that didn’t involve carting a kid around. It was nice to have and I used it a few times while our van went to the shop but for the most part, it simply sat and waited. That autumn, as inspection time rolled around, I found that I had put a grand total of four thousand miles on the clock. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a long unused synapse fired and a memory of a rusty, sad-looking motorcycle flashed into my consciousness. I pushed the vision back into its place and, with another winter on the horizon, slipped the Chrysler back into its place at the side of the drive way and secured its cover.

The memory continued to work at me, however, and the site of the car hunkered down under its cover and covered in autumn leaves, then snow and finally the yellow pollen of a new spring, gnawed at me. A few weeks ago, I took the car out, prepped it for the summer and doted on it as usual but the seed that had been planted last fall had grown large enough that events had crossed the tipping point. I made a last work related road trip three weeks ago and upon my return posted an ad to Craigslist.

I asked too much money but, regardless, someone responded quickly. Our first conversation went well and the interested party, a man named John, seemed like a good guy, Even better he had spent much of his life in Arizona, where I had purchased the car after my return from Japan in 2010, and he knew the dealership in question. What sealed the deal was when he and his wife arrived to check out my car and I saw he was driving his own less-than-Special Chrysler 300M.

There was tire kicking, a look under the hood, a test drive and a conversation but surprisingly little haggling. John and I are men of a similar type, I learned, and he knew exactly what he was buying. Maybe it was more expensive than every other 300M in Western New York, but it was truly unique and, like me, John was smitten as soon as he slipped behind the wheel. He thought about it overnight and, after working out the finances, came back on Wednesday evening with his cashier’s check. We swapped another story or two as we wrapped up the paperwork and then he opened the door, sunk down into the seat and started the engine. The car burbled at idle as he adjusted the seat, the mirrors and took a moment to survey his purchase. He slipped the car into gear, pulled the parking brake and then, slowly, majestically, the 300M slipped slowly down the drive, onto the street and out of my life forever.

The logical side of me knows that machines are things to be used up and discarded. If a person is especially devoted to regular service and maintenance they can stretch the lifespan of a given vehicle well beyond the norm. If they have the necessary mechanical skill, or the money to access those who do, they can keep a machine running indefinitely. But if a person lacks the time or interest to do the maintenance, make the repairs or even drive a vehicle then there can be only one, ultimate result. If, as I have often posited in my articles, cars really do have souls, the deserve better than to be held prisoner of a man’s past. They deserve a chance to live out their lives in the sun, with the wind streaming over them, the road rushing towards them and the miles falling away behind. Godspeed.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

In the early 1980s, as the economy continued to slump and gas prices soared, American car makers were desperate for a way forward. The good old days were gone forever. Under pressure from the Japanese, whose small cars had gone from rolling jokes to serious, high quality competition in little more than a decade, the big three knew they needed to make a radical departure from their traditional approach before it was too late. Although some of the more stodgy cars would soldier on and continue to sell to members of the Greatest Generation well past their expiration dates, for the rest of us the future was a smaller, lighter and more efficient. The winds of change were blowing and even the Ford Mustang felt the chill.

In 1982 Ford began to take a good, hard look at their strong selling V8 powered, rear wheel drive pony car. Introduced in 1979, the Fox body mustang was a radical departure from the Ford Pinto based Mustang II that had carried the name forward through the disco era and it was a good car, but all indications were that the front engine rear wheel drive platform appeared to be on the way out. Most domestic manufacturers were headed towards front wheel drive platforms, Chrysler was already heavily invested in its K car and rumor had it that even GM was considering moving its Camaro and Firebird to FWD. Fortunately, Ford’s 25% stake in Mazda offered them quick and relatively inexpensive access to a FWD platform already under development, the Mazda 626, and they chose to examine that option.

Toshi Saito of Ford’s North American Design Center prepared the initial concepts, one of which was chosen and the project moved forward into a full sized clay mock up and eventually a fiberglass model was constructed and sent to Japan where Mazda headquarters in Hiroshima. Mazda’s management approved of the design, but after some thought Ford decided that it wasn’t quite what they were looking for and came back with a longer, leaner and more rakish design that required some re-engineering from Mazda. The car was to be produced in the United States and Mazda purchased a Ford property in Flat Rock, Michigan to produce the car alongside their own 626 and Mx-6 models.

Much like the now oft-derided Mustang II, the new Mustang was set to be a radical departure from the Fox car. First, no V8s were to be offered. Instead, the front wheel drive Mustang would mount a Mazda sourced transversely mounted 4 cylinder good for about 110 horsepower. For the first year, GT Mustangs would feature the same 4 cylinder with turbo good for about 145 horsepower – comparable to what the Mustang V8 was making at the time – and the next year move to the Mazda V6 which was good for about 175 horsepower. The design was sleek, slippery and generally well liked by those who saw production models and images.

The public backlash against the car came as a real shock. Mustang enthusiasts and red blooded ‘Murricans everywhere were appalled at the thought of a Mustang based on anything other than good old American design and sent up a howl of indignation that resonated all the way back to Ford’s executive offices. Firmly in the Reagan era, a resurgent America would simply not tolerate the venerable Mustang name attached to a Japanese design. As thousands upon thousands of angry letters poured into the corporate offices, buyers rushed into dealerships and sales of the Fox body Mustang, which had been slipping as the design aged, suddenly increased.

People, it seemed, were anxious to own what was sure to be the last “real” Mustang rushed into the dealership before it was too late and, in a moment of “Classic Coke” vs “New Coke” brilliance, Ford capitalized on the controversy. The classic Mustang would remain on sale, but the new car would live too, and so Ford reached into the bag of names and pulled out one that had been attached to an especially well received aerodynamic concept car just a few years earlier and, with a knowing wink to proctologists everywhere, dubbed it the “Probe.”

The rest is well known history. Introduced in 1988, The Probe was a success and it went on to win the hearts and minds of many of those who cross shopped it with its primary competition, the Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge Turbo K variants, the small FWD GM cars, the Cavalier and the Beretta and Japanese turbo cars of all makes and models. Sales were brisk and the Detroit News reported in 1989 that Ford was selling around 600 of them a month. The design was refreshed in 1993 and almost 120,000 were sold that year. By 1997, however, the design had run its course and only 16,777 were sold. Meanwhile, the “Classic” Mustang soldiered on, was continually refreshed and, although it has been updated and redesigned over the years, it is still with us as the front engine, rear wheel drive pony car that God and Lee Iacocca originally intended.

Looking back, the 80s was a time or real, small-car innovation. Car companies, both domestic and foreign, put forth an amazing number of designs across all price ranges as they fought for market share. In that regard, I suppose, Ford really didn’t hurt themselves by keeping the ‘Stang and adding the Probe to their showrooms. I’m guessing the Probe really didn’t steal buyers from the Mustang as they each appealed to different market segments. I wonder, however, what would have happened if Ford had made the decision to stick with New Coke? Would GM have followed suit and put the Camaro and Firebird on a smaller FWD platform? Would the Chrysler K Turbos have eaten all their lunches? I wonder…

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

My mom around 1955

As mother’s day approaches I think now about my own mother on the other side of the continent and about the journey her life has been. Born in the mid 1930s and raised in poverty, she was dumped into an orphanage by her father after her mother’s sudden death from breast cancer in the late ’40s. It has never been discussed in detail, but I know that she and her younger sister were rescued by their older sister, my aunt Evelyn, herself just a recently married teenager, and raised as one of her own. At barely 18 years of age, my mother married my father, had the first of her five children and worked hard to build a home for herself and her family. The amazing part of this is that she was able to do it all without ever driving.

Being a mom has never been, and probably never will be, easy. Modern moms work hard to ensure that their kids use every moment of their free time in the most productive ways possible. Gone are the days when a child came home from school, jumped on their bike and headed to the park or a neighbor’s house to play. To be a child today is to be constantly running from one activity, lesson or play date to the next and modern moms spend a lot of time behind the wheel. It’s hard to imagine that my mother raised five complete, productive people eight miles outside of town without ever loading us into the car and taking us anywhere. I wonder if it could be done today.

The routine around the Kreutzer house in the early ’70s was simple. On weekdays, Dad got up before dawn and worked all day long. With a lot of mouths to feed, if he had the opportunity to work overtime he took it and he was generally gone from sunup to past sundown. We kids got up just as he was leaving, ate our breakfasts and were at the school bus stop early because if you missed the bus there was no one to drive you. For us there were no afterschool activities, no sports and, of course, no play dates you couldn’t get to under your own pedal power. On the weekends, if dad wasn’t working, the younger kids would load into our station wagon and go to the supermarket while the older kids stayed home. On Sundays we would all go to church. In the summers we stayed out in the hills, rode our bicycles as far as they would carry us, fought endless mock wars with the neighbor kids and swam in the lakes. If we were injured during any of the aforementioned activities, we either suffered until dad came home or, if the situation was deemed serious enough, called a neighbor to take us to the hospital.

My mom and dad around 1983

It seems odd today, but the reason for our plight was not because we couldn’t afford another car. Truth be told, the reason is that it was because my mom simply didn’t want to drive. She had, she told me, tried to learn once back-in-the-day but the pressure was just too great and she had suffered a panic attack at the wheel. The terror she felt left such a strong impression that she had decided it was better to leave the responsibility of driving to others. The family soldiered on and, as we kids matured and eventually got our own licenses and cars, the situation improved. As she moved towards the golden years of her life, it seemed that my mother’s status as a non driver would be forever secured. And so it was until my father passed away.

Tough times call for tough measures and it is amazing how my mother and all of our neighbors rallied in the face of adversity. With an empty nest at home my mother found herself stuck at the old homestead far outside town. At first the neighbor ladies were quite generous with their time and included my mom in all sorts of senior activities but one morning she was a few minutes late to the end of the driveway and they left without her. That day my mother swore she would never be dependent upon anyone ever again.

That evening after I came home from work, I rolled my father’s perfectly preserved Cutlass out of the garage and we headed to the local school parking lot to practice the basics of driving. The next day, another neighbor who was a driving instructor at a local high school came to our house with a driver’s guide and began working with her as well. Between the two of us, we covered all the basics and two weeks later my mother, then in her fifties, passed her road test and got her first driver’s license. To this day, almost 20 years later, she remains a licensed driver.

Think for a second about the kind of guts that takes. As car enthusiasts we are immersed in the culture of cars. Those of us who truly love cars have, for the most part, been enamored with them from the time we were little kids and we jumped at the chance to get behind the wheel. We admire the beauty of their lines, thrill at the power and enjoy the actual act of driving. It’s hard for us to imagine how anyone would choose to forgo what is to us, one of life’s great pleasures.

No matter who you are, however, cars are really all about freedom and if you really want to be free you can’t live your life in fear. I’m proud that I had a small part in sharing that freedom with my mother and prouder still that she had the courage to face her fears. But given where she comes from, I guess I should have expected it. Happy Mothers’ Day to all of you and yours.

My mom and her husband Guy around 2001, a few years after they married.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

In some ways my initial move across the Pacific was a lot easier than my return. I was at the end of my personal rope when I went to Japan in 1999 and, even though I was stepping into a dead end job, there was nowhere to go but up. Coming home was quite the reverse. Of course I had a job offer, but I had learned the hard way about birds in the hand versus the two in the bush and, truth is, I was scared. I had carved out a nice little life for myself in Japan. I had friends, a decent place to live and, for a change, money in my pocket. I had even purchased a car and a motorcycle, but now it was time to sell out and move on.

The car in question was my 1986 Twin Turbo Supra and it was in great shape. In the two years I had owned it I had taken good care of it, corrected a few minor paint issues with rubbing compound and special wax that turned the paint back to its original brilliant white, added new tires, a kick ass stereo and even completed the shakken. Back home in the States a similar car would have sold for several thousand dollars and there was no way I could have lost money, but in Japan, as usual, it was a different story.

Someone once told me long ago that Japan is like the pond in the center of a Zen rock garden. From the outside it looks tranquil, placid and is a perfect reflection of the sky above. Underneath, however, everything that happens in every other pond is taking place. Bugs are laying their eggs, frogs are eating the bugs and the fish are eating the frogs. The entire circle of life is going on under that water and it isn’t until you decide to plunge in that you really understand how deep and how murky the pond really is.

The Japanese, as I had learned during my initial purchase of the Supra, don’t generally do person-to-person sales of used cars. Sure, you might sell a vehicle to a family member or a good friend, as I discovered when I sold my Mazda MPV to my “Japanese family” when I left Okinawa in 2010, but selling a used car to a stranger is practically unheard of. I’m not sure if anthropologists have ever conducted a study as to why this is the case, but rumors about the Japanese belief in evil spirits attaching themselves to things that others have used in a personal way aside, I think it is because public transportation is nearly universal, parking is limited and cars are expensive to own. The result is that young people don’t need to own a car to get around and, thanks to all the fixed costs of car ownership, are effectively priced out of the market. Therefore, most cars are purchased by adults who can and usually do buy new because of status issues, increased reliability and other benefits given to new cars under the shaken inspection system.

The average Japanese person trades in their old car when they buy a new one. The money they receive in trade is ludicrously low, but given that most people don’t have the need, desire or even the extra space to keep an older car it works out well. Sure, like anyone who trades in a car they lose out on some money, but they are essentially paying for the convenience of disposing their old car. I had learned, however, that a little elbow grease and an unconventional approach could often circumvent the natural way of things in Japan and so I determined to turn to the “international community” for a solution.

There are quite a few foreigners in Japan. The vast majority of them are tourists, then in decreasing frequency come the international students on exchange trips, the Mormon missionaries, the JET teachers, company-men on temporary assignments and finally the dregs of Western society that end up as ESL teachers at for-profit English conversation schools, spouses of Japanese citizens and all the other flotsam and jetsam of the world that get swept into the relatively sheltered waters of Japan and end up staying there for years at a time. As with many communities that fail to fully integrate into their host countries, Westerners in Japan have built for themselves a vibrant and fun sub culture all their own and all it takes to access it is the time and willingness to sit down in an Irish pub and listen to people who have no intention of ever returning to their home countries bellyache about how much they hate Japan.

About a month before I returned home I put an ad in the local Gaijin (foreigner) classified ad paper, known as the Kansai Flea Market and waited for the calls to roll in. I got some quick bites on my bike and sold it after just a week at a small profit, but the car languished in the paper and generated just one call from an Australian bloke who was hoping I knew about any laws that might prevent him from taking it home. As my departure neared I checked with my girlfriend’s friends to see if any of them wanted it and was given a resounding “no” by everyone we asked. Finally I decided to take it to a place called “Gulliver” that ran frequent ads on TV about buying used cars.

In retrospect I should have probably guessed that any company that has the money to run almost constant ads on TV wouldn’t pay much for the cars they bought, but when the guy told me my car was so old that they would only take it for free I wasn’t very happy. Still, as the time for my departure was drawing ever nearer, I went ahead and struck the deal and told him I would bring the car back the next day. Of course one thing led to another and I didn’t bring the car back until the following week but since I was giving it to them who would have thought it would be an issue? Well it was, and imagine my surprise when the guy told me that because I had failed to honor my word and bring the car the next day the terms of the deal had changed. Now, instead of simply giving them my car, they wanted me to pay them $50 to take it. I wasn’t happy, but with my tickets to go home in hand, I went ahead and paid the money and bade my Supra farewell.

Had I known that I would eventually get the job of my dreams, marry my Japanese girlfriend and end up living in the same region of Japan just three years later, I would have paid up my parking fees in advance and let the car sit until my return. But at that point in time, with the future still uncertain, I know that it was better that I let the car go. Still, whenever I visit Japan and return to my “hometown,” I feel a sudden flash of shame and anger every time I drive by that shop. I know I was cheated and, frankly, it grates on me. Of course, outside of a snarky article on a car blog, I will never exact revenge. Still, it’s nice to think that someday, maybe someday, I will.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Time was, the only time you could see cool cars on TV, outside of reruns of the Rockford Files and Starsky and Hutch, was on Saturday Mornings on The Nashville Network. Those programs, aimed at shade tree mechanics and the average do-it-yourselfer, were about as interesting as a high school auto shop class’ instructional videos. Things have definitely changed and today, thanks to hundreds of cable channels and the advent of Reality TV, car related programming is easy to find. The problem is that Reality TV is character driven and you have to endure colorful personalities in order to see the cars.

The first Reality Show that really grabbed my attention was American Chopper. I know it’s not about cars but, when you think about, it wasn’t really about bikes, either. American Chopper was about fathers and sons, and how working class men pass along their work ethic and values to their children – at least for the first few seasons. After that it was about how money and fame corrupt and about how families and relationships can self destruct as father and son compete with one another for time in the limelight. Watching American Chopper for the first few years was like spending time in the garage with my own dad, learning a lot about being a man while getting yelled at for being stupid, unskilled and lazy. Watching American Chopper as the show churned through its final episodes, and as the entire Teutul family descended into chaos and mutual hatred, was painful. If the events depicted in the show happened in real life, the Teutels should be ashamed of themselves. If those events happened because of clever editing, the production company should be ashamed. Either way, because I felt something of a personal kinship with those characters, it felt personal.

Since then I have sought out lighter Reality fare and now I have a new guilty pleasure, the Discovery Channel’s “Fast N’ Loud.” The shows premise is simple. Basically, two guys with a small shop shuck-and-live their way around Texas looking for old cars that they can fix quick and the sell for a big profit. This is a subject I personally know a lot about, after all I did help to kill the American Muscle Car and, truth be told, the show strikes me as being fairly true to life.

If Fast N’ Loud was a typical reality car show, our greasy looking heroes Richard Rawlings and Aaron Kaufman, would buy a piece of junk and then, in the name of drama, inflict some crazy-short deadline upon themselves which they would then meet with seconds to spare. Then, they would sell their crazy creation to a corporate customer for about a bazillion dollars. Although I wonder about the Ford Bronco, which had seats upholstered in a red and black plaid pattern suspiciously close to the halter tops the well endowed waitresses at a certain restaurant were wearing at the end of the show, that sort of thing doesn’t generally happen here. More often than not, Richard buys a piece of junk, drags it back to the shop where Aaron picks apart all the problems. Sometimes the answer is to throw a lot of money at a project and hope it pays off while other times the answer is to roll the hulk out front, put a for sale sign on it and hope to pass the trouble along to some other sucker with more time and resources to throw into it. Seems about right to me.

Then comes the cars. In American Chopper Paul Teutul thought like an artist and he always seemed to be more concerned about creating his artistic vision than he was about creating a reliably running bike. In Fast N’ Loud, master mechanic Aaron Kaufman spends a great deal of time on actual engineering and he often states that his primary concern is safety. Sure, some of the cars that emerge from the shop are show boats, but for the most part the cars end up as fairly mild customs that sell for less than stratospheric amounts of cash. I like that.

Lastly, let’s talk about the main characters Richard Rawlings and Aaron Kaufman. On the surface they seem like prototypical Reality TV chumps complete with abundant tats, crazy skull rings, various piercings and no fashion sense. Personality wise, however, they differ from the usual fare and, again, they come off as likable and especially genuine.

Richard Rawlings is the front man and I know his type intimately, I grew up around them. Fast N’ Loud’s Gas Monkey Garage is his business and like many successful small businessmen who sell to the public, he has an effusive, outgoing, larger-than-life personality. He is engaging and smart but not afraid to be silly in order to bridge the gap between himself and the customer. He does what it takes to get the sale and he knows that getting noticed is at least as important as offering a quality product. He mixes with the rich and famous one minute, talks to 70 year old Texas farmers the next and he finds something in common with each of them. That’s how sales works and if he was any different, and any less genuine, he would be out of business in a month.

Aaron Kaufman is the master mechanic and he oversees Gas Monkey Garage’s staff as they work on the various cars that Richard brings back to the shop. Thanks to his shaggy beard and slicked back hairstyle, I first expected Aaron Kaufman to be another larger than life reality show figure with a pretend bad-boy attitude. The personality that has emerged over the course of the show, however, is a quiet, thoughtful and genuinely likeable. Aaron Kaufman comes off like a guy who knows how to repair cars and who thinks that doing a good job is critical. Often there is, albeit mild, conflict between Aaron and Richard over the rising cost of this or that project as Aaron seeks to ensure the job gets done right while Richard seeks to control costs. Again, this is a compromise that all small businessmen make on a daily basis and it lends credibility to what we see on TV.

Now into its second season, I believe that Fast N’ Loud is on its way to being another huge Reality TV hit for the Discovery Channel. I earnestly hope that Richard Rawlings and Aaron Kaufmann can keep their egos under control as their fame and fortunes increase. It would be a shame to see these two very likable guys turn into raging jerks. I know that some part of reality TV will always be scripted, but as long as the set-ups are interesting cars and not silly interpersonal drama they can count me among their regular viewers. The world needs more fun, silly shows that can draw attention to the car hobby. This is a good one – check your local listings for the time and channel and sit through an episode, you might find yourself surprised at just how much fun you’ll have.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

At around 2:00 PM on the afternoon of October 6, 1973, more than 200 Soviet built Egyptian aircraft began to assault Israeli air bases and missile emplacements north of the Suez canal and the established line of defense, known as the Bar Lev Line. During the night that followed, Egyptian combat engineers crossed the canal in small boats and used gasoline powered pumps to throw streams of high pressure water against the massive sand wall the Israeli forces had erected at the water’s edge following their 1967 conquest of the Sinai. The water eroded the wall with amazing efficiency and by the next day more than 50,000 Egyptian troops and 400 tanks had made their way across the Suez, through the remains of the Bar Lev line and out onto the Sinai desert where they forced the Israeli military back in disarray. The offensive, known as Operation Badr was the opening of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and it makes interesting reading. The conflict had lasting effects in region and some say that it helped to set the stage for the Camp David Accords and eventually led to the peace treaty that President Carter helped negotiate between Egypt and Israel. The war also had effects closer to home and, thanks in part to the Arab Oil Embargo that was a direct result of America’s support of Israel during the conflict, it led to a new, fuel efficient car appearing in my family’s driveway.

The Opel Kadett wasn’t running right. My father’s coworker had purchased the little car, 1.1 liter Coupe, new back in 1969 and it had always been a spry little car. It was never a power machine, but with its light weight and manual transmission it could scoot when you wanted to go and it looked good doing it. For some reason, however, the car’s performance had begun to degrade and now, just four years old, it was proving to be a disappointment to its owner. Naturally, my dad bought it for next to nothing.

Once the car was safe at home, my dad, who could fix anything, took a closer look at it. The car ran smoothly and shifted fine, but it was definitely down on acceleration. Under the hood, and with my older brother Bruce in the driver’s seat working the accelerator pedal, my dad watched the carburetor linkage as it moved through its full range of motion. It wasn’t binding, but the butterfly valves didn’t seem to be fully opening, either. An hour of troubleshooting located the problem, two screws under the accelerator pedal had worked their way out over the years and, thanks to their interference, the pedal simply wouldn’t go all the way down any more. Two minutes with a screw driver completed the repair and the little car’s power was restored.

My dad used the car as his daily driver for three years and as the older of my two brothers, Bruce, approached his 16th birthday it became a given that the little Opel would go to him. Bruce drove the car for a year or two without incident and then passed it on to our brother Tracy. Between the two of them, I am sure that the car went on any number of mid ‘70s high school adventures most of which I, who am about 7 years younger than them, never actually heard about. I did hear about the big wreck, however.

There may or may not have been alcohol involved. According to Tracy, he came speeding around a corner to find several kids in the middle of road pushing a go-kart. He swerved to avoid them, put the car into the ditch where it dug into the soft earth and flipped onto its top. Tracy and his friends righted the car, popped out the dented roof and refilled the engine with oil. Unfortunately, they forgot to refill the transmission oil as well and by the time he got the car home the transmission was fully destroyed.

The Opel ended up in our garage as it awaited my father’s attention and, for some reason or other, he never quite got around to getting the parts to repair the little car. Tracy graduated high school, got his first full time job and sunk a part of his monthly salary into a slightly used 1978 Nova coupe. The Opel languished in the garage where it became my own personal play car. I read the entire owner’s manual cover to cover, learned the purpose of every switch and warning light and even taught myself how to recharge the battery to keep the radio working so I would have music as I played. I logged a lot of hours behind the wheel, fantasizing about being out on the road. Although I was only 13 at the time, I naturally assumed that like my brothers the car would eventually become mine. Despite the fact that over the years I endured a whole host of hand-me-downs, clothes, toys, and bicycles, I never did inherit the car. Somewhere around 1981 the little car left our garage and was never heard from again.

The Opel looms larger in my brothers’ transition into adulthood than it does my own but, like so many machines I have bonded with over the years, the little car was more than just the sum of its mechanical parts. Maybe she was a little too old for me, and maybe she had been around the block a few too many times, but the Opel’s clean, utilitarian design helped to shape my view of what great cars should be. The little car took everything my brothers could throw at it and still brought them home safely every time. Its toughness and reliability are legend and, to this day, that Opel holds a special place in every Kreutzer’s heart. It was the one that got away.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Sweet, sweet publicity. Although I am loathe to admit it, I am a sucker for a slick ad campaign. Those catchy jingles, perfectly posed photos, and quick camera cuts work their way into my psyche and demand that I throw down my hard earned cash for something I may not need, but God how I want it! Done right, an ad campaign can have a lasting effect on me – I’m not sure if Bertel is to blame, but does anyone else remember when Volkswagen used Elvis Presley’s “Devil In Disguise” to promote their GTI? I sure do- too bad I can’t find it on you tube! So let’s talk car ads – here are some of the greatest car ads of all time:

Nissan 300ZX

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nissan had a real string of clever commercials in the early 1990s. I think the company really understood that people weren’t buying some of their cars on cost or features, they were buying them because they were some of the coolest cars going. The above ads spring right from the mind of every boy who ever owned a classic GI Joe.

Isuzu Impulse

Click here to view the embedded video.

Joe Isuzu was the pitchman in one of the most popular TV commercial series of the 1980s. You may or may not know it, but not everything he says is the truth…

Dodge Shadow

Click here to view the embedded video.

Today computerized graphics and morphing from one shape into another is old hat, but way back in 1987 that technology didn’t exist. This commercial was incredible and it drew a direct line between the legendary Dodge Dart of the past and the new, modern K car based Shadow. It got my attention for sure, this commercial is the reason I got my ass down to the local Dodge dealership when I went looking for my first brand new car.

Mercury Cougar

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is one of the earliest car commercials I can remember from my childhood. Back then I was more interested in the cat than I was the car (or the woman.) I guess it’s a sign of my age that today I am more interested in the car than I am the cat (or the woman.)

Bonus: American Home Direct

This is actually a Japanese advertisement for life insurance but it is a touching story about a man, his cars and how his life’s priorities change as he moves through life. Keep your handkerchief handy for this, it’s a beautiful, touching ad featuring some cool classic Japanese cars. (Big thanks to Japanese Nostalgic Car for turning me onto this a couple of months ago.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

There you have it, food for thought. As always, your own contributions and suggestions are more than welcome. Also, if you have better internet sleuthing skils than I, feel free to find that Golf GTI Elvis ad I mentioned!

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

I saw it this morning. Slipping along the in the dim, pre-dawn light and shrouded in the thin early morning fog that wicked up in wispy tendrils from the damp pavement, it was an apparition, a beast from another age. Like poor Yorick, alas I knew it well and although, in time, it has become the subject of infinite jest, it was in its day the most excellent fancy of many young men and it bore my youthful dreams upon its back a thousand times. It had, I thought, no right to be among the living when so many other, better, vehicles of its era were consigned to their graves, rotting away in fields, pulled apart for their components or crushed, shredded and melted wholesale back into their base elements. Why then, knowing through the clarifying lens of history the terrible truth about the trouble that lurked beneath its slick sheet metal, did its unexpected appearance stir a long-forgotten longing in my heart?

“May you live,” So goes the Chinese curse, “in interesting times.” Now well into my 40s, I can tell you that the times, especially from an automotive standpoint, have indeed been interesting. Waxing less rhapsodic, there has been a whole lot of suck built in the last four decades but the awful truth is that some of those cars still set my heart aflutter. I’m not sure what the attraction is, honestly. Is it the curve of a fender, the sweep of a windshield, or is it the fact that just seeing one sends me back to a more innocent time in my life when many of these cars were aspirational? I don’t know.

20/20 hindsight tells me many of these cars lack power and have an unacceptably high level of fuel consumption. They lack most real, modern safety equipment. They lack build quality, hell most of them came off the assembly line with issues, but I still fantasize about them. Crazy as it may seem, the following are “bad cars” that I would like to own –

Pontiac Grand Prix GTP

It’s hard to tell people today what a breath of fresh air the 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix was. It looked clean and its plastic body cladding accentuated just the right spots, making the car look wide and muscular. Door handles up on the door frame seemed like a real innovation as well and the interior, complete with buttons on the steering wheel and various switches mounted on the gauge cowl made feel like you were sitting in a rocketship. In GTP trim, the V6 produced more than 200 horsepower and could be had with an automatic or a stick. Frankly, I thought these cars looked great back in the day, and I think they look pretty darn good today, too.

Chrysler LeBaron Turbo, Coupe

When Kitty changed her name to Karen and traded her MG for a white Chrylser LeBaron, this is the one the she got. With their long hood line and short rear deck lids, the mid to late 80s Chrysler LeBarons are still, in my opinion, one of the best looking cars ever. By 1990 a V6 had been added to the mix, but I am a Chrysler Turbo guy and that would be my first choice. I understand that the 148 horsepower turbo could also be ordered with a 5 speed manual, but I have never seen one in person. Inside they are “budget plush” and they don’t come anywhere equaling the interior design and build quality of a modern sub compact like the new Dart, but they were functional and comfortable enough for long trips. Many convertible LeBarons have survived into the present day and I even see them offered occasionally on the Buffalo area Craigslist at reasonable prices, but my preference is for the coupe.

Jaguar XJS- V12

When I was a kid I used to stay up past my bed time and watch a British TV show called “The New Avengers.” I don’t remember much about it, but one thing that has stuck in my mind was the car used in the show, a pre-production Jaguar XJS-V12. They have terrible reputations, I know, but that classic shape, the hand built interiors and the idea of 12 cylinders under the hood stills sets my heart aflutter. I would love to own one of these, providing I could find one in good condition and then not have to rely upon it. As usual, my inclination is to avoid the convertible and stick with the coupe.

So there you have it, three “bad cars” that I would still love to own. Don’t try to talk me out of it, love is a funny thing. Fortunately, I am in a committed relationship so I won’t be sticking my key in crazy anytime soon. Tell me though, validate my unexpected rush of emotion and tell us about the cars that bring out your own psycho love.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Honmoku street is a wide, tree lined avenue that bends through the southern “Naka” district of the city of Yokohama. Close by sits the massive port, the gateway through which so much of Japan’s industrial output is sent to the world, its tall cranes working ceaselessly and with no regard for human concerns like the time of day. Above it all the Yokohama Bay Bridge soars like a vision, lifting cars and trucks across the entrance to the harbor as effortlessly as it straddles the line between art and infrastructure. Although the massive bridge and its double decked feeder highways encircle the entire district, the sense one has on the ground is of open space and nature, rarities in the second largest city in Japan. In the midst of it all sits the classic American Hot-Rod shop, Mooneyes.

Mooneyes is legendary among car guys. Its iconic eyes have adorned the sides of race cars and hot-rods since Dean Moon started the company in a small garage behind his father’s Norwalk, California café in 1950. An avid car guy, Dean Moon was heavily involved in the local drag and dry lake bed racing scenes in California as they gained momentum through the 1950s and 60s and his sense of innovation and style helped shape the nascent “hot rod” culture as it was emerging. Many of his stylistic innovations, things like spun aluminum disc wheel covers and the foot-shaped gas pedal are must-have items on any period correct classic hot-rod.

When Dean Moon passed away in the late 1980s, the company took a brief break and then stopped work altogether after the passing of his wife a few years later. In the early 1990s, Moon family friend Shige Suganuma, a long time dealer of Moon Products in Japan, reformed the company as Mooneyes USA. The US Branch of the company continues Dean Moon’s work at the shop’s location since the early 1960s, 10820 S Norwalk Blvd, Santa Fe Springs, CA where, according to the Mooneyes website, visitors are welcome and where there will be an open house from 9:00AM to 3:00 PM on Saturday July 13, 2013.

The subject of this article, Mooneyes’ Japanese location, is a place worth checking out. It combines a full service hot rod shop with a parts store, gift and novelty shop and an American 1960s style café complete with oversized hamburgers, milk shakes and apple pie. At night, its neon lights beckon you forward with a welcoming glow, and a row of classic cars, both American and Japanese, stand ready for inspection as they await just the right person to take them home. After a hard day’s struggle with the Japanese language and culture, stepping inside feels a lot like coming home to a better, vanishing America where the cars are cool, the gas is cheap and where no one counts calories.

Out back, rows of cars sit ready for the full hotrod treatment. During my time in Yokohama, I noted the progress of these cars on my way to and from work as they arrived in the rearmost parking lot in various states of disuse and decay and then moved to the area behind the garage from where they eventually disappeared into the shop for weeks or days before turning up refreshed, renewed and reformed for sale at the front of the building. My favorites were always the classic Japanese iron, the most common of which were variants of the Toyota Crown, including sedans, station wagons and even an El Camino-like trucklet. Some of these ended up as beautiful restorations, others as slick looking hot-rods and still others as mechanically solid rat-rods. All of them were appealing.

With Mooneyes just a block from my apartment, the whole area was frequently awash with car culture and excitement. Mooneyes is the sponsor of many great events, including hot rod and chopper shows that draw cars from all over Japan and visitors from all over the world. As of this writing, upcoming events include the “All Trucks Morning Cruise” on April 14th at Honmoku Hilltop Park, and a Hot Rod Cruise Night at their Honmoku Shop the evening of April 27th. More information is available in English and Japanese at www.mooneyes.co.jp

It can be hard for a foreigner to break into Japanese culture and make friends, but I have found that cool cars and fast motorcycles are a good way to break the ice. If you are ever in Japan, take the time to head out to Mooneyes’ shop in Honmoku, Yokohama. Grab a hamburger, get the T-shirt and take the time to talk to some of the people you meet there. You will return home happy, full and refreshed. The car culture that Dean Moon helped to start so long ago and so far away conquers all.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Dodge Charger

They say that you don’t regret the things you do as much as you regret the things don’t do. I hope the auto manufacturers are listening, because when I look at so many of the fantastic looking four door sedans on the market today, I feel a sense of regret for what they aren’t doing, namely making two door coupes. I know there are financial considerations, probably tens of millions of dollars worth, at work behind the scenes. I understand, too, that there are likely to be engineering challenges and any number of other issues that a simple layman like myself can never really understand, but the fact that there are no really cool coupe versions of today’s hot sedans gnaws at me.

Thank God for artists like Casey Shain, a man of considerable talent who, like many of us, believes that today’s cars can be better. Unlike most of us, however, he has the talent and the ability to turn his thoughts into artistic reality. His website artandcolourcars.blogspot.com showcases his digitally altered “fake” cars and his love of all things automotive. It is filled with images that rival those of any professional design studio and I highly recommend checking it out. If you are anything like me, you will spend hours there.

Like so many of us, from the time he was a child Casey dreamed about designing cars. Instead, he earned a bachelor of arts from Vassar College and worked as a designer in the publishing industry for more than thirty years. These days he is a freelance book designer and a professional “starving artist,” but he spends much of his free time working with Photoshop and pretending to live that childhood dream. He says, “I’m the same doodler as when I was a child, only now my crayons are digital.”

Casey’s cars may not be real in the sense that they are made out of rubber, plastic and steel, but the detailed images he creates certainly have a life of their own. As a kid who grew up spending hours in front of the fire looking at the Sears Christmas catalog, I know there is a great deal of joy to be had simply looking at pictures and dreaming about the possibilities. Still, I hope that one day someone turns these ideas into reality. Come on car companies, don’t wonder “what if” – take a chance!

View more of Casey Shain’s work here: Casey Shain Car Photochops at Pintrest

Buick Verano “Skylark Hot Hatch”

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

If you have a spare four minutes and four seconds (plus time for the commercial) take the time to check out the following discussion over at Bloomberg.com. As a layman, I find these kind of discussions very interesting and would like to hear the best and the brightest, many of whom I know to be connected with auto industry, give a little perspective to what seems to me to be a very shallow look on the subject of modern car design.

The active premise of the Bloomberg piece is that American car design lost its way in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, and is now beginning to return to its former glory. There is no doubt in my mind that improvements automotive technology have ushered in a golden age of performance, dependability and longevity, but I am left feeling cold when I hear people talking about how superior the “new designs,” are to the ones that came before.

There were some fantastic designs in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and when I look back at the clean, classic lines of many of those cars I miss the days when designers used a straight edge as a part of their work. The Chevrolet Vega and Monza, while mechanically problem prone, are still wonderful looking little cars that have aged quite gracefully. The mid 80s Fox Body Mustangs, shown in the piece alongside both previous and later versions, look especially good to my eye. Of course you already know my thoughts on the Chrysler LH cars of the 1990s – I like them so much I put my money where my mouth is and have a 300M Special in my driveway.

My take is that there were some damn good designs in the eras these people are deriding. Sure there were some uninteresting and even outlandish designs too, but that doesn’t mean that designers have spent the last 30 years sleeping on the job. They were trying new things and some of those really worked. So, tell us now, what are your favorite cars from the much derided ’70s, ’80s and ’90s?

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The California state DMV is offering motorists the chance to step back in time and order new license plates in historic color combinations.

Your choices are black letters on a yellow background, yellow letters on a black background (the famous original black plates often found on California barn finds) and, my favorite – the color combination synonymous with the 1970s, Disco, leisure suits and “CHiPs,” – yellow letters on a blue background.

The program requires a minimum of 7500 paid pre-orders prior to January 1, 2015, but the DMV’s information states that, once that magic number of has been hit, the program will begin immediately so the wait for your new plates may be substantially less than it first appears. The best news is that you don’t have to own a classic car to get that classic look. But it helps!

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/legacyplates/index.htm

I’m not a reporter. I don’t even pretend to be one. What I do is tell stories and sometimes, if I am fortunate, they resonate with people. So when guy name Joe here in Buffalo contacted me and offered me a ride in his 1995 Lotus Esprit I was torn. Naturally, I wanted a ride, who wouldn’t? Still, I had to tell him up-front that I didn’t know if that a ride would generate a story good enough for the illustrious readership here at TTAC. Luckily for me, he invited me over anyhow and I got my ride, but in the end it turns out I was right. A ride, no matter how exhilarating, really wasn’t enough for me to create an entire story. That’s fortunate though, because Joe’s story about his almost lifelong connection to this one specific car is better than anything I could have invented.

To an ordinary guy like myself, the Lotus Esprit is one of those legendary cars that only live in posters on the walls of kids’ bedrooms. It is a low wedge of a car built for speed and handling and the car I found waiting for me in the driveway next to Joe’s house looked painfully out-of-place in the working class Buffalo neighborhood. The fact that it occupied a space next to a Renault Alliance, Motor Trend’s Car of the Year back in 1983, blew my mind, but the truth is that both cars are perfectly representative of the amazing person that their owner is. The Lotus is what Joe aspired to when he was a child and the Renault is where he comes from. The fact that he has both says something good about the man.

The car was low and difficult for me to clamber into, but once inside it felt surprisingly roomy and comfortable. The engine behind me hummed with pure energy as Joe put the car out onto the main road near his house, the pop off valve hissing impressively every time he switched gears. “This is one of those cars that gets a bad rep,” said Joe, “I don’t think that reputation is deserved though. A lot of guys take them out, flog them before they get fully warmed up, don’t rev match when they downshift and they generally beat on them. It’s a hand-built car, after all, I mean back in 1995 they only built 46 of them. TThese things need a little more TLC than your average sports car, but they are damn good cars” We continued up the rutted street, Joe using the car’s superior handling to dodge manhole covers and, as we drove, Joe’s amazing story trickled out.

When he was a kid, Joe was fascinated with the Esprit. He studied the specs in the magazines, read about them in books, admired them in film and photo and decided that one day he would own one. So intense was his desire that as a 14 year old riding with his mother, when he saw one on the road he forced her to turn around and chase after it. “I believe in the code of exotic car ownership, “Joe told me as he grabbed third gear, “One of the rules is that when kids come up and ask about your car that you encourage their interest. I know exactly what that means.“ The owner, it turned out was of a similar opinion and he encouraged the boy’s interest. The two soon became friends.

Eventually the cost of speeding tickets and insurance became too much and Joe’s friend sold the Lotus. Joe mourned the loss of the car, but continued his friendship. Flash forward almost a decade when Joe, a recent college graduate, decided to make his lifelong dream of Esprit ownership come true. “I got on-line and looked at dozens of ads for used cars.” He told me, “I knew exactly what I wanted, a 95 Esprit S4 like my friend’s and it took a long time to find one. On the very last page of the classifieds I finally found the perfect one. It was in Texas but I knew right away that this was the car. There was only one made in this color combination, it was my friend’s – the same Esprit I first saw when I was 14.” Joe contacted his friend and flew him out to Texas to check out the car. It turned out his suspicions were right. “I sent a check and had my friend drive it back to Buffalo. I have had it ever since and I’ll never sell it.”

As we headed home we passed an old steel mill, now shuttered and dark. “My dad worked In that building for 38 years.” Joe said over the growl of the super car’s engine. “Buffalo is changing and those changes have taken a lot of jobs with them. This town has been on a downward spiral for a lot of years but I think we’re past the worst of it, though.” He said hopefully, “The industry is gone but the people have always been what made this town special. They still do, Buffalo is the city of good neighbors, you know?”

Back at home the Lotus slipped into its spot next to its polar opposite, the battered Renault. “I always wanted this,” said Joe from the seat of the Lotus, “But I grew up in that.” He said waving to the small car. “My dad was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and I got that so we have something to work on together when he gets better. I had to spend a lot of time finding one like he had, but I finally got it. I think we’re going to have a good time with it.”

The childhood dreams that most of us have fade away over the years as we grow into adulthood so it’s nice to know that sometimes people make those dreams a reality. It’s nicer still, to know someone who lives those dreams but remains firmly grounded. Joe knows who he is, where he is from and what is really important in life. It was my honor to meet him and to tell some of his story. That’s all I can do, I hope it resonates.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The best science fiction tells human stories set against a backdrop of strange worlds or futuristic cities. Because pacing and plot are more important than lengthy, accurate descriptions of the technology at work in those worlds, most sci-fi writers don’t spend a lot of time on the various machines their protagonists use. We might know that our hero traveled in a shiny aluminum air car, but the details generally are left to our imagination.

Fortunately for those of us who want a real peek into the future, film is a visual medium. The best directors know that set and prop design are critical to the tone of a movie and that machines can be as important as the action. They pay a lot of attention to getting just the right look and, even though we may not get to open the hood on that futuristic air car, we definitely get to see it at work, get a feel for its lines and even some idea of how it handles. If they do their job right, we might even believe these vehicle could be real.

The following are, in this author’s opinion, some of sci-fi’s finest.

Korben Dallas’ Taxi from “The Fifth Element.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

In our mind’s eye we usually think of the future as a bright shining place free of dirt and disease. The Fifth Element gives us vision of the future in which the world is as dirty and well worn as an old shoe. The cars in the film reflect this by being futuristic flying vehicles, but with design elements taken straight from the cars of our own yesteryear.

Korben Dallas’ taxi’s huge grill, sweeping fenders and fins hark back to the late 1940s and immediately let us know that this car is old and out of date. Although the technology at work is light years ahead of where we are today, the car is obviously a tired, overworked machine that would look perfectly at home along side any of the tired, overworked machines on the bad streets of New York today. It is at once futuristic and believable, normal yet totally over the top. For the sheer audacity of its design, Korben Dallas’ taxi must be ranked high among the best cars of sci-fi.

The “Spinner” from “Blade Runner.”

Blade Runner is another vision in which the future may not be a better and brighter place. In the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” the world is a fully fleshed out disaster in which humanity struggles relentlessly along while living amid the aftermath of World War Terminus. A lot of that back story is lost in the Ridley Scott movie and the viewer is thrown into a confusing future society complete with flying cars and robotic “replicants” almost indistinguishable from, and in some cases maybe even more human, than the people they are supposed to serve.

In his book, Philip K. Dick takes little notice of the vehicles Rick Decker and the other bounty hunters use, but the movie is a visual feast and no expense was spared. The Police “Spinners” used in the film are one of the iconic cars of sci-fi and they seem quite plausible designs. Their tires show that they would work well on the road yet they fly with equal ease. Their large glass cockpits are similar to the ones found in modern helicopters and look as though they would give their operators a good field of vision. What I like best about them is that they seem like regular workaday vehicles that could be at work on any police force in the world today. It is this touch of reality that makes me rank the “Spinner” among the best cars of sci-fi.

The “S.H.A.D.O.” cars from the TV series “U.F.O.”

Gerry Anderson had a huge effect on television sci-fi. Beginning in the 1950s his supermarionation hits including “Stingray” “Captain Scarlett and the Mysterions” and “The Thunderbirds” gave millions of kids a look at the future. By the 1970s, Gerry Anderson was producing movies and live action TV sci fi like “Space 1999” and “U.F.O” and his shows included full size working props along with the superior model-base special effects for which his shows are best known.

Two working cars, known to fans as the “Straker “ and “Foster” cars, were built out of aluminum on the chassis of the English Ford Zephyr Mk 4 and used in Anderson’s first live action movie “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun” and later in his series “U.F.O.” Angular and futuristic with gull wing doors, these cars are a very 1960’s version of the future and they have not aged particularly well. Still, because they were seen and obsessed over by millions of young sci-fi fans they must be counted among the important cars of sci-fi.

The “Cricket” from “A.I.”

The movie A.I. is not one of my favorites. Sorry, I wanted to like it but it comes off as a weird dystopian utopia and I think it sends mixed messages. Do we love technology or don’t we? What if that technology loves us? It’s gut wrenching in a way that makes me both glad and sad that I sat through it.

One thing this move does very well is give us a real vision of what our future may be. It is a better and brighter place, but it is not outside of the human condition. In the end, it is humanity’s own frailty and our inability to really understand how we should relate to the rapidly emerging computerized intelligence around us that that makes this vision of the future miserable. In short, the message is that people are jerks. Got that? Yeah, totally a chick flick.

The car, ‘The Cricket” seen in the film strikes me as the kind of car we might actually see on the road one of these days. Bright, light, futuristic and with convenient sliding doors rather than impossible to use in a parking garage gull-wings, the car looks like something you average suburban mom would drive. To be honest, I think it looks cool. Hell, paint it red and add a racing stripe and I’d drive it. It is because this car seems so realistic, without resorting to blatant product placement like some other movie cars (looking at you Lexus and Audi!) that I consider this one of the great cars of sci-fi.

Bonus – The “Landmaster” from “Damnation Alley.”

Sometimes the future sucks and when that happens you need something like the Landmaster to take you, your hippy wannabe Peacenik former subordinate and a couple of oddballs you find along the way to a better, happier place on the other side of the continent. When this movie was released in 1977, aka the middle of the cold war, wasn’t so much sci-fi as it was a vision of what might happen next week. Still, it was good fun and the Landmaster is awesome.

In the film, the Landmaster is portrayed as being constructed out of ordinary truck parts in order to facilitate repairs in the post apocalyptic world. It turns out that this is also a pretty accurate description of the real thing, too. The prop, built for the film cost of around $300K, used a Ford 427 CID industrial engine, the rear ends from two large trucks and an Allison truck transmission. The most unique feature of the vehicle, its drive wheels, are all fully functional and work shown as in the movie. The truck is said to have survived a 25 foot jump during testing with no damage. Because we are men, the Landmaster must be included in any list of the top Sci-Fi vehicles.

I know there are other vehicles out there, feel free to add your own. Just for reference, although I did select several model cars for this article, I purposely chose not to use any cartoon vehicles. If you know of other vehicles that you think need to be added, please add them. And now – to the comments!

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The salesman must have thought I was nuts. I could hear the incredulous tone in his voice, “Some guy calling from Okinawa wants to buy a used car that we put on Craigslist? When does he want to come and look at it? He doesn’t? How’s he going to pick it up? He isn’t?” Fortunately for the both of us, money talks.

By the spring of 2010 I had spent six straight years in Japan and I was worn out. Although I wasn’t exactly eager to return to the United States, whether I wanted to believe it or not, it really was time for a change of scenery and the closer my departure came, the more comfortable I became with the idea. A return to the United States meant a lot of good things, I realized. My wife would get to experience life in the land of the free and my kids would get to hear someone other than their dad speak English for a change. It would also be a return to live football games on TV, real bologna sandwiches and, best of all, I might even get the chance to own a cool car again.

As soon as the thought entered my mind, I knew what I wanted, a great American sedan. I spent a lot of time hemming and hawing about the various ones on the market but, when the time came for me to put my money where my mouth was, reality reasserted itself and took control of the situation. As an auto enthusiast, I’d like to say that I refused to settle, but the truth is a couple of my dream cars went out the window, foremost among them the Pontiac Bonneville GXP I had long dreamed about. Then an old memory tickled the back of my skull, what about the 300M?

From the days of the Eagle Vision, I have been a sucker for the LHS cars. Now, of course, I know that some of them have transmission issues, but from the day photos of the Eagle Vision hit the magazine stand those cars have featured large in my own personal vision of the future. Each iteration of the design, the New Yorker, the LHS and eventually the 300M represented another step towards a better, brighter tomorrow. So the 300M really didn’t have 300 horsepower? It looked so good to me that it didn’t matter.

With my departure from Japan just a month away, there was no time to be lost. After reading as many old road tests as I could, I set down a list of requirements so thorough it resembled the build sheet for a brand new car. I chose the 300M Special, a slightly sporty variant of the already good-looking 300M that featured a few more horsepower, fake carbon fiber interior trim, special body work, lower stance and special wheels. I decided too that I wanted the white/grey two-tone interior, a sun roof and all the other options. Finally, I decided that it had to have less than 70K miles and be in perfect condition.

Thanks to the internet, I had a whole world of 300Ms at my finger tips. Thanks to my list of demands, I had very few choices. I found a nice black one in Salt Lake City that looked like it met the criteria, but it was sold when I called. A gorgeous blue one in Sandusky Ohio was long gone, too. Eventually, thanks to a Craigslist search aggregator, I found a dark grey 300M in Tucson, AZ. This time when I called it was still there.
The salesman was shocked, but when I told him I was a cash buyer he jumped at the chance to sell a car. He sent me dozens of pictures and promised me, under threat of a major beat down, that the car was in great condition. From half a world away I held my breath, took the plunge and bought the car sight unseen. Then I had to get it up to Seattle.

Fortunately, I am from a big family and my older sister Connie needed a vacation. For the price of a one-way ticket to Tucson and a few dollars pocket money I was able to solve that problem. I watched her progress via Facebook as she picked-up the car and then headed across the high deserts of the American Southwest, then Northward through California, with a stop to visit the wine country, Oregon and finally Washington state. When I arrived at the airport two weeks later, Connie was there to meet me and the big Chrysler was waiting for me in the airport garage. It was a thrill to step right off an airplane and slide right behind the wheel.

The car was and still is immaculate. I used it to travel from my home north of Seattle across the country to my new assignment in Buffalo. Later I used it for a trip to New Hampshire and another trip to Washington DC. It has, thanks to the birth of my third child and the subsequent purchase of a mini-van for my wife, slipped from daily driver status but considering the winter road conditions here in Buffalo, that isn’t a bad thing. Even now it sits hunkered down safe and snug under its cover and a layer of early spring snow in my driveway. I may have had to move heaven and Earth to get it, but it was worth coming home for.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

My wife with the Oldsmobile at Storm Lake, WA

Nobody likes to think about the passing of a parent. When it happens it leaves you with a lot of different feelings, sadness, emptiness, loneliness and even, if your parent has been effected by a long illness or a prolonged decline, an unexpected sense of relief and completion. The grieving process is different for everyone, the legal process isn’t. Within a few days of your parent’s passing, the division of assets, property and cherished mementos begins to grind relentlessly forward. If your family gets along well, who gets what is generally handled gracefully and your relationships are actually strengthened by the process. So it was with my family and, since I was the only “car guy” among my brothers and sisters, it was a foregone conclusion that I would get my father’s Oldsmobile.

Despite George Orwell’s dire prediction, 1984 was a pretty good year. Sure the economy was tough, but America felt like it was on the rebound and the music was generally good. It was the year I graduated from high school and it was also the year my father purchased a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It was a lovely little car in a stately gray color with good-looking Oldsmobile Rallye wheels shod with white wall tires. My father was a working class guy, a telephone man, and he understood what made a car reliable over the long haul. More stuff meant more opportunities for a car to break, so he passed over the optional V8 and chose a car with the Buick V6. He also skipped the landau top, leather seats, power windows and all the other upscale options. Still, the car never felt like it was missing anything, it was simply beautiful.

Over the next decade the Oldsmobile saw a lot of light duty. It made a few cross-country trips but spent most of its time under a cover in the garage waiting for Sunday morning trips to church. By the time cancer finally overtook my father in the early 90s, the little Olds had just 60K miles. My mom, who had never been a driver, let the car sit for months until she finally worked up the courage to take a driving course. Once she got her license, the Olds went back on the road, but even so my mom stayed close to home and over the next few years the car continued to see limited use.

Upon my return from Japan in 2001, I purchased a well-worn 200SX Turbo. Later, when I got a job on the other side of the country, my mother stepped up and offered me the Oldsmobile. I was thrilled to get it. The car still turned a lot of heads and it drove out well too. It was the perfect car to take across country and in March of 2002 I took it to Washington DC, but when I was sent overseas in July of that year I faced a hard choice. I really didn’t make sense to hang on to the car, but at the same time it was a tangible link to my father. It just seemed wrong to sell, so I stored it instead.

My Son Harley and me with my father’s oldsmobile

In July of 2004, I returned to the United States and my wife and I took the car back across the country. It was a great trip. We came up to Niagara Falls then drove across to Michigan where we boarded the SS Badger for a trip across the lake. A couple of days later we spent the night in Wall South Dakota, a place I always stop at on my cross-country journeys, and then headed to see Mt. Rushmore. Then it was on to Yellowstone where we had reservations at the Old Faithful Inn and finally, after a couple of days in the park, we headed home to Seattle. Three weeks after that, the car was back in storage and I was on my way to Japan.

After two years in Japan I made another lengthy trip home and I decided that I should finally go ahead and get rid of the Olds. It was a hard decision but the long periods of storage were not good for the old car, I knew. When my two years old son in tow, we went up to the storage unit, prepped the car and brought it home. We had a nice month with the old car and took a lot of pictures. It was important to get a lot of photos with the car and my son Harley, who is named after my father. At the end of the trip, rather than return it to storage, I passed the car on to my twenty-something nephew who was just starting a family of his own.

I suppose I should have known that the car would be more of a burden to him than it was an asset. He did use it to carry around his wife and baby for a while, but when he hit a period of extended unemployment, he decided to sell it. I was, and still am disappointed. Over the years I had spent thousands of dollars in storage and maintenance fees on the old car and all that was gone in an instant. My father, however, would have approved. He was, after all, a pragmatist and no piece of property, no matter how many good memories were associated with it, would have stood between him and supporting his family.

Owing the car for as long as I did was like a final gift from my father. Letting it go was hard, but with it also came a sense of relief and completion. As it turns out, too, the money that my nephew got for it went to purchase a set of tools required to start a new job – as a telephone man just like his grandpa. Maybe that’s the happy ending I needed.

Thomas M Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The Lake Michigan Car Ferry website is reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency and the operators of the Lake Michigan car ferry, the SS Badger, which runs between Ludington MI and Manitowoc, WI, have reached and agreement that will allow the historic steamship to continue operating. The Badger is one of the last coal fired vessels operating commercially on the great lakes and its continued operation means millions of trade and tourist dollars for the region it serves. During the summer months, the 6650 ton vessel makes two round trip crossings per day and can carry 600 passengers and up to 180 automobiles.

The SS Badger’s future was cast into uncertainty when the ship’s permit to dump coal ash into the waters of Lake Michigan, something that was common when the ship was constructed in the early 1950s, expired in December of last year. The current agreement allows the company to continue dumping ash into the lake with a 15% reduction for the next two years while constructing a containment system that must be in place by January 1, 2015. After that date, no more ash can be dumped overboard.

Yours truly made the Ludington to Manitowoc crossing in the summer of 2004 and had a wonderful time. Having spent around 5 years as an engineer on large, oil fired steamships in the Pacific, I was excited when, planning a cross country trip, I discovered the ferry service. Instead of driving south through the maelstrom that is Chicago area traffic, I cut across bucolic upstate Michigan and made a leisurely passage in fine weather. Like many other fans of the SS Badger, I am thrilled that this historic old vessel will continue sailing into the foreseeable future.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Hard to believe someone like me would need a rich fantasy life, isn’t it?

If you haven’t guessed it by now, I love cars and like a lot of people I spend a lot of time thinking about the ones I might like to own. My daydreams live in an odd place, they don’t run towards the higher plane of pure fantasy where the Ferrari and Lamborghini live, and, despite the fact I expect to be buying a new minivan or SUV in the next couple of years, they don’t run to the purely practical, either. No, my fantasies live in that middle place. A place where the cars are interesting and, as unlikely as a purchase may be, still attainable.

I am forever perusing Craigslist and the other on-line classifieds for likely subjects and it has become something of a game with me. Naturally, I wondered if you might like to play along.

The rules of the game are simple. You have a total budget of $5000. You must purchase the car, get it to home and roadworthy for under that amount. Expenses include basic repairs and rebuilds, but just the essentials to get the car roadworthy no new paint jobs or total restorations necessary. If the car is further away than 250 miles (500 miles round trip) then the cost of an overnight motel stay and/or truck transport must be covered in your budget. Because they vary from state to state and would give some players an unfair advantage, don’t worry about fixed costs like tax, licensing or basic inspection fees unless the ad specifically states that the car will need special repairs in order to pass an inspection.

You can find your car from any public source, and links will be appreciated by everyone, I am sure. In the interest of fair play don’t tell us about cars that only you can buy. So if your grandma isn’t willing to make everyone a killer deal on her 1986 Grand National, then you can’t use it here. Also, just to keep things fresh and attainable, let’s not consider ads older than 30 days.

Finally, please also give us some insight into your thoughts. We would all like to understand your logic so we can better make fun of your odd predilections.

I’ll go first. Here are three that I have chosen to start the conversation. They appear in no special order.

1994 Subaru SVX Coupe – $2,850 OBO (Hamburg, NY)

AWD Coupe LSI model. Boxer 3.3 6 cyl 230 horsepower Approx 120,900miles

Automatic, Moon-roof, Dual exhaust, Power windows/locks/mirrors/power driver seat, Leather seats good condition. Also has new battery, breaks, power steering, timing belt, axel shafts, motor is phenomenal/very reliable vehicle all the way around! Some rust on doors as can be expected with its age. Starts right up.

This Subaru sits less than 30 miles from my house. It is well under my budget and it is a model I have been interested in since I saw one on the street in Japan back when they were new. They look cool and the performance numbers seem decent. The downside is that I don’t know much about them and I am not really all that excited about a sporty car with an automatic transmission.

I understand that Subarus have a tendency to be complex and fragile. This car is an odd ball and I am sure parts would be tough to get. Still, the price seems right and I have never been inside of one. I would, at least, go look at it.

1987 Dodge Daytona Shelby Z – $4500 (Pittsburgh, PA)

Clean Daytona Shelby Z. Turbo, 4 cyl, 5 speed, AC, 71k miles, perfect seats, good tires, fires right up, etc. NO rust! Just needs a battery and inspection.

It’s no secret that I am a sucker for Turbo Dodges, but the truth is that the Daytona rarely makes it onto my short list. To be honest, I have always thought they were a little overwrought and tried too hard to look like the Chevrolet Camaro of that era. This little car, however, jumped right out at me as a killer deal. If it is as clean as it looks in the pictures, I am confident that I could travel the 180 miles to Pittsburgh, drop in a battery and drive it right home.

Bonus points that this is a real live turbo Dodge with the manual transmission. There are more pics on the ad, including several interior shots, of which I have added just one, below. The inside looks just as pretty as the outside, don’t you think? I always wonder about cars like this, it’s 26 years old, why wasn’t it used? If it was here in town, I would be over there like a shot.

The only downside to this car that I can see is that it was right about 75K miles that the head gasket in my Turbo Shadow let loose. I would be worried that I could be stuck doing one on this car before too long as well. That said, I have a lot of experience working on these cars and I know that I could do the work by myself. Still, at $4500 this is close enough to my ceiling that I would be a little worried about my budget. Also, I would almost be ashamed to bring it up to Buffalo and expose it to the elements.

1981 DATSUN 280ZX 5 SPEED – $4300 (Ogden, NY)

1981 DATSUN 280ZX. 5 SPEED, 6 CYL, One Owner, 98,300 Original Miles, No Winters, Great Condition ~ $4300.00 ~ OFFERS WELCOME ~

Wow! No, seriously, Wow! This is a drop dead gorgeous little Datsun. It looks pretty nice in the photos and other than a cracked arm rest I don’t see a single problem here. Sure, it’s not a 240Z and it isn’t a turbo or a Special Anniversary Edition, but it is a head turner in a stunning color I haven’t seen in a long, long time. I love the fact it’s a stick.

This little girl sits less than 60 miles from me right now. If it was closer, I’d go over to take photos and maybe finagle a test drive. Man, my wife would be mad at me if that came home. It would be hard to tell the seller “no” though.

OK, you’ve seen my three choices. I could sit here a lot longer looking for obscure deals but if I did that I would never get to see what you come up with. Let’s have some fun!

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The Seattle area traffic was light. A few hours earlier, at the peak of the Friday night rush hour, Interstate 405 had been bumper to bumper. Now, just after 7 PM, the road was crowded but moving freely. I had a killer commute, 40 miles each way, and I was thankful I had missed the worst of it. I spent a lot of time on the road and I understood how traffic ebbed and flowed in that same intuitive way that way someone who works on a river understands how a ripple on the otherwise smooth surface betrays the roiling currents in the depths below. On a Friday night like this, for example, I knew I was behind the great outward rush from the urban centers and into suburbs and just ahead of the second, smaller rush of people from the suburbs heading back into the city for an evening of food, fun and friends. To the west, the sun was sinking slowly into the Pacific while on the Earth, the hunt was on…

It was a good time to be out and about, the night was young and full of untapped excitement. I knew anything could happen as I headed south out of Kirkland, through the city of Bellevue and made the gentle ascent through the tunnel and up towards the I-90 interchange just south of the city. Once past the interchange, I had a good view of Lake Washington and the exclusive properties on Mercer Island on my right, and I began to slowly work my way down the hill towards Renton, still some miles to the south.

With Bellevue and the last big freeway interchange behind me, traffic was moving faster and spreading out. I was in the fast lane and my little red Dodge Shadow was running effortlessly along in 5th gear at just above the posted limit when a motion in my rearview mirror caught my eye. I read the scene with a practiced eye: A big Jaguar sedan weaving quickly through the already fast-moving traffic, overtaking car after car, its dark shape slipping stealthily up behind me. The driver was obviously having fun among the other, lesser cars and as he pulled alongside I glanced over to size him up.

He was a handsome man in his early thirties, clear-eyed, perfect hair and with jaw carved out of pure granite set with, I was certain, perfect, white teeth. Beside him sat a woman of equal beauty perhaps a year or two younger while another equally handsome couple occupied the back seats. They were all well dressed, both men in expensive looking suits and the women in fancy dresses with carefully coiffed hair. The car itself was a black XJ sedan and it showed a 6 liter V8 emblem on its back. It was a big, powerful and classy car, the perfect choice for the perfect man with the perfect life.

I pulled the Shadow out of 5th gear, zapped the throttle and stuffed the shifter straight into 3rd . The little engine roared in instant anger and the boost gauge swung hard right burying itself against the pin. The Shadow leapt forward, slamming me into the seat, and in a split second I was back alongside the big sedan. Surprised, the handsome, perfect man behind the wheel of the Jag glanced over at me and then tossed back his head and smiled as he said something to the others in the car. The lovely woman in the passenger seat tittered airily as she brought her hand up to her lips. I had seen enough, I mashed the gas.

The Shadow jumped forward and opened a lead of about two car lengths as its 2.2 liter 4 cylinder raced towards the red line. I quick shifted into fourth and pegged the throttle again as the Jag shot forward and made up the gap while my boost momentarily dropped with my RPMs. The road wound out in front of us, the two lanes of the interstate twisting as they made their way past the Coal Creek Parkway and down towards the May Creek exit at the bottom of the hill. We stayed there, stuck to one another, door handle to door handle as our speed climbed quickly into triple digits. Onward we went, the little 2.2 liter engine in my Shadow revving hard as I pushed the car for all it was worth. Red line came, then passed as I held it in 4th gear knowing that 5th was a big jump that would drop my revs too much and mean my defeat.

The big Jaguar and my little Shadow were still neck and neck as we hit the bottom of the hill, ran across a brief flat and then began to work our way up the long, steep slope of the Kennydale hill. Beyond the hill lay the city of Renton and its infamous S curves and already I could see traffic slowing as the typical back up on the approach to the city was beginning to build. There was still time to make my competitor stand down, I thought, but with the little car firmly in the red zone I knew it was past time to shift up or blow up. There was no choice and as I made the switch the Jaguar slipped smoothly away from me and up the hill.

I let off the gas and, thanks to the steep slope, my little car began to slow quickly. Traffic was still open enough for me to weave and dodge my way through at a decent clip as I continued to burn off speed without using my brakes while the big Jag had an easier time coasting back down to legal speeds in the car pool lane. We crested the hill and, as we made our way down towards the S curves, I could see a river of ruby-red brake lights growing ever nearer. Traffic slowed to a crawl and then ground to a halt. At the Renton city limits the carpool lane ended and the Jaguar was forced back into the crowded lanes. As luck would have it, we found ourselves stopped next to one another.

The handsome man’s perfect composure was wrecked and he sat there glaring out the windshield, both hands gripping the big car’s wheel so tightly the knuckles were white. A vein on his temple pounded, and the muscles of his magnificent, granite jaw bulged and pulsed as his perfect white teeth ground away at one another. The vision of loveliness in the passenger seat sat stiffly beside the man, arms crossed and her face turned away from him as she stared out the passenger window. The couple in the back seat were a different story altogether. They woman was smiling and laughing with real knee-slapping gusto while her man sat looking at me and my little turbo, the awe plain on his face as he tried to understand just what the hell happened.

Technically, I knew, I had lost the race when I the big Jag had finally used its superior muscle to pull away on the Kennydale hill, but he didn’t know that. To the perfect man, with the perfect girl and the perfect friends in the big, beautiful Jaguar I was the winner. Sometimes, that’s how it goes.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Fong’s Taxi looked just like this.

The container yard stretched out into the distance as far as the eye could see. Next to the ship, three giant cranes worked at a feverish pace, plucking the 40 foot long containers from their racks, lifting them high into the air and depositing them onto one of an endless stream of flat-bed trucks below at a rate of around one every minute. The loaded trucks raced their engines and sped off into the yard where they were met by other machines, immense forklifts, that removed the containers and piled them in stacks six or seven units high. The stacks, numbering in the tens of thousands, merged with one another to form great flat topped mesas of multicolored steel cut by valleys of cement and the industrial landscape rivaled anything that nature could create with stone and water. It was a scene I had looked upon many times and it could have been a container port anywhere in the world. Only the stench of told me it was Kaohsiung Taiwan.

Given the weight of the cargo filled containers, the scale of the equipment and the frenetic pace of the activity below, the opportunity for death at the bottom of the gangway was obvious. But after crossing the Central Pacific by way of Hawaii and Guam, and with a 12 day return run to Seattle looming ahead, there was no way that I, or any other self-respecting sailor, was going to stay aboard ship. If necessary, I would have walked out to the front gate and tried to flag down a ride, but fortunately, the port authority in Kaohsiung understood the situation and allowed a number of taxis into the yard. Sure enough, there at the foot of the gangway waited a battered green taxi owned by a driver we knew as Fong.

Normally there were several taxis on the pier and while each of us had our personal favorite we were united in our disdain for Fong. In retrospect, Fong had to have been smarter than he let on. He spoke fairly fluent English and probably made a good living, but he always seemed like a huckster and a ride with him was an opportunity for him to bombard you with unwanted advice about where you should drink and with whom you should meet. Of course, every driver was in cahoots with one or more of the establishments along Kao-Suing’s version of skid row but when you rode with Fong, no matter where you asked to be dropped, you always found yourself deposited directly in front of his chosen establishment.

I was anxious to get uptown and with no other options in sight, I reluctantly climbed into the passenger seat of the much abused Toyota. We haggled for a minute about the cost of the ride but with the exchange rate firmly on my side I honestly didn’t try too hard. The deal struck, he mashed the gas and we roared off into the night while I was still fumbling around for a seat belt.

Fong handled the car with careless ease, one hand on the column mounted stick shift and the other grabbing a wheel mounted suicide knob. We slowed just barely at the port gate and then rolled out onto a wide, four lane road that ran around the perimeter of the yard and towards the town proper. As we neared the city limits the traffic became a mix of large trucks, cars and small motor scooters all moving along without regard for one another. The sheer number of two wheeled machines on the road was stunning and they flitted about going every which way without any rhyme or reason, their operators seemingly indifferent to their own survival. Fong treated them like obstacles, whipping the wheel as he changed lanes to avoid them and once even ducking into the lane reserved specifically for them to pass a car on the right. I stared in awe at an entire family rolling along on a tired Honda scooter, the father at the controls with a young child between his knees, mother behind him with a baby in her arms and grandmother behind her, facing backwards holding a frightened chicken in a wire cage.

Sort of like this!

At a major intersection, in violation of a red light, Fong made an abrupt right turn without using any brakes and seamlessly merged into the cross traffic. Without checking his mirrors, he guided the car into the fast lane and then, as we approached another red light, suddenly swerved into the oncoming lanes to pass cars slowing for the light. The oncoming cars moved over to facilitate his passage without so much as a honking horn and we shot through the gap along the centerline and drove towards the intersection when the worst happened – two semi trucks moving side by side rounded the corner and headed straight for us. With a line of stopped traffic on our right blocking our escape, Fong shifted the car left and straddled the line in the middle of the two oncoming lanes. The truckers both hit their horns and parted just enough to allow us to shoot down the middle with inches to spare.

Compared to that, the rest of the ride was anticlimactic. Five minutes later we rolled to a stop in front of Fong’s chosen bar and sat there in stunned as I dug out my wallet. “You’re crazy!” I shouted at him. “If you drove like that in America,You would go to jail.”

Fong looked at me incredulously, “That’s not true!” he said earnestly. “I know all about America, we watch American TV.”

I stared back, unbelieving as I paid the fare and climbed out of the car. “It’s true!” He shouted after me as I fled into the night. “I know all about American drivers, I watch The Dukes of Hazzard on TV!”

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

Typical Japanese Highway scene

Total silence is not the kind of thing you expect in Japan. Given the fact that there are almost 130 million people crammed into a country roughly the size of the State of California, only 20% of which is actually habitable, the din of human activity follows you wherever you go. It is an incredibly urban environment, filled with people, heat and activity. Yet when I turned off the engine and stepped out onto the empty road and into the cool stillness of the summer night, I felt like I was the only person in the world.

How I found myself here, on a deserted stretch of road that could barely be considered pavement running between Mie and Shiga prefectures at an ungodly hour is a tale unto itself. It is the saddest kind of story. The kind of story that involves the untimely death of someone who has much life ahead of them. It is a story of despair and the urgent need of a good friend to return home to her parents in their gravest hour. It is a story kindness, friendship and loyalty and, best of all, it features your author coming to the rescue with a magnificent white, twin-turbo steed.

It was about 8 pm, just before closing time, when the call came in. The news was dire, my friend Fumi’s young brother, just 20 years old, had been killed in an accident and she needed to go home to her parents’ immediately. It was a long way to her parents’ home in the country and I knew that in the next few hours the trains would stop running. I imagined her stuck mid-journey on the platform of some isolated station while her parents waited at home alone at a time when they should be surrounded by family. There was no looking away and, fortunately, I could help.

To be honest, despite the situation, I was looking forward to the adventure as I went to retrieve my Supra. Even in the direst of emergencies, a journey across Japan in the dead of night can be sublime. The expressways are ribbons of silky smooth pavement hemmed in by tall curved walls of steel and glass and for much of their length overhead lights shine down and give the scene an ethereal atmosphere. In places, to enhance road safety, the pavement is covered by yellow or red textured surfaces set with tiny pieces of ground glass that reflect the beams of your headlights like a million imitations stars. The other worldly effect is completed by flashing lights set into the pavement on dangerous curves while in other places, pole mounted reflectors use tiny pinwheels spun by the breeze of passing cars to flash their own warnings. The lights, colors and road combine to focus your attention on the road, drawing you into the experience of driving the way a good video game pulls you out of your living room and into the action.

Upon my return to work, however, I discovered that there was, alas, no expressway where we would be going, we would have to go by rural highway. A journey across Japan on a rural highway can be torturous. The roads themselves are awful, frustrating scars on the surface of the Earth that move across the countryside with little concern for directness, speed or efficiency. At night, add to the narrow, often winding roadway the flashing lights of the pachinko parlors, noodle shops and convenience stores, each competing earnestly for your attention, and the glare of coming cars and you will find yourself in the midst of a perfect storm of danger and distraction. The result is sensory overload and an accident always seems just a moment away.

After a trip to Fumi’s apartment so she could collect a few things in an overnight bag, we left Kyoto at about 9:30. The trip can best be described as playing football on a team without a passing game. When the light turned green and the play action started, I came off the line hard and when an opening presented itself, I took. I shucked and jived my way past the blockers, it didn’t matter which way they are going at this point because they are all in my way, and you I went as hard as I could until I was abruptly stopped just a few yards from my last starting point. So it went, moving in fits and starts, until at around 2 AM we reached our goal, exhausted.

Japanese farmhouse

Fumi’s parents home was a small dark farmhouse set in rolling hills. As we pulled up, a light flicked on inside the house and Fumi’s mother emerged. Her eyes were hollow, but she smiled broadly and emitted a stream of polite Japanese as she invited me in for tea on this, the worst night of her life. It was good manners on her part and the feelings were sincere but, as I have come to understand only after years of living with a Japanese woman, the offer was not genuine. Fortunately for everyone involved, the open road was calling me home and I politely refused. As Fumi’s mother gathered up her daughter and guided her back down the dark path and into the house, I turned the Supra around and headed back down the narrow driveway alone. Before heading out onto the road, I stopped and consulted my trusty map book. After a few minutes work, I found that there was what looked to be a better route to the South and I set out through the night to find it.

The Meihan National Highway was toll-free and it turned out that even in the dead of night it was filled with truckers looking to save a buck. Together we blasted along at unsafe speeds, impossibly close to one another. Whenever I slowed the least bit or worked to increase my following distance, the space in front of me was quickly filled with a large truck and soon my exhaustion was exacerbated by my rising anger. The late hour and my frustration began to take a physical toll and exhaustion was setting in. Was nothing in this country easy?

Suddenly, I saw a piece of America glowing ahead: the Golden Arches. They called to me, offering me an island of normality in this strange land, and I left the highway. Fortunately, it was 24 hour restaurant and while I chuffed down hamburger after hamburger I studied my map book for better options. I had come a good distance on the dangerous Meihan and saw that to the North was route 307, I road I knew well from my explorations on my motorcycle. The connection looked good enough on the map, Route 422 over something called Sakura Pass. It was a direct path home and even if it was a little slower, it had to better than the Meihan, I decided. I put away my book, swallowed the last hamburger and headed inland.

Japanese village road

Within a mile of the highway the streetlights ended and the town fell abruptly away. Darkness reigned, the mountains closed in around me and the forest grew thick and impossibly close. Ahead, a raccoon or perhaps a tanuki took offense at my unannounced appearance and glared at me momentarily from the roadside before turning and stalking off into the underbrush. From unseen heights, an owl plummeted from the sky and flashed through the white-hot arc of my headlights and an amazing variety of insects rose up from the ditches and fluttered unsteadily across my path.

My momentum soon slowed to a crawl as the road twisted and rose through the darkness, following what I gathered to be the course of a stream lost somewhere off in the darkness on the other side of the impossibly close guard rail. I noted too that the road was growing narrower, now down to just a single lane in most places with only the occasional turn-out where cars headed in opposite directions might pass one another. Only there were no cars, I was totally on my own now, and still the road climbed.

The road twisted then dipped and suddenly, as I came around a corner, the trees pulled back from the road and I found myself in a small, high mountain meadow. Overhead, the moon shone brightly, casting its silvery light down upon a scene straight out of medieval Japan, a rice field and, in the distance, a small cottage with a thatched roof. Taken aback, I stopped the car, turned off the headlights and killed the engine.

I stepped out onto the empty road and soaked in the sight as the warm cloak of silence wrapped around me. The scene banished the present and I imagined the road as simple dirt track empty of all but the occasional horse and cart. As my eyes adjusted, I picked out more details of the scene, the ripening rice growing tall in the paddy at the edge of the road, a row of reeds bending gently in the breeze and, in the distance, a swarm of fireflies swirling around. I had found it, then, a place the exact opposite of the gleaming, futuristic expressways. A place with its own ethereal light, real stars and the flashing beacons. Not the future, but the past, and it too was sublime.

Ahead, the mountains loomed less large and I knew then that I was near the pass. The way ahead was clear and the road was calling me again. Slipping back into the car, I fired the engine, snapped on the headlights and headed up over the pass towards Uji, and home.

Japanese field

The paintings in this article are taken from the following website: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xr8k-tmr/ It features many wonderful watercolors and sketches of life in rural Japan. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

1991 GMC Jimmy SLE

The 1991 GMC Jimmy was a throwback to a better time. The design, originally introduced in the 1973 model year, was all truck and its square, upright design spoke volumes about American strength and power. Over the years, the design gradually evolved and towards the end of its product run even gained small touches of luxury. Don’t be misled by the soft velour seats and carpeted floors, though, under the skin the truck was still all business. It was a serious rig for serious men and it required a seriously big wallet to fill its seriously big fuel tank. I didn’t know it then, but I was in serious trouble the minute it hit the driveway.

The Jimmy, resplendent in its two-tone grey paint and rolling on raised white letter tires and aluminum rims that look suspiciously close to a set of Centerline Racing wheels, is the “car” I never should have bought. Despite the fact that I was making almost weekly trips to visit my girlfriend on the other side of the state, 5 hours and a high mountain pass away, it was more vehicle than I needed. Still, my off-road adventure in my tiny Geo Metro had left me aware of the perils involved in the trip, especially in mid winter, and earnestly believed that a four-wheel drive was necessary to ensure that my love life remained uninterrupted.

I had begun the process of replacing the Metro by looking at the big GMC’s little brother, the S-15 Jimmy and it’s Chevrolet sibling the S-10 Blazer. What I found was disheartening and I have since become convinced that these vehicles are the 90’s version on the 70’s Camaro, usually bought cheap by young people and thrashed from the minute they leave the lot. Every one of them I looked at was in poor condition, frequently dented by off-road adventures and usually with some crappy aftermarket radio shoehorned into a hole hacked into the dash. The bigger, K series trucks seemed to be in better condition and despite the fact they were bigger than I wanted, I soon found myself gravitating towards them. The more I looked, the more comfortable I became with their price and size and so, when I found a 1991 Jimmy in great condition I jumped at the chance to buy it.

I’m ashamed to say that P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. That day, it was me. Thanks to a poorly negotiated deal, something I was about to repeat, I was seriously upside down in the Metro. Add to that payoff a generous mark-up on the Jimmy at a convenient “no haggle” price and you can imagine the total that was presented to me. Today, almost 20 years later, I would beat it out of the show room in a hurry, but back then I was so clueless that I sat there while the sales manager worked to get me into the right loan that would let me take the prize home. Unfortunately, they were successful and ,in the end, I ended up paying about $330 a month for 6 years on a 5 year old used truck with around 90K miles!

The truck itself was a beautiful machine. Papers I found in the glove box indicated that the truck was a top of the line machine that had actually been given away as the grand prize, along with a matching bass boat, at the Outdoorsman’s Expo in 1991 and it still looked the part. ‘91 was also the last year of the big, square style Jimmy and although it was old school on the outside, under the hood it featured the latest fuel injected 5.7 liter engine. Inside was nice, with comfortable buckets seats, a huge plastic console and all the available options.

Reverse angle of my Jimmy

It did great in the snow and I regularly used it to storm over the Snoqualmie pass and across Washington state. Equipped with a hitch and a transmission cooler, the truck was also a great towing rig and I used it that summer when I decided give up the long weekly commute and moved to Pullman. I really loved the truck, but gradually the high cost of fuel and the poor loan terms I had received, combined with a poor employment situation, began to take a toll.

By 1999 I was at a low point in my life. A whole series of poor decisions had finally joined together in a perfect storm and I was really behind the 8 ball. I had finished college but the better life I had thought would surely follow failed to materialize and I ended back with my mother in my childhood bedroom. I felt like a heel. To make matters worse, I still owed so much money on the truck that there was no way I could finance a more fuel efficient vehicle and, broke, I couldn’t even sell it at a loss. Finally, with a job in Japan on the horizon, my mom stepped up and paid the loan down enough for me to sell it.

The guy who bought it was as thrilled with his purchase as I had originally been and he gleefully took it off my hands. I wish I could say that I was as excited to be out from under the truck as he was to buy it, but the truth is I was emotionally drained by the whole experience. Unemployed and beat down by life, I met with a recruiter for an English school in Japan and, after taking another loan from my mother and headed for Japan where I willingly stepped into an obviously dead-end job and began to rebuild my life. To this day, I can’t think of the Jimmy without a flood of world-weary, unhappy emotions welling up. It’s too bad really, that truck was one for the ages.

So now, for our entertainment, let me ask you to reach into that darkest part of your soul and tell us – What is the vehicle you should never have purchased?

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

1988 CRX Si

My buddy John is one of the smartest guys I know and over the many years we have been friends John has always been a step or two ahead of most people, myself included. In 1988, when I was selling spark plugs and oil for just a scratch over minimum wage, John who is just a few months older than I, was writing computer programs and maintaining the data systems for a fairly large shipping company. He has always been a responsible, hardworking man but, to be honest, he is also a bit of a computer nerd.

Computer nerds and fast cars seem like an odd combination, but one trip to through the parking lot at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA will convince you otherwise. Fast cars and bikes are common and that isn’t because all these people have money burning holes in their pockets. The best programmers, John explains, are all about making machines go fast. To them, cars and computers are two sides of the same coin.

Uber-Nerd Bill Gates is reputed to own a Porsche 959

John was always a Honda guy. Growing up, his dad had several Honda N600s and prior to the CRX he had owned a 1979 Prelude. About the time I purchased my Turbo Shadow, John started looking for a new car himself and with me in tow we hit all the local car dealers. Since his income was a lot better than mine, we were able drive cars I could never afford and we had a great time. But eventually we came back down to Earth and found our way to the Honda shop where John soon fell in love with the CRX Si.

The CRX was a tiny black go-kart of a car. The dash was low and the giant windshield made it feel like you were sitting right on the pavement. The seats were rock hard and put you close to the floor with your legs almost straight out in front of you. The five speed transmission was slick shifting but the hydraulic clutch felt like a limp wristed handshake compared to the more manly clutch in my Shadow. The engine made around 105 horsepower and although the car was light and fairly fast, it never felt genuinely powerful. The whole package made it seem rather like a toy and to my youthful mind, that was a problem. Today I know better.

The CRX was a pure sports car. What it might have lacked in straight-line power, it more than made up for in the curves. The little car handled like it was on rails and, because John and I sometimes swapped keys, I soon found that I could carry a great deal of speed through the corners. It was a fun, slick little car and I enjoyed every chance I got to slide behind its wheel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By 1992 I was in the Merchant Marines and John had taken a transfer to his company’s headquarters in New Jersey. Far away from his family and friends, John decided that the move wasn’t to his advantage and left the company. It took some time for him to find a new job after his return to Seattle and, as his finances began to suffer, he made the decision to sell the CRX. Sometimes, when it rains it does actually pour and John had a tough time selling the little car. He advertised it for several weeks and for resons unknown received scant interest. Eventually, he sold it to the son of a family friend for a fraction of its true value. Two weeks later, that young man totaled the car.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I know now I should have bought John’s CRX. Not only would it have helped my friend in his time of need, it would have put me into another of those legendary cars from the late 80s. Knowing that the kid crashed it tears my heart out. Live and learn.

But it makes me wonder – If you had it to do over again, what is the car that you should have bought?

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

The forest green 1969 Nova sat unwashed and unloved at the side of the modest house. I studied it from the side of the road with the eye of an experienced hunter and I recognized the signs. Shunted off to the side while two more modern cars sat in the driveway, it was obvious that the old Nova had already passed that threshold of usefulness and begun the descent into eventual abandonment. The grass beneath the car, just a cutting or two taller than the rest of the yard, told me how recently that had been – just a few weeks. There was a chance then, that the car had not sat long enough to totally degrade. Perhaps, I thought, there was still some value to be had.

It was a 2 door coupe, a style I liked, and my practiced eye identified optional wheel covers and matching trim pieces covering the rocker panels. The vinyl top and bright trim on the rain gutters told me this car had been fully loaded when it was new, but the absence of badges next to the front marker lights made it unlikely it was a performance model. Still it looked good sitting there and there might be a chance to have some fun and make a buck. I pulled into the driveway and headed for the door of the house.

The man who answered was friendly enough when I asked about the car and together we walked into the yard to take a closer look. Up close the Nova looked dirtier than it had from the street and I could see the paint just beginning to bubble in all the usual places. Still, overall, it looked good. The smell of “old Chevrolet” assailed my senses as I opened the door and I found myself looking at well-worn bench seat and a column shift automatic. The headliner was good and the back seat nice, but the floor behind the driver’s seat showed some signs of rust. Under the hood I found an oil stained 250 cubic-inch inline six cylinder that fired right up with minimal effort and idled noisily through an exhaust with a missing muffler.

My conversation with the owner was brief. He wanted the car gone but didn’t know how much to ask. I low balled him with an offer of $50 and he countered with “Any car that runs is worth $100.” In the end, we settled for what I had in my wallet, $85. That evening I came back with my best friend Rick and together we convoyed back to my house.

The next day I took good look at my purchase. Unlike my buddy Tim, I wasn’t in the parts business, which was good because from his perspective the old car would have been a losing proposition. The six cylinder engine ran OK and the transmission shifted fine, but these were parts no one would want. The body, already in the first stages of rust, would bring no real money either. Arguably the best bits, the high option trim pieces, would interest only a collector in the midst of a major restoration project and I knew of no such person so there was no money there either. My plan. however, was to have some fun and then eventually resell the car and for that purpose, the car was perfect.

My first step was a thorough cleaning of the interior, something that netted me about $7 in loose change. Next, I took a closer look at the floor behind the driver’s seat and found that the rust had fully penetrated the floor pan. The holes were not big and I, knowing nothing about rust and structural integrity, solved the problem by covering the area with a couple of rubber floor mats. Under the hood, I cleaned the oil stained engine with a liberal application of engine degreaser and water and, while I had the hose out, I washed the car. I followed it up with some wax and the result was good.

I next turned my attention to the exhaust system. With a hacksaw, I removed three or four inches of the damaged exhaust and clamped a purple, Thrush brand glass pack, complete with a cartoon woodpecker smoking a cigar painted on its side, onto the end of the pipe. I finished by hanging the entire contraption up with some plumber’s tape and called it good. The result was a monotonous, undignified, droning exhaust note, but I thought it looked awesome – never mind the fact that no one could see it.

Thrush Muffler mascot

My exhaust work made the car sound like a pickup truck from the 1950s and there were other things that reminded me just how old and out of date the little Nova really was, too. On the street its power steering gave zero feedback and the car’s worn suspension made it jangle over bumps and wallow in the curves. The six cylinder engine made modest power but, thanks to the automatic transmission, very little of what it produced actually reached the rear wheels. The car was painfully slow. Still, I was young and, even though I had a much nicer car at my disposal, I thought the car was great fun. I spent a happy summer cruising around the back roads with all the windows down and music blasting from the tinny AM radio.

Towards the end of summer, my best friend Rick approached me and asked if I wanted to sell the old car. His current ride, a 1969 Charger, was too fragile and expensive to be used as a daily driver and with Fall coming he needed something more mundane to carry him around. The Nova was dull and unremarkable but it made up for those faults by being as reliable as a stone axe. It was perfect for him and sold it to him $350, a bargain for him and a nice profit for myself as well.

Rick was rough on things and from the minute he got it, the old Nova was driven hard. The car’s accelerator was always mashed flat under his foot and the little engine struggled to keep up with the demands he placed upon it. At higher speeds, the car’s old suspension was prone to bottoming out on the hilly back roads and the muffler I had spent so many minutes installing soon broke off and flew into the woods after striking the ground one too many times. I imagine it still looks great there embedded in the earth or stuffed under a log.

Another time on a trip to the drive in, another of our buddies named Marvin, who had been consigned to the back seat, discovered the holes in the floor. In protest of being denied the coveted shotgun position up front, Marvin rolled up one of the rubber floor mats and shoved it through the hole where it dragged on the road until it caught fire. It was fully aflame when he pulled it back into the car and the black oily smoke-filled the cabin. In a panic, Marvin stuffed the burning mess back through the floor where it flew off behind us into the night.

Despite all the shenanigans, Rick wasn’t at fault when the accident happened. The car that ran the red light had almost cleared the intersection when Rick entered it. The resulting collision twisted the front of the Nova up at an odd angle and destroyed the driver’s side fender, hood and front bumper. The guy who caused the accident tried to claim that Rick had rabbit started, but when Rick told the police the old car only had a six cylinder, they had laughed at the notion and had written the other guy a ticket. For once, being slow paid off.

Rick had the old car towed home and hunkered like a wounded animal in his mother’s driveway for the better part of a week until the offending party came to make amends. Rather than make an expensive insurance claim, the man offered to buy the car outright. There wasn’t much haggling, Rick gave him the option of buying the wreck for $1500 or going to court. The payment was in cash and the car was taken away. We never saw it again.

Looking back now I realize it was an ignoble ending for the little car, but it was, perhaps, better than the fate that would have awaited it had I left it unwashed and unloved beside the house where I first found it. At the very least, it had one last summer in the sun and one final chance to finish its days in the fast lane. It remains there in my mind today, droning steadily along on some sunny afternoon, on its way to some new adventure.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.

My TDI in Japan

The engine quit with a sudden un-dramatic snap, and the little Golf TDI began to slough off speed. Reflexively, I bumped the gearshift lever into neutral, flicked on my signal and began moving towards the left edge of the expressway. My exit was less than a mile away and, rather than stop alongside the highway, I used my momentum to coast up the off-ramp and over the small knoll that stood between the expressway and the toll plaza. I stopped there, on the back side of the hill where the road widened on the approach to the toll booths, to avoid blocking traffic and dug out my cell phone to call for a tow truck. I didn’t know it then, but it was the last time that I would ever sit behind the wheel of the little car, never mind the fact that it would follow me again around half of the globe.

I had purchased the dark blue VW diesel new before heading to Jamaica and the car had carried me faithfully, but not entirely without drama, during the two years I lived there. The problems were always small, window regulators, the brake like switch, an air bag light, and a check engine light among other things. They were more of a nuisance than anything else. There was a VW dealership in Kingston and they were quite professional but since I had purchased the car in the States, and then imported it to the island, none of these issues were handled under warranty. It was OK though, I really liked the car and so long as nothing big happened, I reasoned, I could foot the bill.

I check the map at a rest stop near Mt. Rokko in Hyogo Prefecture (2004)

After two years in the Caribbean, I moved to Japan, and the Volkswagen, after a delay that stretched into several months, followed me. It arrived in sorry shape, covered in filth and spattered with baked-on dead bugs from a trip across the USA on a car carrier. After so long apart, I was glad to see it and after a thorough cleaning, an oil change and a new set of tires, the car was road worthy. It was, I was told, the only Golf TDI in the country, and I enjoyed running around the Kansai region trailing a cloud of smelly black exhaust wherever I went. Unremarkable as it may have been in the USA, the car was a hit in Japan. VW fans often worked up the courage to bridge the cultural gulf to ask about it.

Times were good, for the most part. I had another broken window regulator, three out of the four VW logos spun off the center caps and I soon found out that there were no correct replacement batteries to be had, but I let these things slide. The car was unusual and quirky, after all, and inconvenience is the price you sometimes pay for cars like that.

Later when I transferred to Yokohama, I used the car to its best advantage to make the 5 hour drive down the Tomei and Meishin expressways almost every weekend to visit my wife who was at her parents’ house in Kyoto awaiting the birth of our first child. My little VW was not especially fast, but it ran well on the smooth high speed expressways of Japan. For once, it finally seemed to be just where it belonged.

On the Japanese expressway.

The car followed me to Okinawa in 2006 and, once again, it was put to work on my daily commute, a 20 minute drive that included surface streets and a bit of expressway. For the first few months, it seemed to be fine, but then, on one of my regular forays under the hood, I noticed that the coolant was low. Okinawa is hot, so I thought nothing of it and added some more coolant. A week later I got a low water alarm and, sure enough, the coolant was low again. Thus it began.

I have had to replace head gaskets before so I know what the signs are. I looked in all the usual places. There was no leaking water under the car, no sudden increase in my oil level, no oil floating on top of the coolant and no white plume out the back, so the signs were not obvious. It could be a weeping gasket, I thought, a leak small enough to suck the coolant slowly from the radiator without leaving a tell-tale trail of white smoke, so I took it to my local VW of Japan dealership to have them perform a test to see if I had combustion gases in my coolant.

It is a testament to my Japanese ability that I was able to use the language to berate the local VW technician well enough that he actually helped me. When first I arrived, he took one wide eyed look at the car and started to wave his hands. “We won’t service this.” He announced. But I wasn’t having any excuses and, after an ass chewing for the ages, he finally he agreed to perform the simple test I wanted. From the way he sucked air through his teeth as he worked, I knew it was bad news before he spoke. “It’s a head gasket,” He said sadly, “and there is no way I can fix it. We never sold these cars and we don’t have any training on them. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” This time I didn’t give him any static, his words had the ring of truth.

A look at my garage.

At home that night I got out the rebuild manual I habitually carried and looked at the job. It was nothing I wanted to tangle with, honestly, but I felt confident I could do the work if I had to. The first step was parts so I got on-line and ordered everything the manual said I would need. It took weeks for everything to arrive and, in the mean time, I made sure the coolant levels stayed high and limited my trips as much as I could. Still, unwilling to commit myself to a project of that magnitude, I continued to examine my options.

Most Japanese mechanics are excellent and I was confident that, if I could find one who was willing to work on the car, they could fix it. The problem was none of them wanted to touch it. It was an unknown, and no one was willing to take the risk. There were no Japanese rebuild manuals for the car, and since mine was written in English it was useless to them. Eventually, I learned that my local Marine Corps Base had an auto shop, so I went down to see if they had a mechanic who could work on the car. Fortunately, or so I thought at the time, there was someone.

Photo I put in Craigslist

The kid looked like a typical grease monkey. He told his boss he knew all about VW diesels and that he had worked on them when he was based in Germany. His boss seemed convinced they could handle the job and agreed to take it ,so I gave them the little car, the parts and went off confident that my worries were over.

A month later the car had not been completed and I found myself back down at the shop looking around. The kid was nowhere in sight but my car was over in the corner with its hood ajar so I went to look at it. I raised the hood and found myself looking at the shop floor – the engine was gone and my blood pressure jumped. Unhappily I tracked down the ship manager and asked what the hell was going on.

The kid, it turned out, didn’t have the experience he had claimed and there had been a problem. The manager told me that they had already ordered new parts and the work would be handed over to the lead tech who, with my rebuild manual, would put the car back together correctly. Until then I could use a small Mazda loaner and was assured that when the car was ready I would not have to pay a dime for the work. Free is good, but it wasn’t like I could do much anyhow, so I accepted their offer as graciously as I could and left them to it.

Two months later the Volkswagen came home. There were still a few issues with it, most notably a couple of the vacuum lines had been misrouted, but at least it ran. It did OK on the highway but seemed a little down on power. It didn’t matter, I told myself, I was slated to rotate home in another two months and when I got back stateside, I could get the car sorted and decide then whether or not I wanted to keep it. My plan worked for three weeks.

After an uncomfortably long wait, the tow truck arrived, carried the car home and dropped it in my driveway. The VW remained there for the rest of my time in Okinawa and, a day or two before I headed back to the States, another truck came to haul it to the port. While I completed my move and enjoyed a vacation back at home in Washington State before heading on to Buffalo, the little car was put into a container, sent across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal and up the east coast to a port in New Jersey. The first I heard of its arrival was when the shipper called to inform me that one of the world’s best traveled car had arrived with a major case of mold on the interior.

Nice and clean inside!

Although I offered to sell the car to the shipper for a reasonable cost, they elected to clean it prior to delivery and three weeks later the Golf rolled off a ramp truck at my apartment in Buffalo. It looked pretty good for all the trouble it had been through and, together, the tow truck driver and I pushed it into a parking spot. The next day, I took some photos and prepared a brief Craigslist ad explaining that the car had a blown engine and was being sold “as is.” I figured it was a long shot, but I asked $3,500.

Long shot or not, my phone rang off the hook all day long and a guy named Hank was waiting for me when I got home from work. He looked the car over quite thoroughly and offered me $2,500. We dickered for a while and then met in the middle at $3,000. The next day he came back, laid down the cash and put it on a trailer. As he rolled away, I realized that the car had become just another unhappy part of my personal history. I was happy to be rid of it.

Hank called again in mid-December. My exportation and subsequent re-importation of the little car and wreaked havoc on the title process but since I had given him the Certificate of Origin we could sort it out with just a couple of signatures. We met at a local bank and while we waited for the notary he told me the rest of the story.

My TDI back in the USA – One of the photos that went on Craigslist

The un-dramatic snapping sound I had heard had been the catastrophic destruction of the engine. One of the valves, which had probably been damaged when one of the Marine Corps’ mechanics had turned the engine over without ensuring the timing was perfect, had broken off and fallen into the cylinder bore. Once there, it had wreaked all kinds of havoc. It gouged the cylinder walls, ruined the head, broke the piston into pieces and sent metal shards out the exhaust port and into the turbo where they destroyed that part as well. According to Hank, the engine was in such poor shape he had purchased a replacement drive train for the car.

The process had been expensive, Hank told me, but the little car, with less than 30,000 miles on it, would bring good money when he went to resell it. Someone, he explained happily as we shook hands on parting, would pay good money for it. Too true, I thought, and if they have the same kind of luck I had with it, they will keep on paying for a long, long time. I hope they like lemonade.

Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He also enjoys writing and public speaking where, according to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.