Falling Out Of Panther Love

On the twenty-fourth day after they pulled my Town Car from the ditch and dropped it off at a distant rural junkyard, the insurance adjuster finally made his way across the snow-covered gravel to take a look. My people had beaten the trillion-dollar corporation there by nineteen days, mostly to empty the bent Lincoln out and to take photos to support a potential difference of opinion regarding its suitability for repair, so I knew what the adjuster would see.

Beyond the missing B-pillar, casualty of the so-called “Jaws Of Life”, the bench seat was buckled and folded up, twisted with a violence and speed capable of fracturing nine of my favorite bones and adding my spleen to the list of the dearly departed. The folding center seat was bent beyond operation. The bones of the dashboard had exploded from behind it, shoving the aftermarket Pioneer nav system out like a rudely extended tongue. The whole front cabin had a funhouse character to it, not a single line left unbent or unbroken, wavy and warped as if viewed in a particularly devious mirror. The cream-color seats alternately speckled and splashed with browned blood.

“It’s a banana,” was the adjuster’s dilatory report to me, delivered over the phone. “Dead and gone, no question.”

The past is immutable but that doesn’t mean you cannot torture yourself with it. It’s not that I was injured; I’ve been hurt far worse in the past and the next time I back a race car in to the wall I’ll probably be hurt worse again. But racing incidents happen without victims. Everyone involved is part of the same suspension of sanity.

My favorite game that I like to play is called “Swap The Car.” What if the crash had happened in my Audi S5? One of the Phaetons? The D2 A8? The D1 S8? The CL55 AMG? The STS AWD? Have I driven any car in the past ten years on a consistent basis that would have been less competent when it was time to bend metal? I can’t think of one. I have to go back to my Land Rovers to come up with less crash-friendly vehicles.

Five years ago, I wrote that

If training doesn’t save lives, what does? Drive less, drive slower, drive sober, take the bus, ride the train. But if you must drive, don’t kid yourself that being a racer, autocrosser, or self-proclaimed “good driver” will save you. Had I been unlucky that sunny day in Florida, I had the comfort of knowing that I, and my family, would have met that impact in a 5200-pound, multiple-airbag, comprehensively crash-engineered premium automobile—precisely the type of car derided by others as a “rolling padded cell.”

When your family’s life in on the line, it won’t be the reflexes of the moment that decide who lives and dies. Instead, it will be that dimly remembered moment of purchase, months or years previous.

My most recent dimly remembered moment of purchase put me behind the wheel of a Town Car. I’ve always considered them to be safe vehicles, and large enough to make the kinetic arguments in their favor during most situations. But in this particular collision, the car more or less dissolved. Melted, twisted, bent. How else can you describe a vehicle which manages to significantly injure the person on the far side of the car from the accident? It crumpled around us, as if it had no side impact strength at all, as if it were a ’57 Chevrolet.

I’m used to seeing race-prepared cars bounce and spin in situations like this. The Lincoln simply folded, like the banana to which it was likened by the adjuster, around the front bumper of the incoming Sonata. I can still remember the interior fun-housing right after my involuntarily blink-and-cringe at the moment of impact. At least I had the sense to get my hands off the steering wheel. It, too, moved and shifted, cracking the dashboard in its eagerness to escape its normal position. That’s why I’m typing this and not dictating it.

After twenty-seven days at the bottom of the well, and after listening to all sorts of ridiculous suggestions from friends about my next car, (yeah, I really don’t want to drive my son around in a SVO-converted 240D, or a used STi, or a high-mileage Grand Vitara) I’ve come to believe even more strongly in the idea that there is the driving you want to do and the driving you need to do. The former takes place under conditions of your choice with your awareness and fitness at its peak and everything just so. The latter happens when the circumstances of your life, from your job to your health needs, dictate.

In a way, my choice of the Town Car was a confusion of the two. I wanted another Panther to remind me of the ones my father and I had driven back in my youth. I wanted to make a few statements about the illusory nature of prestige and branding. I wanted something that could fit in with the black cars in New York or Chicago. But I should have been shopping for the car I needed, not the one I wanted. Particularly with a pair of Porsches in the garage already.

I’ve negotiated the value and the disposal of the Lincoln. It’s bound for Murilee’s Crusher. I won’t miss it. Not after what happened. I’ll get something else. What, I don’t know yet. But no more illusions, no more fantasies. No more Panthers.