Bark's Bites: Song for My Father

In his QOTD a few days back, Doug DeMuro had this to say about his father’s decision to buy a Camry:

“He wasn’t the BMW type. He wasn’t cool enough. Back then, few were.”

Doug is a tad younger than I am, so his father was apparently in his forties back in the Nineties. My father wasn’t cool enough in the Nineties, either—he was cool enough when LL Cool J was still rocking a red Kangol and Don Johnson was making pastels look masculine.

Before Bush 41 even took the oath, my dad had long been rolling in the deep with the boys from Bavaria. He bought a 320i and a 733i when his neighbors were still representing Cadillac. In many ways, he was a metrosexual long before the word ever had meaning—he wore Armani suits when gray flannel still dominated the workplace. He exercised religiously long before fitness was considered an indicator of success, maintaining a 5’10” and 165 pound frame that allowed him to easily beat my friends and me in basketball even as we were winning high school state titles.

However, it was the cars that made him coolest in the eyes of my friends. Dad was always at the leading edge of what was hip on four wheels. A poll in 1983 asked Americans what their dream car was—over 70 percent responded that they aspired to own a Lincoln Town Car. It was the symbol of success in America. So, naturally, my dad went out and got one, resplendent in baby blue. He parked it in our garage right next to his MG Midget, which was a gorgeous sunrise yellow. He was 36 years old, and already had his dream garage.

But he wasn’t satisfied. He never kept a car for more than 24 months, and often much less. During the years of my childhood that I can remember, he had an Audi 100, a Jaguar Vanden Plas, a Nissan Maxima (back when that was considered a serious Bimmer fighter), a Lexus ES 250, and many others. He bought one of the first Infiniti J30s in America, and then bought another one for his wife. When I totaled my 944, I got to drive his pimped-out, gold-badged QX4 for a few months. I used to borrow his Range Rover when I was in college when I really wanted to impress a girl on a date.

He returned to the BMW brand in recent years, with both an E60 and E90 in his garage for a while, before making somewhat of a change to the Mercedes brand for a spell. After his last Merc was stolen from his gym’s parking lot, he decided to buy what I consider to be the best-in-class Grand Cherokee.

He was and is a different sort of car guy. He never turned a single wrench on a car or a single lap on a race track. He still wanted his cars to be practical—he never bought the Corvette he dreamed of for much of his life. I almost had him talked into a 350Z roadster once, until he saw the trunk space. He got so mad at his J30 for getting stuck in the snow once that he drove it immediately to the dealership and traded it on that QX4, likely taking a huge depreciation hit along the way.

Why do I tell you all of this? Because I think all of us owe our love of cars to somebody. I learned early on in life that having a cool car makes you different. It sets you apart. I’ve been accused many, many times by the B&B of being a bit image conscious when it comes to cars, and I don’t deny that I am. I can trace it back to seeing the look on my friends’ faces when my dad would drop me off somewhere in his latest and greatest European ride. I was lucky enough that he extended his love of cars to the cars he bought me, as well—a brand-new Jetta, an Infiniti G20, and my ill-fated 944.

So maybe that’s why I have always bought new, why I never keep a car past its third birthday. I also learned what I’d didn’t want to do from him—it’s why I have gone a little impractical with some of my purchases, so that I never have to say I eschewed the car I really wanted because it didn’t have four doors.

So even though you didn’t do it deliberately, thanks, Dad. if you had bought a cloth-seat Camry, I’m guessing I wouldn’t be working the numbers on a Shelby GT350 as we speak, despite the fact that my Boss hasn’t seen a third anniversary.

Wait a second. Maybe I shouldn’t be thanking you, after all. Ahh, what the hell. Of course I should be.