QOTD: Coveting Thy Neighbor's Car?

There’s never a shortage of nostalgia here at TTAC. On any given day you’ll find at least one writer waxing poetic in our Slack chatroom about a long-departed car, be it a classic (or “classic”) model from childhood or, more often than not, a piece of crap deserving of the scrap heap.

We’re all going to play the nostalgia game today, because I’m asking you to think back. Way back. Specifically, to that impressionable time in your life after your feeble, developing brain began retaining memories, and ending just before you received your driver’s license. Your main method of transportation at the time was probably a bike — something you pedalled furiously up and down your childhood street in pursuit of your friends (or perhaps while being pursued by bullies).

Look to your left and right. Sitting in at least one of those driveways is a vehicle you wished was yours. What was it?

In your author’s case, it’s not an easy choice. Not because my childhood street overflowed with American muscle or foreign exotics, but because it was such a smorgasbord of regular cars.

Maybe my land yacht fetish started while staring at the late-70s Buick Electra sedan (baby blue) and Century coupe (copper) sitting directly across the road. For a time, a white 1980s Ford LTD cooled its heels next door. Down the road, a coffin-nosed Oldsmobile Toronado added some attainable personal luxury to the landscape.

Not exactly the stuff youthful dreams are made of. Despite its reliability and standard six-cylinder, the sharp-edged Toyota Cressida a few houses down wasn’t bowling kids over with its sporting prowess.

There was, however, a couple of notable exceptions. One was the Triumph TR6 — orange, with Union Jack emblazoned on the rear flanks — that moved onto the block later in my childhood. The pièce de résistance, though, was something of a ghost. You never saw it rolling down the street or sitting in the driveway, glistening under the summer sun. And yet it was one of the best exotics to come out of the 1980s.

Magnum, P.I. drove one. Yes, contained in the garage of one neighbor, sitting under a protective covering that never budged an inch, was a red 1981 Ferrari 308 GTSi. And for some reason — a motivation I can’t fathom — the owner never drove it. That car, for all of its sporting potential, racked up zero miles during its time on the block. Seems like a crime against autodom, no? Surely, ownership of a Ferrari demands that you drive it once in awhile, rather than stashing it away like a savings bond to accumulate value?

Childhood Steph had bigger plans for that car.

What about you, Best and Brightest? In the hazy, wistful memories of your youth, what vehicle tempted you from the driveway of a neighbor? Which person on the block had the best set of wheels?