QOTD: Driving Down Educational Memory Lane?
Each one of you here in the peanut gallery learned to drive at one point or another. And whether that was via a proper driving school, or, perhaps for the older types, at the wheel of a friend or relative’s car, the memories are there just the same. Today we talk driver’s education and the car which withstood your naive mistreatment. It’s story time.
Botched gear changes, following distances, passing rules, jerky turns, squealing tires. Driver’s ed is hard on students, but harder on the cars. Long hours are spent in the classroom on books and videos, as instructors attempt to scare the speed out of you and replace it with pure caution and defensive driving. Did it work? A little.
I can remember how nervous I was when it was finally time to get behind the wheel. I’d been waiting so long for this moment — a validation on my driving excellence. The Audi 5000 was waiting as well, parked patiently on the street until I got my permit. In Indiana there’s a 30-hour requirement for classroom instruction, followed by six hours of time behind the wheel before a 15-year-old can apply for a permit. Surely my patience would be rewarded with a fantastic car with which to demonstrate my skills.
Uh, no. It was one of these. A circa 2002 beige Chevrolet Cavalier, in terrible Ace of Base trim. With an automatic transmission and air conditioning, it was bereft of performance. The Internet tells me it had a 2.2-liter four-cylinder that produced a shocking 115 horsepower. Those horses had to motivate 2,676 pounds of car, plus three teens and an adult. Sluggish and awful, I can remember how inferior it was to the 1987 Audi at home, even with its lifter-ticking inline-five engine. Summer temps in the 80s and 90s and a lack of window tint meant the air conditioning couldn’t keep the nervous sweat from the back of my neck. The driving part was tough, too.
The main problem that stands out all these years later is my initial lack of understanding where the center of the lane was. Especially on two-lane roads, my fear of hugging the center line and clipping an oncoming car meant I hugged the right side line, getting close to clipping mailboxes and signs. I did fare better than one of the other members of my driving group — an individual who found it incomprehensible that the wheel must be turned opposite to the desired direction of travel when reversing.
Let it all out; let’s hear about your driver’s ed experiences.
[Images: Ford, GM]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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For the driving portion of DE I was by myself with the instructor. We did not use the provided DE car, we used the instructors personal ride - a 60 something Pontiac Catalina (or was it a Grand Prix?) convertible in red. Drove during one hour of school time - 2 pm. First time drive was from my town to a neighboring larger town (county seat) on a road which crossed a river. The bridge was an older style with a superstructure. I was glued and near motionless when going through that bridge - first time no oncoming, second time with oncoming. The instructor actually complimented my driving, especially after he found out it was my first time behind the wheel. It was dang scary for me. Like with many things, it got easy with more practice. I don't remember why I did the solo thing. It could be I had no other time available as I had an after school job. I was actually looking forward to having friends along like most others did.
Late 1980s Toyota Corolla, four cylinder automatic. The driving school sign strapped to the roof hurt freeway performance pretty bad, but out of all the lessons I think we only made a few runs from one entrance to the next offramp. The sign didn't interfere with city driving or parallel parking.* * That is if you can call my several~ish feet from the curb "parallel parking..." three feet or closer notwithstanding, I'm pretty sure that part of the vehicle was obstructing the travel lane of those subdivision streets. The driving examiner didn't mind since I carefully checked my surroundings and used my signals.