QOTD: Your Most Fun Summer Wheels?
This first week of August finds us in the thick of summer, battling heat and mosquitos in equal measure. One summertime treat that has faded from your author’s life now he’s knocking on his fortieth year? The purchase of a summer car.
You know exactly the kind of summer car I’m talking about. It’s a beater, bought for peanuts and likely ending its life at the end-of-summer demolition derby. In between, though, full-throttle blasts and the lack of concern for dents and bumps (in both the car and myself, if we’re honest) lend themselves to the creation of a roster of stories to be told and re-told at the local bar that winter after the car is long gone.
There is actually a decidedly odd but fun computer game on Steam called My Summer Car, a bizarre first-person program in which the protagonist finds themselves with a knackered old beater and the summer months to themselves. The parallels between some of this promotional video and your author’s late teens and early 20’s is alarming.
We’ll leave you with a brace of fun facts: yes, it is possible to get air in a Crown Vic despite it being rusted to the point of having the structural rigidity of a week-old salad. And it is difficult to gauge one’s speed when the only thing illuminated on the dashboard of a rough-but-ready 1986 Bonneville is an angry red warning light that reads “Engine.” Allegedly, of course.
Was your summer car a rusty Detroit barge from the ’60s? Was it a knackered and forgotten old minivan into which you could fit all your friends? Whatever it was, we are certain you lot have a story or three upon which to reminisce.
[Image: Murilee Martin/TTAC]
Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.
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I'd say my FIAT 124 Sport Spider fell into this category, but I remember driving it to a party, meeting someone there that I rode to a club with, and coming back to retrieve my car only to find the interior full of snow. I'm guessing I had it outside of the summer months.
My first car, a 1968 Dodge Dart with a slant 6. Bought it from the elderly lady next door who upgraded to an Aries K in 1982. It was a bucket of rust but it was mine. I can still remember the smell of the hot vinyl seats/interior cars had back then when you opened them up after sitting int he summer sun. Best part was the "fingertip power steering" or something those cars had. It was some crappy color like Butternut Gold. It's demise was a front wheel bearing that failed and sent the drivers side wheel off into traffic while pulling out of the hardware store parking lot. Lucky it rolled off into the weeds. It was replaced with a stout 1970 Chevrolet Nova that I wish I still had.