Cars, Cars, Cars

ACCORDING TO ONE of those recent surveys with which the nation so loves to amuse itself, the American male daydreams more often about cars than sex. Hush the Freudish gaspings: it’s understandable. A woman is only a woman (which is surely enough) but a good car, now that ladies are offered Tiparillos and the saloon is dead, is something entirely else, one of the few remaining masculine preserves. Like a woman, it is something the male creature can latch onto, make a fool of himself over, love and understand. (The number of women who truly love and understand automobiles is tiny: they commit such enormities as refusing to understand the sweet logic of the gear-shift, and driving home from the supermarket with stalks of celery and O-Cedar sponge mops protruding from the back seats of Aston-Martins, and saying infuriating things like, “Well after all, it’s just transportation, isn’t it?” or “My car is broken” or—it was said about a birdcage Maserati that I was eyeing lustfully — “Gee, it’s sorta cute!”’) If woman is man’s partner, the automobile is his toy; one is fire to the other’s frying pan, really, but to live is to dream and delude oneself. The toy function was everywhere in evidence at the International Auto Show, now touring the nation after opening in New York City this spring. Cars of every description were strewn over three floors of the New York Coliseum, like great baubles tossed to greedy children by some benevolence beyond. There were a few sensible station-wagons for the wives, but the emphasis was all on color, style, speed, dash, verve and whoosh; even little Simcas, Renaults and such were painted gaudy colors and touted as “fun cars,’ and the Volkswagen display, all practicality and writhing self-deprecation, merely proved the rule by inverting it. (VW offered a modest proposal in the form of its little “Squareback” station-wagon painted Taxicab Yellow and equipped with meter, sliding partition et cetera. Understandably, it drew crowds of admiring New Yorkers; alas, a sign confessed that the thoroughly comfortable vehicle was but a dream because—get this—it was too small to meet size standards for city cabs.) THE SHOW would have maddened car-haters, that strange breed of demi-intellectual (Eric Bentley is a car-hater, when he isn’t busy fondling the corpse of Bertold Brecht) that reveres Ralph Nader and rails at the tail-fin (which vanished six or seven years ago) as a clear and present symptom of America’s ugliness, spiritual emptiness and moral decay. It displayed the automobile in its infinite variety, and car-—haters like to think of the auto industry in terms of three wicked Detroit monoliths that hold the American public in a state of colonial subjugation. In reality, given the cash and the inclination, the car-seeker can have anything from a $1,500 Mini-Moke, a platform holding four tiny wheels, a little Austin engine, a driver’s seat and a surrey top, and designed to take just about anything just about anywhere; to a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for $31,000 (almost a waste, now that the makers have embraced not only dual headlamps but also the Coke-bottle bulge over the rear wheels that Pon-— tiac pioneered back in 1964). Engines of three, four, six, eight or twelve cylinders are mounted in front, in the rear, sideways; cars have front-wheel, rear-wheel and four-wheel drive; there are fat air-conditioned things for bombing down the thruway with Lester Lanin on the stereo-tape, snaky sports cars for prowling the back roads of a summer’s day, rugged boxy cars for driving right off the road, through a Swamp or two and up the nearest mountainside. The man who can’t find a car to please him these days must want a Sherman tank. The GT (Grand Touring, an imprecise classification of dubious origin and widely misused) cars were in their glory. Perhaps because of their greater speed and comfort, the likes of Porsche and Jaguar—and now, with an especially handsome entry, the Japanese firm of Toyota—have replaced the old-style sports roadster in the affections of suburban rebel types. Which is fine — who would quarrel with the desirability of a car in which one (or two) can travel long distances at high speeds, in great comfort, and at the same time enjoy the pleasure of driving, as opposed to mere cruising? : There were up-to-date throwbacks to more elegant and exciting days: the irreplaceable and almost never-changing Morgan, which looks rather like the MG once did (only better) with its long, lean hood, genuine fenders and running boards, and oldfashioned vertical radiator grille; and . the Excalibur, an $8,000 made-in-Milwaukee replica of the 1927 Mercedes-Benz SSK, complete with baroquely serpentine exhaust pipes blossoming from the side of the hood (long, lean) and curving gracefully down into the fenders and out of sight, but powered by a thoroughly modern mill, a get-it-fixed-anywhere Chevrolet Corvette 327. WHILE LESS EXOTIC, the Detroit products showed up well. The bad old style of a few years ago is forever gone; everything is swoopy, fastbacked (small boys at auto shows love to slide down fast backs) and tidily chromeless. The Industry concentrated on its pseudo-sports cars for the young consumer—the Mustang, Camaro, Barracuda, Firebird et al. which, however purists may ‘sniff, offer the public handsome basic cars. Option list in hand, the buyer can transform one into just about anything he wants, from a quiet, economical, automatically transmissioned runabout to a snarling, torqued-up beast. Almost as entrancing as the cars in the Detroit exhibits were the girls who stood beside them on revolving platforms, dressed to the nines and cooing the cars’ merits in caramel voices (“Oo, yis, and it’s the safest car on the road!”). THEN there were the hybrids: the stock Detroit cars gloried up by independent manufacturers like John Fitch, who nicely modifies the Chevrolet Corvair into a creature with European dash and American convenience and reliability, and Carroll Shelby, whose Ford Mustang fastback becomes, via meddlings with engine, suspension and body, a gutsy road machine. Fitch and Shelby should be imitated and emulated: they produce individualistic cars of a sort that mass production prohibits, yet, because they start with mass-_ produced originals, they are able to keep prices (initial purchase and maintenance) within reason. Even further out, strictly for the hard-core enthusiast, is the Valkyrie, from Fiberfab (also makers of a bewildering array of dramatic fiberglass bodies for Volkswagens and other conventional cars). It comes as a kit, costing about $1,500 and consisting of a chassis and a body—very low, spectacularly European-racer. Into this, where back seat and trunk would normally be, one drops one’s favorite V-8 engine (or Corvair 6, if timid) and—presto! Instant LeMans! How’s that for choice? Almost lost in the array of good things was a prototype battery-powered vehicle from General Motors. Under the hood and in the trunk (and for all I know, in the glove compartment and ashtray) were crammed nasty plastic battery cells. This was not, of course, a car. Under the hood of a car are cast iron and steel, and writhing exhaust ports, and brushed-metal valve covers, and wires wandering all over the place, and when you turn it all on, things roar and spin and move, and or, my… . Oh, well.