Just about the time I thought I had experienced another Brilliant Epiphany—in my case these are so rare that they deserve capitalization—I discovered that I was wrong again. It’s not that my memory is becoming more faulty; it’s always been this way.
I’m blaming the electric Mini.
Oh, not for the faulty memory; that’s been evident since I began to sink into my senility at around the age of five. The Mini spoiled my epiphany because I was musing about all the cars I have owned in my life, and I suddenly realized that my first car and my last car were the oldest cars in the entire array—but then I remembered that we bought the 2020 electric Mini SE after we acquired Ike, the 1965 Mini Cooper panel van.
Well, dang.
Besides, first car is a slippery concept. My mother and her sixth or seventh husband, Cactus Tom Cafferty, presented me with a black 1953 Mercury flathead V8 when I hit sixteen, but I did not have possession of it long enough to consider it mine. In fact, I can’t remember how long I had the Merc before it was arbitrarily impounded by unsympathetic authorities merely because Mom ’n’ Tom never quite got around to titling and registering the damn thing. I did have it long enough to paint a few hooded monks on the dashboard (don’t ask) and to learn that a can of Lemon Pledge could spiff it up for cruisin’ the main, but I really didn’t bond with it the way a guy should with his first car.
So I remember, much more fondly, the first car that I bought with my very own money: a 1943 Ford.
Wait a minute, I hear you saying. Wasn’t 1943, you know, about halfway through World War II? Well, yes, of course it was—and Ford was fully committed to the war effort. So this was a military jeep, before that term became a trademark. In fact, Ford produced nearly 300,000 GPW models—General Purpose, Willys design specs—and until the government told them to discontinue flaunting their trademark, the Ford script logo was stamped into the tailgate of each one. (Anyone genuinely interested in the arcane history of singular automotive design should read William Spear’s Warbaby: the True Story of the Original Jeep. You’re welcome.)
Trapped by nostalgia, I further realized with some horror that I can’t remember whatever became of my ’43 Ford jeep.
With today’s technology, I could have logged all sorts of information about my car—or cars, plural, since it was obvious that as a car guy I would wind up owning more than one. But I had cars in the decades before Microsoft Excel was a thing, or even Lotus 123; I am pretty sure that I was into automotive ownership before Jason Cammisa was born. Cammisa is the ultimate Excel data nerd, documenting everything about every car he owns, or has owned, or wants to own, bringing new glory to OCD compulsion. I am but a poor acolyte trailing after the master, but lately I have been trying to create my own spreadsheet of the cars I have owned. It is pitifully incomplete, of course; I owned so many Saabs for various lengths of time (and various purposes) that I have recorded only those which have some significance to me.
I know that I don’t know what became of the ’43 Ford because I have a column titled Disposition, and that cell is blank—as is the Disposition cell for the VW Karmann-Ghia. Did I give the Vee-Dub away? I do remembering blowing it up in the Mojave desert and dragging it back home, where it sat unrepaired for a significant amount of time—could be months, could be years—before… something. Salvage yard? A friend eager to build a dune buggy? Your guess is as valid as my faulty recall.
Filling in spreadsheets can become as compulsive and time-consuming—you have been warned, but it’s too late for me and Cammisa—as any other addictive activity. Looking over my spreadsheet, I ponder whether to include a column for Country of Manufacture, but I am pretty sure that this information will remain obvious to me. Besides, I don’t want to be reminded of the stereotypically British Lotuses—one of which I wound up trading for a Bugeye Sprite—even though I loved the brilliantly quirky Mini panel van. (Jeez Louise, that’s five British cars that I remember—shuddering at the thought. The Disposition cell for the Lotus Esprit reads “Gave It Away.” I think that’s also how I got rid of the Chevy Tahoe pickup, Ol’ Blue.)
I should probably add a row to indicate which of the dozens of cars I would rather have kept, but that gets complicated. I have often said that if my Citroën SM had come with the five-speed manual instead of the piece-o’-crap three-speed Borg-Warner automatique transmission, I would have owned it forever. My dream car from its inception was the BMW Z8 roadster, and I am privileged to have looked after it for a few years and about 40,000 miles of roadster exuberance, but I am happy that it has gone to a better home—and a caretaker who loves it as much as I do. So I guess that the Z8, of all those cars, is the one I miss the most.
Along with my 1943 Ford military jeep.
