My March 2016 column for Roundel magazine was titled “Car Obsession and Imelda Marcos’ Shoes.” In it, I described how when former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife fled the palace, they left behind, according to Wikipedia, “15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 1,000 handbags, and pairs of shoes, the exact number of which varies, with estimates of up to 7,500 pairs. However, Time reports that the final tally was only 1,060.” I said that, to me, the thing that was the most mind-boggling wasn’t the shoes and the handbags—it was that, in a tropical nation of grinding poverty, madam Marcos had a refrigerated room constructed inside the palace so that she and her mink-wielding friends could parade around in their fur coats and look wealthy and chic without the indignity of sweating.
The point of all this was that I then said that I can’t help but wonder if gearheads do the same thing with cars, and if track days, road trips, concours events, and even cars and coffees are the equivalent of refrigerated rooms. Further, there’s no arguing the fact that vintage pre-catalytic converter cars are pollution-generating machines, pumping out unburned hydrocarbons at levels that stun mosquitoes and make our eyes literally water. I basically wriggled off the hook I’d set for myself by arguing that the amount of time and the number of miles that enthusiast cars are driven is tiny, and that one can use the “it’s not essential and people are starving in country X” argument for art, music, literature, vacations, sports, and many other things that make life worth living. In addition, there’s my ridiculous but utterly sincere argument that “I’m not really a collector” because I don’t seek out the best-of-the-best, many of my cars are pretty heavily patina’d, I don’t have a warehouse full of them, and I’m in this for emotional appreciation not financial appreciation. I ended the piece by saying that “As long as I own fewer cars than Madame Marcos had fur coats, I’m good.”
However, since I wrote the column, my car count has crept up to 13, and I do in fact keep five of them in a warehouse (the one 70 miles away in Monson on the MA/CT border). It’s the furthest thing from a swank climate-controlled automotive man-cave social club with Le Mans banners hanging on the walls and antique gas pumps and juke boxes where hedge fund managers can hang out and see which one has a bigger Ferrari maintenance bill. However, when I drive the 80-ish minutes each way to swap one cool car for another, I can’t help feeling that this, the drive back and forth, is my refrigerated room. Even the trip to Vermont a few weeks ago in Sharkie felt a bit like choosing which fur coat to wear out in the first crack of autumn’s chill.
Don’t worry. I’m not having an existential crisis of automotive faith. I’m a good, kind, generous person who spends a lot of time helping people (and, as Stuart Smalley said, “and doggone it, people like me”), and using the cars to go on relaxation drives, cars and coffee events, and road trips are part of my self-image and give me a lot of pleasure.
So what am I on about?
Autumn in New England this year has been absolutely otherworldly, both in terms of the weather (flawless) and the foliage (mind-bendingly beautiful). Like life itself, part of its beauty is that it’s transient. The foliage ramps up to peak, and one windy-rainy day later, it’s gone. Enjoy it while it’s here. That’s the lesson.
So I have been. With the cars as a primary vector. I can’t get enough of it. The Lotus Europa has been a repeat offender, as zipping the little 1600-pound car through the foliage in the leafy suburbs west of Boston, doing 42 in a 35 zone and feeling like I should be arrested, is endlessly addictive. The car’s heavily-patina’d brown finish doesn’t try and upstate the foliage’s candy-corn colors. It’s really the only time that the attention-grabbing little Lotus blends into the background. Well, that’s not true—when the leaves all turn brown, the car is downright invisible.
To quote Mona Lisa Vito, “Oh yeah. You blend.”
Of course, the BMWs come out to play in the leaves as well. The jewel in the crown, the fairest of them all—the ’73 3.0CSi I’ve owned for 38 years—has made multiple appearances. This week, Maire Anne and I drove the car out to Walden Pond for a walk. There’s something about the car’s Signal Red paint that feels like the red M&M in the bag, an accent piece to the fall foliage. The gorgeous red E9 coupe may not ascribe to Henry David Thoreau’s theme of simplicity, but it does check off the boxes of spirituality and the good life. (Okay, yeah, I admit that I googled “themes in Walden.”)
This time of year, every bend in the road is another “oh, wow…”
The E9 looks good from any angle, but there’s something special about the rear quarter.
The car was in shadow, but the sun was hitting the trees like a message from the heavens.
The next day, it was Hampton’s turn. I don’t think of the ’73 2002’s Chamonix white paint as foliage-compliant (there are white M&Ms, but they’re not part of the standard mix, similar to the way that birch trees don’t jump out in the fall). But as soon as I began driving the car around Newton (which is proud of its trees—its slogan is “The Garden City”), I realized that its white paint is like a reference sheet that allows the colors to explode.
Just some random small road in Newton.
Now that’s just showing off. I wasn’t kidding when I said “otherworldly.”
The red FrankenThirty has been used quite a bit—it’s been the go-to vintage BMW at the house, parked in the driveway like the daily drivers, no need to move cars out of the garage to get at it, for me to jump into and take anywhere, whether that’s the crowded parking lot of Trader Joe’s or a hundred-mile round trip down to Providence to play at an open mic as I did last night. No foliage pics, though. I think that its so-much-prettier red E9 big sister has made it camera-shy.
So, is this behavior frivolous? Definitely. Wasteful? Maybe a bit. But I’ve gotten a lot of glorious stress-busting pleasure out of it. Even forgetting world events for a moment, with what I went through with the FrankenThirty, I think I deserve being able to don my best automotive duds and partake in the parade of fall. I’ll be back to nuts and bolts and busted sunroofs and cracked oil pans soon enough.
Hey—Imelda Marcos had 15 fur coats. I can still buy two more cars before I feel it’s, you know, excessive. And besides, right now the temperature and lighting in The Big Refrigerated Room are just perfect.
—Rob Siegel
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