Yahoo Autos Editor's Letter: My Dad's New Car Looked Like a Toad Ready to Fight
From the July/August issue of Car and Driver.
It sounded unlike anything my 11-year-old ears had ever heard, and I loved it. In one of the biggest automotive shifts ever conceived, my father went from a 1982 Cadillac Seville—a silver and burgundy hunchback designed to keep you as far from the driving experience as possible—to a 1986 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa.
He died last month. And he's been on my mind in a way he hasn't since he controlled my keys and curfew. He made it to 85 despite a 30-plus-year fight with Parkinson's. An overachieving middle child, he had two careers as different as the Seville and the 911: one as a pro soccer player in his homeland of Bolivia and a second as a neurosurgeon in the U.S. The cars he owned tell a story of the time he lived in, our family, his career, his personality, his humor, and his life.
When he first immigrated, he bought a crappy Fiat 850 because Fiat extended credit to physicians. After moving to Detroit for residency, he went native. First came a 1970 Challenger that somehow proved less reliable than the Italian, and then a 1971 Charger a year later.
The first car I remember was his triple-red fuel-injected 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. He presumably purchased it to tell the world he'd "made it in America." He rushed me to the hospital in the big Cadillac after I accidentally put a four-inch gash in my arm. I was barely three, but I can still see the speedometer hitting 100 mph and hear the theme from The Godfather playing from the 8-track. I loved that car.
When 8 mpg got to him, he bought a 1978 Volkswagen Rabbit as a tender. When it died on him (something it did a lot), I heard him swear for the first time. Bauhaus in its everyman simplicity— small, well built, fun—it influenced my three Volkswagen purchases. I loved that car.
Hoping to combine the Eldorado's opulence with the Rabbit's efficiency, he came home one day with a 1981 Oldsmobile Toronado diesel. Of all the cars he owned, he despised the Toronado the most, for its clatter, its smoke, and the diesel stains on his Florsheims. The hate affair lasted nine months. I loved that car.
From one front-drive GM product to another—enter the '82 Seville. In typical Malaise style, it defined luxury by the number of button tufts on the seats. It took us to Game 5 of the 1984 World Series. The Tigers won. I loved that car.
Did a midlife crisis prompt the Porsche purchase? Maybe. But what I remember is being pressed hard into the seats as it revved past 4000 rpm in second gear. As I was raised on '70s cars with no power, its 200 horsepower felt like 1200. I spent 1986 drawing it. I loved that car.
When 1990 arrived, the 911 and the Eldorado were still in the garage. But bad knees and a realization that the Cadillac took up too much space led him to cut them loose. In came the Nissan Maxima SE, my dad's first Japanese car and the result of the first time he took my advice. It was his all-time favorite too—relatively affordable, attractive, fuel efficient, inexpensive to maintain, and perfectly reliable. The other cars were lust. The Maxima was love. I loved it too.
A 1994 Cadillac STS replaced the Maxima, but four years later, he was back in a new Maxima. A move to Florida influenced the 1997 BMW 528i and the 1998 Mercedes SLK230. He tired of those and went for a 2007 Infiniti G35, arguably the ultimate expression of the Nissan Maxima. He stopped driving a few years into owning it.
He never went to a Cars & Coffee, he didn't quote acceleration times, and he probably never redlined any of the cars he owned. Judging by that, a lot of folks wouldn't count him as a car enthusiast. I'm not so sure. He appreciated design, luxury, build quality, and reliability, even if the Malaise Era conspired against most of those attributes. He made bold choices, sometimes practical, sometimes not. But he lived a life without fear. You can see that in his cars. I loved him.
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