Avenue to Futures Past

My two girls are 4 ½ and 1 ½ respectively. Thanks to a healthy dose of cruise nights, car shows, and my own misadventures resurrecting and restoring my in-laws' abandoned 1975 Mark IV, the oldest is starting to flex her developing motorhead muscles with an eye for cars that both pleases and scares me. Last week she mistakenly identified a car for my wife’s (earning credit for the approximate shape nonetheless), but when I corrected her she protested that the wheels were the same – and indeed they were very close! And while not yet a make/model nerd, she gleefully points boxy Malaise-era traffic survivors to my attention with the pointed words "Look dad, an old car!" And she now prevents me from fixing the Lincoln's exhaust leak by saying "I like how it sounds like the [cartoon] Ghostbusters’ car, dad".

She even cried when I sold my ’97 T-bird last year, and asks when we can have it back. I tell her probably never, but it will be OK. She asks why I sold that car when I have another under a tarp? She’s too young to understand the needling realities of real estate and zoning laws and nosy-neighbor community regs, much less the sad reality of me sacrificing a garage to buy more comfortable living space for her future.

So then she asks me what the car under the tarp is, and why I kept that instead if it doesn't work, and why doesn’t she remember it?

It's my battle-worn 1988 Thunderbird. And she’s still too young to understand, but like a true motorhead does when pressed about his first love, I tell her the rest anyway: That car was my first. That car was my best. That car is how I courted your mother, representing 30,000 miles logged in a long-distance college relationship while I was in Chicago and she in Kentucky. That car was a friend and a soldier that saw me through 22 states when I had a road job, never leaving me stranded, always and without fail getting me where I needed to be before making its displeasure known. That car had supernatural powers to get me through the rough times, and forge bonds into the best times. That car seared a love of automobiles and wanderlust and possibility further into my soul. In many ways in which you can’t yet understand, that car is why you’re here. That car was worthless as a trade-in, but my treasure nonetheless. That car will be my opus, with the Lincoln being the test lab. That car may need every bolt and panel worked over before you can appreciate it but someday… it will be yours."

She nods and says "Yeah, I like it too daddy. It’s pretty, and it’s blue, and it will be an old car like the Lincoln someday… and I like riding in old cars with you."

And whether it’s restored with its original Malaise V6, or hopped up with a respectable old-school V8, or reworked with a hydro-pneumatic electro-maglev drive, it won’t matter. I’ll give her the keys and ask her to take me for a ride, so we can look at all the "other old cars" – treasured friends, survivors and stories in their own right - together. If I play my cards right, I could only ever hope to be so lucky.

Author's note: Co-winner of Jalopnik's Comment of the Day Award (as informed by editors), Aug 19 2009, in response to the question "What new car do you want to hotrod with your children in 20 years?". I disclaimed that it's not a "new" car, but maintains the point nonetheless.