Got Car?

My last business trip was made perfect with great company and great wheels. A colleague-turned-instant-friend shared her love with me—a shiny, bronze ’66 Convertible Impala. What a beauty she was! Beth and I sat up front, while Andy and Brandi rode in the expanse of back seat. We cruised through a Chicago suburb when the air was full of Lake Michigan humidity and clear dark sky, accented with a moon the size and shape of half a parenthesis. I rolled my head back to feel the wind through a mass of tangled blond, and they leaned forward together to hear Beth’s remarkable car story.

She had dreamed of owning a car exactly like the one she had in high school, but the likelihood of finding another was slim, she told us, through a broad gleaming smile. She hired a broker to find something she would like, as near to the original as he could find—and he did! She saw a photo the size of a large postage stamp of her coveted car, and gave him her ideal buying price. He committed to represent her by phoning in a bid to the auction house in Branson, Missouri.

On auction day, minutes before the bidding began, the broker waited for the bronze babe to come up on the block. He was unable to phone in from the office and…yes, you guessed it, his cell phone died just at the worst possible moment. I forget all the frazzled details of who called whom, and what transpired during the auctioning, but he managed to present a bid—THE bid. She wrote the check for $500 under her final offer price, and there we sat in the gorgeous ride, with just a sprint of oil smell on the manifold; as though she purposely perfumed herself with the spice of seduction.

She has fly-on-the-floor, four buttons on the dash, vintage “optional” lap seat belts, and a convertible roof that folds behind Andy like collapsed bellows. She’s got real radio dials—for AM only—“which didn’t work then, and doesn’t work now.” She gets four to a gallon, powers up grand, and sings low and pretty-like once she is cruising. She stays indoors in the rain—are you kidding!—and toasts your toes with heat from a blast furnace while freezing your cheeks—didn’t warm then, and doesn’t warm now. But she’s a ride I’ll never forget that left my heart warm and my cheeks sore from grinning.