I pieced together a trip from odds and ends and leftovers then slapped on the name PA Cars because it includes a couple of Pennsylvania car museums. I’m going to learn to drive a Model T at one of them. The first day’s journal has just been posted despite it being the end of the trip’s fourth day in real life.
This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.
This article first appeared on May 20, 2012. Recent memories and shared pictures reminded me of the places it features so I decided to repost it as close to its anniversary as possible. With concerts, museums, travel, and other story-generating activities currently non-existent, there will likely be more of this sort of reuse before the current summer slips into the past.
The fountain in front of Union Terminal, a.k.a., Cincinnati Museum Center, runs all summer and is turned off all winter. Therefore, one sure sign of summer in Cincinnati is the turning on of the fountain. That happened Friday at 10:30 AM. I had kind of hoped to see the stepped pools below the fountain go from bare concrete to a series of waterfalls right before our eyes but it wasn’t quite that dramatic. Whether the pools were primed in the interest of time or whether the standing water was simply left over from some secret testing I cannot say, but they started the day ready to overflow at the slightest provocation.
I still think bare concrete morphing to cascading waterfalls would have been cooler but watching the fountain go from zilch to a spurt to a full spray wasn’t bad.
All the kids, and there were plenty, were properly wowed and they also enjoyed the characters on hand to promote the ongoing A Day in Pompeii exhibit. I’ve seen the exhibit and it’s a duesy. University of Cincinnati Professor Steven Ellis, along with several UC students, has been instrumental in the current excavations in Pompeii and that was instrumental in making Cincinnati one of only four US cities hosting the exhibit. As you can see, security was tight.
The weather was obviously quite nice for the events at the fountain but Friday was just one of several consecutive near-perfect days. Perfect not only for fountains of water but for fountains — or taps — of root beer. I made it to three different root beer stands on three of those near-perfect days.
On Thursday it was the Jolly’s on the west side of Hamilton, Ohio. Back in 1938, Vinny Jolivette opened an A&W Root Beer franchise in Hamilton. He built this place in 1967 and, casting off the A&W identity, used the family name to inspire a new one for the restaurant. It’s west of the Great Miami River on Brookwood. Somewhere along the line, they added another on the east side of town on Erie. That one has a cooler sign but this one still makes its own root beer and that trumps the sign. The two remain officially connected (The car side signs carry both telephone numbers.) but are managed somewhat separately by two brothers. There is a third Jolly’s in Tiffin, Ohio, that was started, also as an A&W, in 1947 by Vinny’s brother, Roy, and it seems there was a fourth somewhere in Indiana (possibly Bloomington) but I know very little about it.
I stopped by The Root Beer Stand in Sharonville, Ohio, on Friday afternoon. It started life in 1957 as an A&W then went independent in 1982. It stopped using carhops in 1972. Originally built and operated by the Rideour family, it moved on to its second and current owners, Scott & Jackie Donley, in 1990. The Donleys have kept everything pretty much the same and that definitely includes making the root beer using water from their 280 foot well. Claims that “it’s something in the water” may very well be true here.
I got my Saturday root beer fix at the A&W in Union City, Ohio. Despite this being a place I frequented as a teenager, I know few details of its history. I do recall that is was owned by a fellow named Smith in the 1960s and that he operated a used car lot right next door. I have vivid memories of sipping root beer and drooling over a black 1956 Thunderbird that sat in that lot when I was about seventeen. At some point, it became Neil’s A&W Drive In and so it remains today. Curiously, this place doesn’t show up on the official A&W website nor does it have its own site but it does have a FaceBook page.
All three of these places make their own root beer using at least some of the original A&W equipment. Guess that stuff was made to last. All of them taste great and I’m guessing that the recipes are all the same or similar. The Root Beer Stand has its special water and both it and Jolly’s serve their brew in chilled glass mugs. I love ’em both and I do tend to dislike chains but “real” A&Ws (Not stuffed-into-a-corner-of-a-gas-station A&Ws.) are pretty cool and it’s hard to beat an ice-covered mug.
I’m guessing that some noticed the slightly red convertible in the center of the Root Beer Stand photo. That’s my 1963 Valiant and plans to drive it to Darke County and the A&W at the border led to the warm-up visits to Hamilton and Sharonville. The 200-mile round trip was the car’s longest outing since the cold drive home from Cambridge in early 2011. She done good. These pictures show her at Jolly’s and Neil’s.
I recently learned that the neighborhood Flipdaddy’s does brunch on Sundays so I walked over this morning to check it out. It was quite good. I’m always dismayed but rarely surprised to find myself alone on a restaurant’s patio. But, with the thermometer at 74 degrees, I was a little bit surprised today. Lots of people just don’t like any temperature I guess. To be fair, one couple and their home from college daughter did venture outside to eat. That was it. The restaurant was fairly busy inside but just one other outside table was ever used all the while I leisurely worked through my bacon & eggs and slowly sipped my Magic Hat dessert.
This series has reached a pause. Even though the forty vehicles I’ve owned to date have all been covered, I don’t think that the My Wheels series is truly at an end. I suspect I’ll buy something else someday. It does, however, seem like a good time for a look back and a bit of a summary. Because of a goof in sequencing, the earliest and most recent chapters both featured bicycles. They are the only two bicycles in the series although I actually owned a couple of used bicycles prior to purchasing the J.C.Higgins. In between were five motorcycles, one truck, and thirty-two automobiles. The autos varied greatly in details, but all had four wheels as did the truck. Therefore, the current count of wheels in My Wheels is 146.
Despite being separated by nearly forty years, there was only one significant difference, other than color, between the two bicycles. The 1997 Schwinn has seven gears; The 1960 Higgins just one.
The motorcycles varied quite a bit for the small sample size. Three came from Japan, one from Germany, and one from the U.S.A. Three had chains, one a driveshaft, and one was belt-driven (with pedals). There were two inline twins, one boxer twin, and two single-cylinder models. There was even one 2-cycle in the mix. Color-wise there were two reds, one maroon, one black, and one blue. Each came from a different manufacturer: Whizzer, Honda, Suzuki, BMW, Yahama.
The lone truck was a gray Chevy van. Powered by a V8 with an automatic transmission, its crude self-made camper like interior held as many people as could tolerate sitting on the floor or the bed.
I’ve applied all the same grouping to the autos as I did with the motorcycles plus a couple of additions. I haven’t overrefined things. For country, I’ve used the country where the manufacturer is headquartered which might not be where the specific car was built. For capacity, I started with the idea of calling everything either 4 or 2 passenger even though some of the older cars with bench seats routinely handled 5 or 6 but quickly realized that I was really just dividing them on whether or not they had a rear seat. I also simplified body style categories. I did not distinguish between SUVs, station wagons, hatchbacks. or any more subtle variations. Anything with a top that folded or was removable is a convertible. Any fixed-roof car with a trunk and usable rear seat is a hardtop. With neither trunk or usable rear seat, it’s a coupe and with a rear seat but no trunk it’s a wagon. Yes, whether or not a rear seat is usable is a matter of opinion and in my opinion, the rear seats in ’94 Camaros and GEO Storms of any year are not generally usable.
Here’s the breakdown starting with characteristics having the fewest variations. There were 27 cars with rear seats and 5 without. 20 cars had four doors and 12 had two. 29 cars had their engine in the front while 3 were rear-engined. 22 cars were driven by the rear wheels, 7 by the front wheels, and 3 by all four.
Style
15 Hardtop
7 Convertible
6 Wagon
4 Coupe
Color
12 Blue
5 Red
4 Green
4 Gray
3 White
2 Black
1 Brown
1 Yellow
Engine (I=inline, F-flat, R=rotary)
9 V8
9 I4
6 I6
3 V6
2 F4
2 F6
1 R
Transmission (A=automatic, M=manual, CV=continously variable)
7 3A
6 3M
6 4M
6 5M
3 4A
2 6M
1 2A
1 CV
Make
13 Chevrolet
3 Ford
2 Dodge
2 Mazda
2 Plymouth
2 Renault
2 Subaru
1 Acura
1 Audi
1 Austin-Healey
1 Buick
1 Mercury
1 Opel
Country
22 USA
5 Japan
2 France
2 Germany
1 England
There have been more Chevys than anything else. The most common color has been blue. Based on history, my ideal car must be a blue rear-wheel-drive Chevy two-door hardtop with a V8 and automatic. There is exactly one car on the list that meets those specs. It’s the 1970 Chevelle castoff by my former mother-in-law that I owned for less than a year. I’d not thought of it as ideal when I owned it and I’m not buying into that now.
The blue Chevelle was, like so many I’ve owned, simply a car that was available and affordable when I needed one. The only exceptions are the two vehicles I ordered from the factory. All the others were either used or sitting on a lot after being built to someone else’s specifications. That those two built-to-order rides are almost as different from each other as possible is pretty good proof that there is no single ideal vehicle for most people. Ideals change.
The first vehicle I custom ordered was the 1979 truck. I was in my early thirties and my boys, although they did not live with me at the time, were eight and ten. I and several friends were into camping and that was the van’s purpose. It was fairly well-optioned in some respects. I checked off A/C, cruise, etc, but no interior options including radio. I installed my own sound system, replaced the single cargo van seat with a pair of captain’s chairs, and built out the empty space for camping.
It would be nearly twenty years before I’d fill out another order sheet. By then, the kids were grown and gone and I had moved from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom condo. The 1998 Corvette reflected that. I sprung for a convertible, 6-speed manual transmission (auto was standard), Z51 suspension, and upgraded sound and climate control systems. The van and the ‘Vette were both Chevys but their option lists looked nothing alike.
So this will be the last My Wheels chapter until a new vehicle comes along. It’s a series that isn’t published often (These forty-one chapters were spread over more than seven years.) so maybe that will happen before you even notice the pause but I think it’s going to be a while.
My Wheel chapters can be seen in total here or individually through the following links:
Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
Chapter 2 1948/9 Whizzer
Chapter 3 1953 Chevrolet
Chapter 4 1954 Mercury
Chapter 5 1952 Ford
Chapter 6 1959 Chevrolet
Chapter 7 1961 Renault 4CV
Chapter 8 1957 Austin Healey
Chapter 9 Honda 65
Chapter 10 1964 Corvair
Chapter 11 1967 Dodge
Chapter 12 1961 Falcon
Chapter 13 1966 Suzuki
Chapter 14 1965 Barracuda
Chapter 15 1969 Opel Kadett
Chapter 16 1962 Chevy II
Chapter 17 1965 Corvair
Chapter 18 1971 Vega
Chapter 19 1970 Chevrolet Nova
Chapter 20 1972 Audi 100 LS
Chapter 21 1979 Chevrolet G10
Chapter 22 1970 Chevelle
Chapter 23 1972 BMW R75
Chapter 24 1983 Renault Alliance
Chapter 25 1985 Buick Century
Chapter 26 1986 Acura Legend
Chapter 27 1985 Mazda RX7
Chapter 28 1978? Yamaha 400
Chapter 29 1991 Geo Storm
Chapter 30 1992 Chevrolet Lumina
Chapter 31 1994 Chevrolet Camaro
Chapter 32 1986 Ford Bronco II
Chapter 33 1998 Chevrolet Corvette
Chapter 34 2003 Pontiac Vibe
Chapter 35 2006 Chevrolet Corvette
Chapter 36 1963 Plymouth Valiant
Chapter 37 2011 Subaru Forester
Chapter 38 2003 Mazda Miata
Chapter 39 2018 Subaru Forester
Chapter 40 1997 Schwinn
The closing sentence of the My Wheels chapter for my previous practical car spoke of trading the recently battered 2011 Forester. The Subaru had been quite good to me and I’d had every intention of continuing to drive it for several more years. Instead, that battering caused me to move to an updated and differently colored version. Reminiscent of the move that replaced the red 1998 Corvette with a blue 2006 model, the red 2011 Forester was replaced with a blue 2018. However, not only is a 4-door SUV quite unlike a 2-door sports car, the two blues are worlds apart. The Corvette’s Daytona Blue was kind of exciting. The Forester’s Quartz Blue Pearl is kind of boring.
My first documented trip in the 2011 Subaru included a stop in Columbus, Ohio, where I had the clever (to me) idea of photographing the car under a Denny’s sign. So naturally (to me) I thought I should do the same thing with the 2018 car. That turned out to be much easier said than done. It seems the Denny’s restaurant chain has fallen on hard times and reduced their presence considerably. There are none left near Cincinnati and only one in Columbus and it lacks the big elevated sign I sought. The picture above was taken at a restaurant near Terre Haute, Indiana. Unlike the similar shot of the red Forester, it was not taken on the car’s first trip but on its second most recent, number eleven.
The red Subaru made its first documented trip just about a week after acquisition. The blue one was in my position for over four months before it was so honored and it would be another four months before it actually appeared in a trip journal. It was the middle of July 2017 when I stopped at the dealer with the scrunched and scratched red Forester thinking it might be close enough to the end of the model year to find a bargain. To my surprise, there wasn’t a single 2017 Forester left on the lot and only a few of other models. I didn’t get the close-out deal I’d hoped for but I did get a deal that was reasonable and put me in a 2018 vehicle when 2017 was barely half over.
I believe the new car stood at approximately the same point in Forester model ranking as the previous one had but it had seven years worth of new bells and whistles. Some, like the rearview camera and adaptive cruise control, I appreciated almost immediately, and it took just one road-crossing deer to convince me that the pre-collision braking was a good thing. The lane departure warning eventually won me over but I’m still not a fan of Lane Keep Assist which tries to keep you from departing a lane without signaling. Fortunately, in my opinion, this latter feature defaults off.
My first trip after the swap was with an uncle and cousin and used the cousin’s Cadillac. The next trip journal involved the Society for Commercial Archeology in Cincinnati where most of the miles were covered in a tour bus. Then there was a trip in the Miata before the Subaru was put to use on a Thanksgiving trip to Tennessee. It also carried me on a Christmas trip that reached into Georgia and an early April trip to Pittsburgh, PA. It served to mark the “Prev” and “Next” links on the daily pages for those three trips but was otherwise out of sight. It finally broke cover on the late April end-to-end drive of the Jefferson Highway. There was a shot of it all clean and shiny at a car wash in Winnepeg, Canada, then the shot at left of the still clean car about to start down the first of many unpaved sections of the JH. A similar view of the car was incorporated into the cover of a book resulting from that trip, Jefferson Highway All the Way.
With the exception of a fly and drive trip that involved a rental car, The Forester has handled every trip since that 2017 Thanksgiving outing. It hasn’t appeared in a lot of pictures, though, and I suspect it has something to do with that “kind of boring” Quartz Blue Pearl paint. On the 2018 Christmas trip, I caught it in a nighttime shot at South 21 Drive In in Charlotte, NC. In April, it posed in Kentucky at the Cave City Motel as I headed to the Jefferson Highway Conference in Natchitoches, LA.
In June of 2019, on my way to the Lincoln Highway Association conference in Wyoming, I stopped by one of my favorite gas stations in Grand Island, NE. This was my first time at Kensinger Service since the 2016 passing of long-time owner Dick Grudzinski. I missed out on what is still a full-service operation by arriving after the day’s closing. That’s just one of the reasons this is not my favorite picture of the station. It might, however, be my favorite picture of the car.
To date, the blue Subby has carried me on an even dozen documented road trips and, as a very active member of my current two-car fleet, I expect it to carry me on many more. That’s assuming, of course, that I can avoid being stopped at the wrong light at the wrong time.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 38 — 2003 Mazda Miata
My Next Wheels: Chapter 40 — 1997 Schwinn
Driving a fifty-year-old convertible is great fun; Not so, at least for me, maintaining one. As reported in its own My Wheels chapter, the 1963 Valiant was sold not long after it completed its mission of carrying me over the full length of the Lincoln Highway. I’d already put some thought into what its replacement would be and did some looking as I waited for the Valiant to sell. I wanted something open and fun to drive like my most recent “play” cars but without the repair frequency of the Valiant or the repair expense of the Corvettes. A Mazda Miata seemed to fit my desires quite nicely.
By pure — and extremely lucky — coincidence, a friend and fellow Lincoln Highway fan was downsizing the family fleet and looking to sell his own “play” car. I met Mike and Nancy Hocker at the next Ohio Lincoln Highway gathering, test drove their 2003 Miata, and, after a couple of phone calls and a little negotiation, bought the car a few weeks later. Two owners had preceded the Hockers and apparently all three had used the car for short sunny summer day outings. At eleven years of age, its odometer registered just 37.500 miles; Barely 3,400 a year, 12,500 per owner. I would change that.
I bought the car in early May. The photo at the top of this article was taken on May 21 in the middle of its first trip. It was a three-day outing along the Wonderland Way across Indiana and into Illinois. The picture at left is from its second, somewhat more ambitious trip, a month later. The destination was a Route 66 festival in Kingman, AZ, which would have been a reasonably long drive by itself but I chose to enhance it a bit. I entered Kingman from the west after driving the full length of the Old Spanish Trail from Saint Augustine, FL, to San Diego, CA. The picture was taken near Milton, FL. That trip totaled nearly 7,000 miles which put the car’s miles-since-purchase at about 10,000. I was obviously screwing up its yearly average and the mile-per-owner average didn’t look very safe either.
To date, the Miata has taken me on nine documented road trips. I still own it and the count will almost certainly increase. Both photos at right are from a 2015 trip to Maine. The first is outside my motel room in Littleton, NH. The second is outside my motel room in Ellsworth, ME. When I bought the car, it was wearing 18-inch wheels with 35 series tires. When it came time to replace the tires, I did the wheels too so they are now 16-inch with 45 series tires.
In the previous My Wheels chapter, I mentioned that I got estimates on repairs to its subject car from a body shop I had experience with. That experience was with this car. I had actually intended to take the Miata on the trip where the Forester got roughed up but it was still in the shop from its own encounter. I was about half a mile from home waiting on a light in the left turn lane. I was the third or fourth car in the line and the non-turn lane to the right was empty. The driver of the Jeep Grand Cherokee immediately in front of me decided that going straight was a better idea than turning left and moved to change lanes. I hit the horn as soon as I saw the backup lights come on so the impact was a slow one but a tow hook on the Jeep still poked a fair-sized hole in the Miata. The Jeep owner accepted responsibility without question and the shop did a nice job on repairs, but that little incident is why it was the Subaru that I took to get slapped around in Virginia.
I’ve now owned the car for five years or nearly a third of its life. Its mileage has more than doubled to just over 80,000. Problems have been rare and costs have been reasonable. It handles like a go-kart and the 5-speed manual seems just right. The 142 HP is enough. I liken it to an Austin Healey that doesn’t leak oil and actually starts when it’s raining. It is a near perfect play car for an old man who knows that it’s a lot more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 37 — 2011 Subaru Forester
My Next Wheels: Chapter 39 — 2018 Subaru Forester
Acquiring the 1963 Valiant triggered an overall shuffle in the stable. The two-car garage at my condominium was already filled and the Valiant was clearly not a good replacement for either of the occupants. In fact, it would never become a truly active member of the fleet. Even at its highest level of roadworthiness during my ownership, it required a certain amount of gentle handling and respect for its age. In the beginning, it needed more than that which is how I got away with having three cars for a short while. The Valiant lived offsite getting a new top and other repairs.
During that time, I joked about my 3-V fleet but apparently I never did get a picture of them all together. The Vibe, ‘Vette, and Valiant lineup only existed a few months. By mid-April, the ‘Vette and Vibe had been converted into a Subaru Forester. The Vibe went first and it was the sale of the Corvette that triggered the previously arranged purchase of the Subaru. I continued making bad letter-oriented jokes by pointing out that I’d traded capital-P performance for capital-P practicality.
The Forester really was very practical, and it needed to be as the road trip workhorse. The opening photo is from its first road trip in April of 2011 when it was still new enough to be running temporary tags with the dealer’s filler in the front. A couple of months later, I would drive it to the Lincoln Highway Conference in Tahoe using a lot of Lincoln Highway to get there. That included the pictured unpaved stretch near Orr’s Rance in Utah. I can’t say for certain whether I would or would not have attempted that in a Corvette, but knowing how far away the next pavement was, it seems unlikely. I would have almost certainly tackled it in the Vibe and don’t doubt it would have done just fine. But there wasn’t even a pause to think about it with the Subaru. This is the sort of road it was made for.
It would eventually carry me on 34 documented road trips, second only to the 2006 Corvette. Between April 2011 and May 2014, it handled every road trip except one with a rental and the two Lincoln Highway related outings that were the reason for the Valiant to exist. With over 110,000 miles on the odometer, the Forester and I set out on that 2016 record-breaking drive to Alaska. I got it to pose when we reached the Alaska Highway and used it as a protective camera stand for various wildlife viewings. The entire 11,108-mile trip was essentially trouble-free.
Oil consumption had gone up during the Alaska trip but that was solved with head gasket replacement when I got home. A year later, with 140,000+ miles on the clock, it was performing wonderfully on a trip through Virginia and Maryland. In Harrisburg, VA, a Honda struck me from behind as I sat at a stop light. It didn’t look too bad, and the car was drivable, but I knew it wasn’t going to buff out. Three days later, I returned to the car in a museum parking lot to find a scrap running the length of the left rear door. The Honda driver had instantly taken responsibility and we exchanged our information. Whoever got intimate with my door had simply vanished. I finished the trip then visited a nearby body shop I had some experience with. Repairs would run a few thousand dollars or more depending on what was found when the exhaust was examined. Of course, I was responsible for only part of that, but regardless of whose pocket the money came out of, the end result would be a car worth not a whole lot more than the cost of repair. I had been quite happy driving a six-year-old car with more than 140,000 miles but there’s not much market value in cars like that. I went straight from the body shop to the dealer and traded for a car that will appear in just a couple of chapters.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 36 1963 Plymouth Valiant
My Next Wheels: Chapter 38 2003 Mazda Miata
Among my “road trip cars”, this one holds a very special place. Several special places, in fact. It is the oldest car I ever used on a road trip, and it is the only car acquired specifically for a road trip. It is also the car that participated in the least road trips. I drove it on just one journey other than the one for which it was purchased. It is one of only two “road trip cars” purchased used, and the other one was acquired specifically to replace the Valiant. Despite its limited participation in the activity that is this website’s reason to exist, it’s significance to the site is at least as large as any of the other cars.
The trip for which the Valiant was purchased was a full-length drive of the Lincoln Highway in its centennial year. The model year was chosen so that it would be exactly half the highway’s age at the time of the drive. The picture at the top of this article is of the car in storage where I saw it initially. The pictures at left show the car when I first got it home and in the shop getting a new top.
The big Lincoln Highway drive was centered around the 2013 Lincoln Highway Association Conference in Kearney, Nebraska. The 2012 LHA Conference was held in Canton, Ohio, and I used it for something of a shakedown cruise. The picture at right shows the car at the 2012 trip’s beginning. The journal for the seven-day outing is here.
The Lincoln Highway ran coast to coast connecting New York City with San Francisco. The first picture shows the car in Weehawken, New Jersey, where a ferry from NYC would have delivered Lincoln Highway drivers in 1913. The second picture was taken near the highway’s midpoint in Nebraska and the third at its western terminus in San Francisco, California. The journal for that outing is here. It includes a section, The Ride, which covers finding and preparing the Valiant.
The Valiant also holds the distinction of being owned for the least amount of time of any of the “road trip cars” except for (at the moment) my latest purchase. I bought it December 18, 2010, and sold it April 28, 2014. I sure had fun with the car, and pulling up to that marker in San Francisco was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. But I’m not really the sort of guy to keep a car like that running; The Oklahoman who bought it is.
In addition to appearing in those two trip journals (Lincoln Highway Conference 2012 and Lincoln Highway Centennial Caravan), the bright red convertible was the lead character in a book. I had to both write and publish the book to make that happen but it did happen. That book, By Mopar to the Golden Gate, is available through eBay and Amazon.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 35 — 2006 Chevrolet Corvette
My Next Wheels: Chapter 37 — 2011 Subaru Forester
I experimented with running away from home for a holiday by spending Thanksgiving of 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee. It went so well that I ran away for both Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2006. I’ve rarely had a shortage of things to be thankful for, and in autumn of 2006 one of those things was a new car. The reverseless 1998 Corvette had made it home from Illinois but hopes of a full recovery were dim. No one outside the dealer even wanted to discuss opening the transmission and no one there seemed overly eager — or competent. Replacing it wasn’t a very promising solution either. Used gear boxes of the appropriate flavor were in short supply and dearly priced let alone the problem of finding someone to do the swap. I half jokingly asked the dealer to give me a price on a leftover blue coupe and he came back with a completely serious, and surprisingly reasonable, offer. It was an offer I could, but didn’t, refuse. I purchased the pictured car in early October and introduced it to road-tripping later in the month. It got warm enough on the way home from Thanksgiving in Bryson City, North Carolina, to get some topless photos in Kentucky’s Levi Jackson State Park. The full trip journal is here.
It was the blue ‘Vette that, one month later, carried me over the length of the Natchez Trace Parkway after a Christmas in Natchez, Mississippi, and those two trips were just the beginning. It seems the rate of my road-tripping had increased a bit, and this car participated in a total of thirty-six documented trips over the next four and a half years. At present, that’s the most of any car I’ve owned.
This car took me not only on my initial Christmas Escape Run but on all but one of the Christmas trips I made while I owned it. After Natchez, came New Orleans then Gibsonton, Florida, then Lubbock, Texas. On the way north from New Orleans in 2007, road fan and Hudson guru Alex Burr joined me for the Jacksonville, Mississippi, to Memphis, Tennessee, segment. In 2008, I continued on to Key West after Christmas in Gibsonton. You’ll note that all of these destinations are to the south as is proper for December drives in low clearance cars. The idea was to get away from the cold and snow and that worked rather well with a single exception.
I retired in November of 2009, and that put me in a position to drive to the western end of US-62 which I’d been putting off because of the time required. That trip journal is here. Even though the trip encompassed Christmas Day, exactly where I spent it wasn’t all that important. I reached Altus, Oklahoma, the evening of the 23rd with thoughts of driving to Lubbock, Texas, the next day. Morning saw those thoughts change significantly. Snow had moved in overnight and was now accumulating. The picture at left was taken about 9:00 AM. Oklahoma City, just over a hundred miles north east of Altus, would ultimately get a record 14 inches and the airport would eventually close. It was then I had a minor epiphany: It didn’t matter. I was retired and didn’t have to be back at work on some rapidly approaching Monday morning or any other morning. Other than adding expense, extending my trip by a day or two or more didn’t really hurt. I walked to the office and booked another night.
I was prepared to hang out in Altus a bit longer, but when morning came, the road to Lubbock was reported clear. I drove, cautiously, to Lubbock on Christmas Day. The big attraction for me, the Buddy Holly Center, was closed, of course, but I could and did visit Holly’s grave. I visited the center early the next day then headed on to Carlsbad, New Mexico. At a stop near Carlsbad, I noticed some snow in the grill and snapped the picture at right. At the time, I didn’t get down to study it at all closely but I would eventually discover things that had me replaying the graveside visit in my mind.
At five inches, the snowfall in Lubbock had also set a record. There is, understandably, no snow handling equipment around so the snow essentially stays where it falls or drifts until it melts. A one lane path to and past Holly’s grave had been quite passable with bare gravel alternating with patches of snow a few inches deep at most. After stopping at the grave, I’d driven on, found a place to turn around, then returned along the same path. When I saw a car heading my way on the road I’d entered on, I drove on past and turned at the next intersection. I immediately knew that was a mistake. The snow had drifted several inches deep here and the road was covered for several yards. I also knew it would be a mistake to stop. Maintaining my momentum was my best hope so I plowed — literally — ahead. I believed I had escaped unscathed but eventually realized that the snow had cracked the hinged air dam and slightly damaged some of the tubing directing air to the brakes. All was repaired, at reasonable cost, when I got home.
The only other incident with this car that could qualify as a misadventure occurred just a few days later on the same trip. I picked up (and foolishly pulled out) a nail in a front tire. Because waiting for a matching Goodyear would have required several days, I ended up buying a pair of Michelins in order to avoid mismatched tires on an axle. I rode home with the old undamaged front tire in a giant plastic bag. It was still in the bag and went with the car when I sold it.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 34 — 2003 Pontiac Vibe
My Next Wheels: Chapter 36 — 1963 Plymouth Valiant
Old-car guys and old-road guys are hardly one and the same although there is definitely a whole bunch of overlap. With this book, Tom Cotter stakes out a position deep in that overlap. Tom is, however, much more of an old-car guy than an old-road guy so it’s not surprising that his position is closer to the car side than the road side. The story of how plans for the trip came together is telling. The idea that Tom started with was driving an old car across the United States. Over the years, the idea had been refined to involve a particular old car. He called it a dream and admitted that it was unlikely to be realized but the car he really wanted to drive across the country country was a Ford Model T. In his dream the road was secondary.
Before getting too deep, let me point out that this is not my great grandfather’s T. My great grandfather once drove a stock Model T to Florida and back. Granddad’s car might have had a theoretical top speed around 40 MPH but the rugged roads of 1920 kept him running in the 20s when he wasn’t stopped fixing a flat tire, worn out brakes, or something else. The car that took Cotter and company to California had a heavily modified engine, lowered suspension, hydraulic brakes, and other improvements that allowed it to cruise at 50+ — safely.
Most of those improvements had been made by Cotter’s traveling companion who was also the car’s former owner. That was Dave Coleman who had sold the car to Nathan Edwards a few years back. Unable to make the trip himself, Edwards loaned the car to Cotter and Coleman. Photographer Michael Alan Ross, following the T in a modern Ford SUV, completed the team.
Only after an authentic but remarkably capable Model T has been lined up for the trip does Cotter look to the route. Calling it a confession, he notes that “I had not heard of the Lincoln Highway until I began planning for this trip.” The trip starts at the Lincoln Highway eastern terminus in New York City, ends at the western terminus in San Francisco, and most of the miles in between were on or near what was once the Lincoln Highway. It was not, however, a particularly strict following of the old highway. There was occasional streamlining of the route and a few side trips to visit interesting people and places.
So those are the “disclaimers”. The car was not a high-clearance, 20 HP, nearly brakeless, stock Model T. The route did not follow every bend of the Lincoln Highway or even pass by every attraction associated with the historic road. But the car was a very old, extremely basic, and wonderfully historic vehicle, and the route was close enough to the Lincoln Highway to sometimes serve up glimpses of the legendary road and constantly serve up a true view of coast to coast travel. Together they form the foundation for a really cool and extraordinary adventure.
As noted, not every Lincoln Highway icon appears in the book but many do. There’s Dunkle’s Gulf in Bedford, PA, and Lincoln Motor Court in nearby Mann’s Choice. In the midwest, the travelers stopped at the Lincoln Highway Association Headquarters in Illinois and the famous Reed-Niland Corner in Iowa. Farther west they drove through some great scenery and made stops at the Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats and the historic Hotel Nevada in Ely. Michael Ross snapped great pictures of all these scenes and more.
The Model T that Nathan Edwards generously loaned out for this adventure could be considered a “late model”. It was manufactured in 1926 during the next to last year of T production. It performed flawlessly for the entire 3,707 mile journey. They even had to fake a flat tire to get a “break down” photo. Cotter acknowledges that they were certainly not the first people to cross the United States in a Model T but it seems at least possible that they were the first to do it without something breaking. That’s partly due to the in depth preparation that Edwards and Coleman made before the trip started, but might be due even more to the attention Coleman gave the car during the trip. Daily or more frequent inspections sought out low fluids and loose bolts before they became problems. There’s a lot of work involved in getting a 91 year old car from one coast to the other — but it sure looks like a heap of fun.
Ford Model T Coast to Coast: A Slow Drive Across a Fast Country, Tom Cotter with photography by Michael Alan Ross, Motorbooks, May 15, 2018, 10 x 7.9 inches, 224 pages, ISBN 978-0760359464
Available through Amazon.
This was the car that replaced the Bronco II when its dependability decreased and my dependency on it increased. In addition to providing reliable year-round transportation, I wanted something that could occasionally serve as a sleeping platform as the Bronco had. Part of my shopping ritual was climbing in the back of any candidate to see if I could stretch out. As you can see, the Vibe worked out fairly well for that.
Having a second vehicle that I wasn’t afraid to drive for long distances meant that the Corvette did not have to carry road trip duty all by itself. The little Pontiac wasn’t heavily used in long trips but it did take part in sixteen documented outings. However, not being a particularly glamorous vehicle, it did not show up in many pictures. Both photos included here were taken on a SCCA race weekend when I was proving to someone that I really did sleep in the car.
As mentioned, the car was not glamorous. Nor was it fast, a great handler, super comfortable, or overly capable in snow. But it was adequate in all those departments and it was a Toyota Matrix at heart so it was wonderfully reliable. I got a little more than a hundred thousand miles out of it and, by last report, its third owner is nearing 180,000 after replacing the clutch.
The Vibe didn’t give me much trouble or many stories. I guess the closest thing to a problem was finding the battery dead on three occasions when it was left outside overnight in quite cold temperatures. Online research led me to a possible cause. There was no on/off switch for the headlights. They operated automatically. It was reported that something in the mechanism could freeze up, turn them on in error, and drain the battery. It was suggested that leaving the high beams selected (there was a switch for that) might keep that from happening. I started doing that and never had the problem again but can’t be certain that was the reason.
The list of complaints was almost non-existent but there weren’t many standout features either. There was the legendary Toyota Corolla reliability, of course, and the surprisingly usable interior space. There was an AC outlet that came in handy for charging things and now and then using a laptop computer. Seat height was something I came to appreciate over time. For the Corvette, entry and exit was a matter of falling in and climbing out. It was the reverse for the Bronco. The Vibe seat seemed just right for easily stepping out for a few pictures then just as easily stepping back in.
As I hinted, a non-glamorous highly reliable car is simply not a great source for stories. Looking through the trip reports turned up just one significant mention of the Vibe. It involved the Tail of the Dragon on the TN-NC border. You may recognize the name and, if so, you’ll know that it consists of 318 curves packed into 11 miles. It’s a fun north-to-south downhill challenge for motorcycles and sports cars on sunny days. I drove the Vibe south-to-north up hill in the rain. It just ain’t the same.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 33 — 1998 Chevrolet Corvette
My Next Wheels: Chapter 35 — 2006 Chevrolet Corvette
