What a Car!

A friend of mine sent me some pictures of this new car that is being custom made in a limited edition. It is called the 789 by n2a Motors and takes elements of the ’57, ’58 and ’59 Chevy’s. When I first saw it, I thought it had to be a fake, something that someone Photoshopped together. I thought the pictures were cool, but I truly thought it was a fake. After a little research, it turns out that it is legit. Here are the pictures I received:

I’m not really a car guy. I’ve only been to a couple of car shows in my life, I don’t work on cars myself and I don’t follow the newest car trends. For me, a car is to get me from Point A to Point B. I don’t see them as status symbols or an extension of my personality, but just a mode of transportation. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to drive a car that’s falling apart, all dented up and has no muffler. I just want something reliable and comfortable. If it looks nice, that’s a bonus.

So maybe it’s something of a mid-life crisis, but I have to say that is one sharp car! Forget the Camry sitting in the driveway; even forget the Matrix that I drive most of the time. If we still owned a minivan I’d probably take an axe to it after seeing these pictures. I could see me cruising around in this baby, top down, only one hand on the wheel, my beautiful wife sitting next to me holding my other hand. Well, maybe not from November through April, but the rest of the year, definitely. That’s when it hits me. On top of the $140,000+ price tag for one of these cars, I’d only be able to drive it about half the year. If I was independently wealthy (I’m not), perhaps it wouldn’t matter to me, but I’m just way too practical to even consider a car like this.

As far back as I can remember my parents had functional, practical cars. I guess that when there are nine kids you really don’t want to have anything too fancy. You can’t afford it anyway. One of our cars, a Chevy station wagon, not only got us around town, it also served as a hang out spot for me, my younger brother and our friends. On those late fall/winter/early spring days when we wanted to be out of the house but not necessarily out in the cold, we were happy to see the car sitting in the driveway. You see, there was this strange set of steps we could do to listen to the radio without a key in the ignition. These may not be the exact steps, but it was close to this: hold in the emergency flashers so the lights come on but don’t blink, put the right turn signal on, step on the brake, turn on the radio and voila! We had music. We’d sit in the car for a while, listening to the radio as we warmed up and then we’d get back to whatever we were doing. That is, unless Mom didn’t boot us out so she could go somewhere or run an errand. I have no idea who figured this out, probably my older brothers, but it somehow worked in this car. And I can tell you, none of our friends could say their car did this! Actually, we couldn’t even sit in any of my friends’ cars.

Imagine that, we couldn’t even sit in our friends’ cars for a few minutes to warm up. Maybe their parents were afraid we’d try to drive their car, even though we didn’t have the keys to start it. Or maybe their parents were afraid we might break something, which we never did in our car. That’s why I like practical, non-fancy cars. I don’t want to worry about every little thing I do in it or every single thing my kids do when I’m driving them and their friends some where. If I had a car like the 789 I would probably hate to drive. I’d be worried that someone would crash into it, or try to steal it. I wouldn’t even enjoy it. No, give me a nice, reliable, practical car that will get me from Point A to Point B with some comfort and that doesn’t look too bad. Oh, and a radio that doesn’t need some crazy steps to play some music on a cold day.