ownership of three European cars in a row

ownership of three European cars in a row

fiction
edward w pritchard


I inherited once upon a time a beautiful red petite Volkswagen beetle by marriage. It was the kind of car whose trim and lines often won it's type vehicle a role as background glamour in a movie back in the 1960's. The car was a 1964 I believe looking back across the years and since it was then 1975 the car had a few issues.

First though before I could drive the car I had to fix it for the engine was seized up and an engineer had declared it unfix-able and a practical competent mechanic  had declared the car not worth the trouble to revive. The car sat on the street and it's health and ownership being important to my new friend I decided to revive the car for her, although I also had a very nice 67 Olds Cutlass that I had already taken to let her drive as needed.

I recall from memory myself working in the freezing cold to un-seize the engine which I did by using unusual ingenuity and initiative which I have not used much since. It might have actually been early fall when I worked on that car out in the cold but I did get it running. Later after marriage we were a two car family from the start.

Next when that red VW died I bought a middling looking two tone blue automatic Volkswagen with an usual clutch-less shift on the fly feature. It was driven to death but it certainly got along well in the deep snow. That car died too.

Then came a boondoggle of a car as all passionate purchase tend to be. For a second car I bought a 1976 Triumph royal green Spitfire. Mostly I drove a new Toyota by then but sometimes the Spitfire would run but not completely through any one trip or journey across town. The Triumph had a bad habit of stalling when the wife and second new baby were going anywhere in the car.

In addition to three memorable European cars in a row I owned several very dependable cars to be proud of new Toyota's over the years.

Sometimes, around snowy Winter Holidays, I like to remissness about that first beautiful Red VW that someone gave me  a part of by marriage. Why can't  mechanical things last forever? Ah well, such the memories.