A BOY’S TOY

Everybody remembers their first car. Sure, you have fond memories of your first two-wheeler bike, but your first car is a rite of adulthood. A rite of passage.

In New Zealand, when I was a teenager, they recklessly and irresponsibly, let you get your driver’s licence (with no P plates) at 15. It was madness. There were no booze buses, no blow in the bag coppers, and, at 15, you could drive to parties and drive home pissed. How we didn’t kill ourselves – or, more importantly, other people – I have no idea. I remember, at 13, stealing my father’s car and hammering it to 90 miles an hour in a teenage macho race down hill with a friend.

My first car was a Morris Series E. I guess around about a 1948 model. It was pink with added, jutting, black headlights. Cool. The interior leather was so old and cracked that I used to paint it with some strange smelling lacquer. When it warmed up, teenaged female thighs would stick to the seats. It even had little orange-coloured indicators that flicked out of the door panel.

When I sold it to give me some money to move from New Zealand to Australia a journalistic colleague earnestly implored me to put some mashed bananas and saw dust in the gearbox to cover any mechanical problems.

Cars are amazing things in our lives. Second only to houses, I guess, in the world of serious decision-making projects. What else do you buy that drops about 30% in value the day you drive it out of the showroom? What else do you own that costs you so much in insurance (more than your kids’ health care) or in petrol and maintenance? And most car salesmen claim it is the wife who makes the ultimate decision.

Cars haven’t been a fixation for me although I have owned some exotic ones. At one stage – when I was married to Jacki Weaver – we had “ his and hers Rolls Royces”. Beautiful cars. Swedish leather. Walnut dashboard. They could turn on a sixpence.

I figured she was safe as houses inside about two and a half tonnes of Royal Blue tank. The joke was we lived in the soon-to-be-trendy Albert Park and didn’t have one garage to even park one of them.

One day a spiteful critic came along and wrote “Bring Back Claudia” on one of the Rollers in acid or brake fluid. Stripped the expensive paint back to the bare metal. The sad thing was that they got Jacki’s car and not mine.

Do cars maketh the man? I don’t know. I’ve never been into that “penis envy” psychobabble. If a car of mine stops and it is not out of petrol then I am bewildered and bereft. In the United States the first car I bought was a bright green Ford Falcon. The deal was organized by the former Motoring Editor of the Melbourne Herald – and later Melbourne’s Lord Mayor—Peter Costigan. It cost me 200 dollars and I bought it over dinner. Have a habit of doing that with cars and apartments.

When I was a teenager I sat in the local movie theatre at the “fleas and itches” on a Saturday arvo and saw that squeaky clean star, Pat Boone, in movies like “April Love” and “Bernadine”.

He was always driving these impossibly stylish duck egg blue Cadillac convertibles with aluminum engine blocks and “twin carbies” (whatever they were). I knew nothing about the stuff under the bonnet. But Pat Boone always got the girl. And, remember, I was a kid in New Zealand – the place where baby Austins go to die.

Maybe that is why, when I arrived in New York City, I bought a Thunderbird. White with a black Landau top and a wraparound black leather love seat in the back. The headlights had eyelids. This car was sex on wheels. Pat Boone, eat your heart out.

At one stage in New York, as the Bureau Chief for Fairfax, I inherited the company car. It was a Mark Ten Sedan Jaguar. In the 1970s it was easier to find a gynecologist than it was to find somebody who could tinker with a Jaguar.

I read the red leather bound instruction book once. It said to always warm up the engine “before perambulating”. I was lucky to even make sure the garage door was open at that time of the morning!

But it gets worse. I have succumbed. I have bought a new car purely out of passion. I saw it outside my local pub the other day and decided I wanted to own it. The precious owner’s wife said that it wasn’t for sale. It was a classic and hubby had told her he wanted to be buried in it and with it.

I told her that could be arranged. I’d toss him in the boot. And so, on a Sunday afternoon, I looked at a dreamboat, made him an offer, went for a ride, and bought four wheels of magic. >From next week I shall be the owner of a two-door, 1984 vintage Cadillac. Wooof!!!

I know it is crazy. I know it is a touch macho. And I have never been car crazy in my life. Last time I went to the Grand Prix I read the Sunday papers and got a golf cart ride home half way through the main event.

But I guess the Pat Boones lurk pretty close to the surface in all of us.

And, what the hell, I am 61 years old next week. I am Dancing With the Stars on Seven. My dancing instructor/partner is drop-dead gorgeous.

I am entitled to spoil myself with a Caddy!

January 30, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004