<50miles
Active Member
Hello One and All
I don’t know how many people on this site read Road and Track magazine, if not you have missed some excellent writing from Peter Egan. Not only does he paint a beautiful picture of what it is like to be infatuated with various forms of hardened steel and bitter machinery, he is also very realistic in how insane it can turn you.
And on that note I will write the following.
Back in 1995 I saw a 3.0cs in a car lot and was . . . well - struck by its focused presence. So what did I do? I asked how much and was told it would cost me 10K. Being poor, I said thank you for the information and moved on. One year later I came across an advertisement for a 1972 3.0CSA. It was Polaris over red leather interior so I went to look. At the time I did not see anything but a beautiful car with what I thought were minor problems. Isn’t lust pathetic?
Anyway, once I got the car and brought it to my soon to be brother in-laws garage (I had none because I was poor) I noticed problems. And the more I looked at it the more problems I saw. However, being struck as I was it didn’t bother me. I didn’t need to drive it. I could just look at it. Problem solved. That was the state of my delirium until my brother in-law asked me what I was going to do with it. Good question. On the heels of such an inquiry I went looking for a mechanic. And I found one – a jaguar mechanic. Based on my father’s experience with jaguars, if there was anyone on this earth that I thought who could jump into the middle of a smoldering pile of carnage and figure it out, that would be the person.
Of course . . . I was wrong. Although the mechanic is a nice person, he promised way more than he could deliver. As a consequence of this, and much late night head shaking, and hearing about other people’s health issues, and how difficult it was to get good help, and how the position of the sun on any given day and decrease ones efficiency, the car is currently in pieces at a jaguar shop in Edmonton, Alberta. And for that very reason, and to remind myself of my sickness, I have given myself the name <50miles because this car indeed has less than 50 miles on it since I purchased it 15 years ago!!!
Maybe I should have called myself: Gott im himmel.
I guess I am lucky that the car is inside and not rusting away at the back of my place (although I am no longer poor, I am not rich enough to have a garage big enough to park multiple cars in, let alone projects).
I hope you found this lamentation entertaining.
I think there should a category for all of this in the DSM.
Thanks for reading.
Andrew
I don’t know how many people on this site read Road and Track magazine, if not you have missed some excellent writing from Peter Egan. Not only does he paint a beautiful picture of what it is like to be infatuated with various forms of hardened steel and bitter machinery, he is also very realistic in how insane it can turn you.
And on that note I will write the following.
Back in 1995 I saw a 3.0cs in a car lot and was . . . well - struck by its focused presence. So what did I do? I asked how much and was told it would cost me 10K. Being poor, I said thank you for the information and moved on. One year later I came across an advertisement for a 1972 3.0CSA. It was Polaris over red leather interior so I went to look. At the time I did not see anything but a beautiful car with what I thought were minor problems. Isn’t lust pathetic?
Anyway, once I got the car and brought it to my soon to be brother in-laws garage (I had none because I was poor) I noticed problems. And the more I looked at it the more problems I saw. However, being struck as I was it didn’t bother me. I didn’t need to drive it. I could just look at it. Problem solved. That was the state of my delirium until my brother in-law asked me what I was going to do with it. Good question. On the heels of such an inquiry I went looking for a mechanic. And I found one – a jaguar mechanic. Based on my father’s experience with jaguars, if there was anyone on this earth that I thought who could jump into the middle of a smoldering pile of carnage and figure it out, that would be the person.
Of course . . . I was wrong. Although the mechanic is a nice person, he promised way more than he could deliver. As a consequence of this, and much late night head shaking, and hearing about other people’s health issues, and how difficult it was to get good help, and how the position of the sun on any given day and decrease ones efficiency, the car is currently in pieces at a jaguar shop in Edmonton, Alberta. And for that very reason, and to remind myself of my sickness, I have given myself the name <50miles because this car indeed has less than 50 miles on it since I purchased it 15 years ago!!!
Maybe I should have called myself: Gott im himmel.
I guess I am lucky that the car is inside and not rusting away at the back of my place (although I am no longer poor, I am not rich enough to have a garage big enough to park multiple cars in, let alone projects).
I hope you found this lamentation entertaining.
I think there should a category for all of this in the DSM.
Thanks for reading.
Andrew