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My family are of a mechanical sort. My maternal grandfather sketched motorcycles in his schoolboy copy of Julius Caesar, and engineered heating and water systems for his summer house that remain the envy of Ragged Island, Maine. My father's ruling passion is vintage cars. There is always at least one pre-war beauty lounging across our garage in a state of undress. (We have the only house in the county that has more square feet devoted to sheltering cars than to sheltering people.)
So when the Ford Motor Company organised a demonstration of the first Aston Martin created under Detroit stewardship, it was only natural that my father and his cronies were invited. The demonstration took place at the Radnor Hunt Club, which is a country club for people who foxhunt. It oozes prestige, and people who care about Debutante Cotillions and The Right Circles care very much indeed about the Radnor Hunt Club. Its clubhouse, stabling, and kennels lie at the edge of the rolling pastureland and large estates of Chester County, just west of Philadelphia's Main Line.
The car aficionados were met on the front lawn of the Club by cheerful, smiling public relations executives of Aston Martin, who led them in pairs like Noah's beasts, each to a new DB7. My father and his friend Fred A--- were shown to their chariot, which my father noted with quiet disappointment was a coupe and - misery! - an automatic. (Our family fervently believes that every time a sportscar is made with an automatic transmission, a fairy dies.)
The parade of Anglo-American dream cars started up, led by a red Jaguar XK120 roadster acting as pace car. They toured the rolling hills and fields of Chester County, on two-lane roads bordered by neat stone walls. The speed was quick enough for mild excitement, and once or twice they even got out of third gear. After a pleasant half-hour excursion, they were led back to the Hunt Club, where lunch was to be served and pressure applied to spread the good word about Aston Martin's new owners.
A PR person bounded up to my father and Fred as they left their car and ambled towards the lunch tent. "Well, what did you think?" he chirped. Dad and Fred looked at each other. "It's a coupe," Fred shrugged. "The transmission is kind of... mushy," Dad added. "Sorry," Fred said.
The PR person leaned in close, conspiratorial. "I know what you mean. Tell you what - lunch won't start for another 20 minutes. Why don't you take that car over there for a spin, just the two of you?" The PR person indicated a convertible, stick-shift DB7. Even better, it was a convertible, stick-shift DB7 in the One True Colour of British Sportscars: racing green, with a tan interior*. Dad and Fred looked at the PR guy like all their Christmases had come at once.
Dad drove first. He motored at reasonable speed until the road turned out of sight of the Hunt Club, and then he put the pedal down. The car roared to happy life, and off they blasted, frightening livestock in nearby pastures. The car was somewhere comfortably in the middle of fifth gear as they came up to a sharp rise in the road. The men grinned at each other, and Dad gunned the engine a little faster.
As they hit the peak of the rise and all four wheels left the ground, Dad realised with sudden, stabbing horror that the road did a sharp 90-degree turn to the left below them. They were sailing through the air, straight for a low stone wall.
Instinctively, Dad wrenched the wheel over to the left. By some miracle of nature and Anglo-American engineering, the car touched down and turned on a half-inch of front wheel tyre, squealing in annoyance but staying on the road. Dad pulled the car over as soon as he could, and looked at Fred. "Uh... you want to drive for a while?"
This is the only recorded instance of my father (the man who lists "the day I realised Ferrari made certain models of car I didn't like" as one of the defining moments of his life) voluntarily surrendering the driver's seat of a convertible sportscar. Fred took the wheel, and drove at a slightly more cautious pace back to a lunch for which they had lost all appetite.
They replaced the car amongst the rest of its flock, and slipped as unobtrusively as possible into the lunch tent. However, as they slunk towards the food queue, they were ambushed by their guardian PR Person. "So?" he asked, radiating enthusiasm like a bad smell. "How was the convertible?"
Dad stared at his penny loafers, muttering pleasantries and edging towards the hors-d'oeuvres.
But not Fred.
Fred looked the PR guy straight in the eye and said in a concerned, solemn voice, "It's got a handling problem."
The PR guy's eyes opened wide. "What?"
Fred reached for a crabstick. "Steering isn't responsive at all when the car's airborne."
*For those not familiar with the True Gospel of Vintage Sportscar Colours, I summarise it here: British sportscars are British Racing Green. Italian sportscars are red, unless they are Bugattis, which are allowed to be blue. German sportscars are silver. Classic French sportscars are French Racing Blue. AC Cobras should be dark metallic blue with two white stripes. Stingrays should be red. Acceptable interior colours are tan, with black and red as secondary choices. Your Miata is not a sportscar.
[Durham, New Hampshire, December 2004]