Oops, I did it again.
I was driving North on 101 with the three kids. We were going to Pump It Up, a kids gym in Belmont, something we do on Tuesdays and Fridays. Merging onto the freeway I saw the car, a bright orange classic car with a white top and a matte black bumper. I had no idea what it was. It looked like it might have been made in the 50s, but there was something more European about it, simpler, less bubbly and ridiculous somehow than the 50s cars I was used to seeing at car shows. And, well it was orange. A lovely retro orange – the color of an overripe tangerine. “Look at that car,” I sad to the kids. They all leaned forward in their seats. They have gotten used to me pointing out cars on the road now, and they do the same. “I think,” I said, seeing a white piece of paper in the window, “it’s for sale.”
Pablo Escobar. Almost as expensive as a coke habit.
I’m not sure when it started, this obsession with cars. I’d generally always thought of cars as something that transport me from A to B, that’s it pretty much. When I met Arun, he was always pointing out things about cars. “Check that out,” he’d say, “those are Mustang wheels on a Honda.” I asked him once why he was always looking at details on cars when we drove. He said it was something to do. So at some point I started to do the same. I started having opinions about after-market exhausts and wheel size. And then at some point I decided that the car I’d always wanted was a VW Scirocco. I liked their low profile, their boxy front, how they looked unassuming and mean all at once. After a considerable search, I located a white one in Seattle, Washington and flew to buy it. Because it was Alpine White, I named him Pablo Escobar after the cocaine drug lord. It was probably the worst purchase I’ve ever made. He was fraught with problems. And everybody knew it - from the trucking company that dropped it off, to the mechanic who tried for months to make it pass smog. Pablo sat in the garage for months, and then a year. The kids played in it. They asked to ride in it, but it wasn’t legal to drive the thing. Arun meant to fix it up. We both did really, imagining that a project car would be something we could do together, that it would give us a sense of satisfaction when it was all finished. But the reality was we had no time and no real knowledge of how to fix up the car. Compounding the problem was that each year the car was made, the parts were slightly different, meaning the 86 parts were different than the 87 parts, which were different than the 88 parts and so on. It was a nightmare. Finally, I told Arun we had to let Pablo go. I probably lost about $5,000 in the whole transaction, but when the new owner drove it out of my driveway, I felt like I’d finally freed myself from an irritating house guest who had long overstayed his welcome.
But then on the freeway the other day, the familiar and irrational desire overtook me once more. I wanted that car. The problem was (and it was considerable) was that no matter how close I tried to get, the sign was simply too small to read. He’d put some of the facts about the car in large font – the vintage and car model, a ‘59 Rambler American, but the rest was in maddeningly small font with the phone number the tiniest of all. It occurred to me (something that turned out to be true) that deep down the owner didn’t really want to sell the car, and so was doing a somewhat poor job of advertising…on purpose. I knew the feeling well, having myself allowed Craigslist “for sale” postings to expire when I was trying to sell Pablo. We followed him for several miles, and then lost him when he exited at 92 heading towards Half Moon Bay. “Darn it,” Hazel said. But before he slipped from view, I managed to scribble down his license plate with one of the kids’ markers.
Later that day, I searched Craigslist and other online car sale sites. None had the ‘59 Rambler. Through image searches I discovered it was a ‘59 AMC Rambler American Coupe. It was the second year they’d made the car and it had been lauded for its simplicity. AMC as a car manufacturer is now long gone. Over the next couple days I searched eBay and again Craigslist. I found two car clubs for the AMCs and emailed the presidents of both. Neither knew of that particular car and didn’t think the owner was in their club. They both wished me luck. With only the license plate to work with, I tried to do a reverse license plate search on a fairly shady website that promised to find me the registered owner for $29. It didn’t. Instead it directed me to dmv.gov. I felt like a fool. It seemed California had strict privacy laws about giving out the information, which was fair enough if you were a stalker, which was basically what I was starting to become. I let it go. But then a few days later I thought, well maybe I’ll give it one more shot. And this time I found a place that supposedly used private investigators to do these type of searches. It was even shadier than the other website; they had a form to fill out and on it I was to tell them why I wanted the information. The choices sounded very legitimate and official – none were: “I saw this car on the road, and I just really really want to have it.” So I picked one of the others. Later that day, they emailed me the search results. It was registered to a couple living in Newark, just over the Dumbarton Bridge. I took his name and plugged it into the first shady website that had been a bust and out popped their home phone. I called him and left him a rambling message, explaining that I’d seen his lovely orange car on the road and that I hoped I had the right man. I trailed off with apologies in case I didn’t. That night I got a call from a 510 area code. I picked up. “Hello” he said, “I’m the one with the orange Rambler.” I told him I had seen him on the road. “You were the black SUV right? With the kids in it? I saw you,” he laughed. “You were starting to make me feel self conscious following me like that.” He told me he had fallen back in love with the Rambler that week, and he wasn’t all that sure he wanted to sell it. He had, he said “a lot of cars” and each week he fell for one of them and couldn’t bear to part with the car of the week. This week it was the Rambler. “I understand,” I said. “I’ve felt the same about a car before.” We talked for a while and at the end he said, “Why don’t you come and see it tomorrow.”
The next morning, Arun and I drove over the Dumbarton bridge, to an industrial park, where the owner was at work in his machine shop. Arun had asked me the day before if I knew how much the car was – if I’d been able to see that on the sign. It was either $3,200 or $32,000, I told him, but I was pretty sure the comma had been after the three. But I wasn’t 100%. When we pulled into the parking lot, there was the car, just waiting for me. The owner, Pete, came out to greet us. We started talking cars, and I could see him relax a little. He told us he had four kids and we learned he had raised them all in Newark, that one had just gotten engaged in Tucson. We even learned how his son had proposed. He took us for a drive to an open space preserve and he saw friends of his out riding their bikes. We stopped and talked to them for a while through the window of the car. When they rode off on their bikes, he told us the couple had a son who had managed to kick heroin. He seemed to want to tell us everything. About everyone. Not in a nosy or gossipy way. He was just one of those people who loves his life and loves his cars and wants the best for everyone. When we pulled back into the parking lot he turned around in his seat and said to me: “So how can I help you?” I said that we would like to buy the car, but I understood his reluctance to sell it. He told us that the week before he’d had two signs on the car, not just the one I’d seen from a distance, and he’d taken one down because he was half changing his mind. He’d told his wife that if someone saw the remaining sign that week, he’d sell it to that person and if not, well they’d go ahead and keep it. “It’s for sale,” he said. “I’ll sell it to you.” He seemed to think the serendipitous event of me seeing it on the freeway that day was enough to part with it. And I’d been right about the price: $3,200. I was thrilled. We wrote him a deposit and after, he showed us around his machine shop, an immaculate workspace full of industrial machines where he made car parts. We left him as he was getting ready to change the oil in his son’s girlfriend’s car. She’d brought him a Starbucks I noticed. I thought it was sweet.
On Friday of next week, we’re going to pick the car up. A car that for three children is supremely impractical. A car with no seat belts in the back. A car that probably doesn’t go much more than 60 miles an hour, foot to the floor. But I mean, come on, look at it.
I loves him.
'59 AMC Rambler American Coupe. All the chrome has been painted a matte black. I like it.
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