Le Grand Le Mans

I had a car once. I have a car now.

I've had a lot of cars, actually. One was a 1979 Pontiac Grand Le Mans which I got from a good friend of mine, when my previous car, a 1986 Honda Civic with 167,000 miles on it died after I'd only had it for about three months.

When I got the Le Mans, I asked my friend if it had air conditioning. He said, "Yes, it has a 260 air conditioning system." When I asked how that particular system works his response was "You roll down two windows and drive at 60 miles an hour."

My Dad spoke Sicilian and used to refer to old jalopies as "Ska-sha-bons," which is a phonetic spelling. The term basically translates to "Break The Bank," which is what you had to do to get money to fix the old cars. If he was on the phone with a friend who spoke the language (which was often) and they asked him what kind of car he was driving these days he'd say "I have the Italian Buick, you know, the Ska-sha-bon." Ostensibly my Le Mans would have fit into that category.

But actually the car was great. It had a rebuilt engine AND a rebuilt transmission. It ran great. It NEVER had a breakdown, but for one time and that wasn't even really a breakdown. I was driving home and all of a sudden it stopped running. The engine had sputtered out and it dropped dead and I figured it was the fuel pump. I called my mechanic and he came to tow it.

I got back to my apartment and within two hours received a phone call. (Please picture my mechanic as you read this next line, he's one of those old salty dudes with a cigarette perpetually hanging out of his mouth, even around the flammable liquids that one always finds in a garage) "You need to put gas in your car if you want it to run. That'll be $25 for the tow and $25 for the gas. Come get it. CLICK." Oops. I had forgotten. Still, one $50 non-repair in two years is better than most cars, even new ones. The only other time I had to do work on it was when the muffler fell off. A friend of mine who is very handy with car repairs repaired it for me with an old washing machine exhaust pipe and some muffler putty. That held up better than what most muffler shops would have done for $350.

Let's take a look at the Le Mans and break down its most important parts.



1. The cool 1970's style "Three-Prong" steering wheel.

2. The jet plane style dashboard with many informative gauges.

3. The Art Deco Pontiac Emblem.

4. The name of the car in script right above the taillight held together with "taillight adhesive."

5. The cool vinyl roof just like Dad used to have on his car!

6. The clean new engine, used in the original Ford Model-T and rebuilt just for me.

7. A hood so wide you could drive the car to the beach and get laid on it (leave the engine running so that you and your lovers' asses will stay warm).

I have to admit that I loved this car, even though I had to put up with a lot of stupid comments about it from idiots who drive cars that talk to you, tell you what street you're on, and have someones voice coming out of the sun visor if you breakdown or lock your keys in them (you could still get the keys out of this one with the old fashioned "hangar method").

Once a neighbor who lives in my apartment complex asked me if "that car is from the 50's?" He was dead serious. I told him it was the car that FDR used at his third inauguration in 1941 and apparently he bought it. Another neighbor sarcastically mentioned that it probably cost me more in gas per week to run it than the car cost me to begin with. I told him that I bought the car from a homeless pimp for five bucks and that as part of the deal he taught me how to syphon gas so that wouldn't be a problem. He walked off in a huff. When he wasn't looking I kicked his Escalade and that tripped a mechanism that caused the OnStar to come on. I asked the customer service person if he could send someone over with a hangar since the keys were locked in it.

Eventually I had to get rid of that Grand Old Le Mans. Another friend offered me a 1994 Buick Skylark (my current car) and since I didn't think the Le Mans was going to pass inspection with out expensive repairs to the emmissions system, I decided to give it up. My eyes were tearing when the junk man towed it away, mainly because his truck blew exhaust in my eyes.

My '94 Skylark is at least from the latter part of the 20th century so it sort of fits in with all the cars driving around today. I'm grateful to the friend who I got it from and its been pretty worry free, though now for some reason its running hot. Not to hard to fix though.

If I pass you in one of my old clunkers while your nice new $50,000 Hummer is broken down on the side of the road, I'll wave to you and give a shout out to the guy from OnStar. I may even offer you a ride in my car's rumble seat.