My First Car

By Matt Stone

Available from:
Motorbooks, Minneapolis
www.motorbooks.com

Hard cover, 224 pages, $28.00

Reviewed by Larry Edsall
Zoom an e-mail to Larry

Does anyone not have happy memories of their first car, the vehicle that finally gave you the freedom of travel that seems to be one of the essential elements in the American Dream?

Well, actually, some do. Me, for example. My first car cost me $500 and while it did, indeed, grant me the freedom to travel, that freedom didn't last very long.

My first car was a used -- as it turned out, it actually was an abused -- early '60s Ford Fairlane, a car in those early days of downsizing that Detroit said was of "intermediate" size. Mine was a four-door sedan, white with a blue interior that I bought because I needed a car to go back and forth to college and to various events I covered on weekends for the local newspaper.

One of my father's co-workers was selling the car and we thought he was giving us a decent deal. We were wrong. He was getting rid of the car before it expired, which it did not very many months after I bought it. Funny, thinking about that transaction I now realize that I have not purchased another used car for my personal use since.

The reason for my trip down Nostalgia Road is Matt Stone's latest book, My First Car.

Stone's book shares the "my first car" stories of 65 auto racers, automotive executives, entertainers, athletes and others -- among the "others" are astronaut John Glenn, writer Tom Wolfe and artist Andy Warhol.

Several things struck me as I read those stories:

• The first cars owned by racers Tony Stewart (1979 Plymouth Volare) and Danny Sullivan (1955 Chevrolet Panel Wagon) both needed oil about as often as they needed to be refilled with gasoline (ah, yes, those wonderful days of "down a quart.").
• Peter Brock (1946 Ford) and Chip Foose (1956 Ford F-100) both sold their beloved first cars so they could pay to go to art school and pursue their passions not simply to drive cars but to design cars.
• Long before he could afford to buy his first car, drummer Neil Peart (1969 MGB) of the rock group Rush collected car badges and other automotive objects he found in his hometown of St. Catherines, Ontario. "Railroad crossings were good places to collect them," Peart tells Stone. "I considered it significant that in those locations I found more pieces that had fallen off of Chrysler products."
• Dan Ackroyd (1939 Dodge sedan) and Morgan Freeman (1952 Ford convertible) aren't just amazing actors, but wonderful storytellers.
• Some of Stone's subjects bought their first cars with their own money; others were given their first cars by their parents.

As someone who paid for his first car with money he earned working as a part-time newspaper reporter, I wish I'd have kept notes as I read the book about who paid his or her own money for his or her first car and who did not.

Among those who worked and paid his own money for his first car was Jay Leno (1934 Ford pickup). Leno bought the truck when he was 14, a Massachusetts schoolboy working part-time at McDonald's.

Leno spent two years restoring his Ford in anticipation of getting his driver's license -- and in the meantime he'd drive it back and forth, up and down the family's driveway.
To help finish the project, Leno's parents upholstered the bench seat in black Naugahyde.

One day, one of Leno's friends accidentally shattered the driver's-side window. Leno was sitting in a high school classroom when he saw the rain start.

"After about 20 minutes, I'd lost all hope for my upholstery," Leno tells Stone.

"Then I looked out the window and saw my dad. He'd left the office, and he and my mom had picked up a huge sheet of plastic. I'll never forget it. Sitting in math class watching those two 'old' people -- who were probably younger than I am now -- struggling while trying to cover my car with plastic. I started to cry. They were out there in the rain for probably 20 minutes, trying to cover my truck so it wouldn't be damaged. I'll never forget that."