VROOM VROOM

Once upon a time when I was a teenager in the Midwest, Friday and Saturday summer nights were for driving around. We’d cruise the streets and take in the impromptu car shows at the local drive-ins (not the theaters). This was the era of the true muscle car, not the pale imitative posers on offer today. Muscle cars are a uniquely American culture feature. They had big, powerful engines and could go crazy fast. The coolness factor of driving such a car can’t be overstated.

There was a protocol involved. The guys would back into the parking spaces and then immediately start polishing an already immaculate, glistening paint job. No one was ever allowed to touch the cars. Most of the drivers would pop the hood to display the engine, and serious technical discussions ensued. Not coincidentally, this was also the era of drag racing. Some drivers had street tires on the car but had “racing slicks” stashed in the trunk. Race challenges were issued for later that night, to be run on streets that had a much lower potential for police presence than the main drag with the drive-ins. Street tires would be switched for racing tires. If the challenge was serious enough the drivers raced for pink slips, and the losing driver could lose his car to the winner. That may be apocryphal, though; I’m not aware of anyone who actually lost their car in a race.

At the time, my dad owned and ran a used car lot. I often drove various cars that he either bought to resell or that had been traded in. One time he had a Thunderbird sedan come in that was in pretty good condition, but it wasn’t tricked out and had kind of a dull finish. There was nothing that visibly stood out about it, and my dad and I didn’t know much about car engines. I drove it one day to run a few errands. While I was out, it so happened that I was at a stop light on a straightaway when a muscle car pulled alongside in the next lane. The driver glanced over at the Thunderbird and immediately revved his car’s engine in the well-recognized challenge to run. The light changed to green, I hit the gas and blew him away.

When I got home, I was so excited and the first thing I did was tell my dad that I had won a drag race. He got this funny look on his face and popped the hood on the car. The loafers who hung around the car lot did know about car engines, and it turned out that Thunderbird had a stock 390, v8 engine. That’s some serious power right there. Surprisingly, I didn’t get in trouble for the drag race, but that car was sold so fast its tires smoked.