Confessions of a Car Man

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Gran Torino

Saw the movie, “Gran Torino” starring Clint Eastwood the other night. Great movie! Completely politically incorrect, a state of being a lot of you know I hold dear to my heart.

What got me about the movie was the reference to the car, a green ‘72 Gran Torino fastback. It was very weird for me to being looking at a car when is being held in such reverence as a “classic” when I sold them brand new! It gave me great insight into how old I am and how long I’ve been doing this shit.

I used to say that you know you’ve been selling cars a long time when the cars you sold new were worth $100. Now I’m in a position that some of the cars I sold brand new are now considered classics. And a Gran Torino? Who would have guessed?

When I first went to work at Hayward Ford in late 1970, I recall a half dozen unsold Torinos going to seed along the side fence. These were high-performance models, 429 Cobra Jets with those hoods with a hole on the top for greater air intake. As I recall they were very hard to sell. One of them was a year old, and my brother declared it was either sell ‘em or give them a birthday party.

A few months ago, I got a phone call from a guy in New York. Apparently he had one of these cars and was looking for some information about its history. Through a series of calls he found me. Now my mind works in a weird way. I suffer from short-term CRS or as it is sometimes called Can’t Remember Shit. But as readers to this blog can attest, I can remember things that happened forty years ago like it was yesterday.

When the guy mentioned his car, it brought back of picture of them sitting side by side like ships in a mothball fleet. Trust me on this; Torinos were not part of Ford Mother Company’s golden age. As I recall their batteries were always deal and their spark plugs fouled. A royal pain in the ass.

Ironically when I asked the guy what the car was now worth, he told me 100K! Damn, I should have bought one of those suckers!

So you never know. Today’s iron is tomorrow’s classic, although I doubt seriously that a Toyota Corolla will be worth a lot of money forty years from now.

But then, you never know.


Talk to you later,



David


P.S. Note to the young people out there. My best guess for a car that will be worth big bucks forty years from now is one of the Chevy SSR trucks. I’d be tempted to buy one, but let’s face it; I won’t be around in forty years.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mom had a '71 Gran Torino. Not one of the hot rod versions, of course. It was avocado green, a very popular color for everything then from appliances to shag carpeting. And it was all green: the dash, seats, headliner, carpets. Anything that wasn't chromed was green. It was a sturdy car; Mom smashed the front end in three times while under the influence of pharmaceuticals. As befitting the common culture of 1970's Nevada there was hardly a thing called DUI (bad for the tourists). I'm sure it didn't hurt that she was young and cute. Once after an accident the officer told her to be careful because if she got in another accident on the way home he would have to give her a ticket! My grandmother used to keep an empty canvas bag (the type banks put coins in) in the car to use as a potholder to start and take the car out of park as the desert sun would make those chrome plated parts hot enough to burn flesh. I also had my first solo drive at 13 in the Torino, when my mother got drunk while cashing her check at the local watering hole, and she had me drive it down the street to where she was living.
Ah, the memories!

Anonymous said...

I too come from a dysfunctional family (They made the movie Prizzi's Pizza which was loosely based us) and my very first demo as a car salesman was a 73 Gran Torino SPORT. It was a 2-door, and had the wild paint job over the 'B' pillar just like in Starsky and Hutch! Like you, David, I was thrilled to be driving a brand new car, it was so much nicer than my (euphemism for feces) 63 Ford Falcon Futura convertible with the ragged and torn top and faded paint! I thought I died and went to heaven! I still vividly remember how cheap gas was in 1973! It was below $1 a gallon! WOW. AND it had F-310 (the forerunner to Techroline) in the fuel!

Anonymous said...

Eastwood's movie shows something that, in the war on hurt feelings and PC stuff that we've lost: the ability to laugh at our differences.