Soul

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Gordy Hyde writes:

> Something tells me it is all about SOUL, which cannot be captured by
> others than the romantic Italians.  

All cars from all countries have character.  The question is simply
whether you *like* that car's character, about which each person is his
or her own final arbiter of taste.

I seriously believe a Toyota Corolla has every bit as much character as
a Giulietta Sprint Veloce.  The Toyota's character is that of a
mass-produced transportation module meant to be consumed, ignored, and
finally thrown away at the end of its profitable life, and every nut,
bolt, connector and plastic panel on the car screams that character
every bit as loudly as the Giulietta screams Mille Miglia.  I happen to
be particularly warped by the echoes of the Mille Miglia (or in the case
of my '67 Giulia GT 1300 Junior, maybe it's the echoes of the GTAs
beating the world in the FIA Makes championship 1965-67), and I value
that link to the car's heritage more than I value set-it-and-forget-it
ignorability.  Doesn't mean that I think the person who really needs a
car they don't have to care about is wrong.

One of my best friends has a '66 Bentley which he's as deeply in love
with as anyone here is about his or her Alfa.  We spent a Saturday two
weekends ago stripping off the chrome from his car im preparation for a
repaint, finding all the connectors, fasteners and -- more important --
logic behind the many ways each piece of brightwork was fitted.  Now, I
had no interest in ever owning a Bentley before that Saturday.  I still
don't; my vision of the Ideal Car is the Lotus Seven, and the more a car
diverges from that ideal, the less it excites me.  A car that weighs
over four thousand pounds is, obviously, about as far as its possible to
get from Chapman's little coffin on wheels.  But I have a much deeper
understanding, even an actual fondness, for the Bentley.  It's a
charming car, and the evident care and concern that went into its design
and construction is now apparent to me.

That's why I'd also suggest to the owner of the 1980 280Z (actually a
ZX, if that's the correct year, a car with a radically different
character from the original Z) that he's missing out on a very, very
enjoyable piece of the car-enthusiast puzzle.  So many people who don't
"get their hands greasy" think that the rest of us are always working on
our cars because we *have* to.  In fact, the neighbors who found my
friend and me stripping the trim off his Bentley asked only whether we
saved a lot of money by removing the trim ourselves, thereby missing a
major portion of the point.

Working on a car -- any car -- causes a shift in one's relationship to
that car.  If only because you get to see how it's put together, taking
a car apart makes you closer to it.  Putting it back together -- better
than before, if possible, or at least having put right the reason you
dismantled it -- and then making it run brings you closer still.  I will
always cherish the memory of the time, many years ago, when this was
first revealed to me, in a gradually growing moment of enlightenment.  I
was sitting at a stoplight in my first sports car, a small British
roadster, on which I'd recently been successful (after long frustration)
in rebuilding and synchronizing the SU carburettors.  The engine ticked
over smoothly while I waited for the light, I blipped the throttle and
the revs climbed and dropped as expected --

And I had the sudden realization that I knew *every piece* of the
linkage that connected my reflexive dipping of the right foot on the gas
pedal with the rise and fall of the exhaust note.  How the cable hooked
into the accelerator pedal shaft... where it came through the
firewall... how it passed through an opening in the carb heat shield...
how the little screw fitting connected to the funny linkage between the
carbs... how the linkage operated the U-shaped forks that caused the
throttle plates to twist... how the dashpot lifted under engine vacuum,
pulling the needle up out of the fuel metering jet to enrich the
mixture... every piece of the induction system on that car was working
in harmony, *because I had put it there*.  

The car was running, not merely because I'd put gas in it and turned the
key.  The car was running because of the efforts of my hands, and back,
and mind, because I'd puzzled out not only how to get the carbs back
together, but how to get them balanced and synchronized, and because I
hadn't given up.

In that moment, I saw that that old M.G. had become *my car* in a way
that a mountain of pink slips could never replace.

A car with that much of the owner's time and energy in it runs on equal
parts mechanical engineering and sheer force of will.  And that's
something that I cherish about all the cars I've worked on.  I've always
said -- usually whenever a list like this one argues about some magic
unguent or additive that is supposed to revive dead paint or cure
flagging performance -- that the only sure-fire, never-fails substance
that works on all cars of all nations is the owner's sweat.  (Plus a
little blood, perhaps, with some knuckle-skin behind it.)

Which may be why I can see the character, the individuality, the soul if
you will, in so many kinds of cars.  I don't look with my eyes, I look
with the grease under my fingernails.

Enjoy your cars!

- --Scott Fisher

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