Counting in Car Years

I shared a house with three friends during my last couple years of college. One day I managed to push one of them too far. Maybe I left my dishes in the sink or hadn’t mowed the grass when it was my turn. My friend, who liked to consider himself the house dad, decided it was his place to lecture me about whatever it was I hadn’t done.

I wasn’t the easiest 20-year-old on the planet to live with, but I must’ve really gotten under his skin that day — so much so that he figured his light artillery was ineffective. As a result, he reached down deep to drop a bomb. He stared me straight in the eyes, and with breath full of contempt, said, “And by the way, you’re never going to finish that car.”

He was referring, of course, to the derelict Chevelle that consumed most of my daydreams, free time and spare cash.

Nothing else he ever said during our decade-long friendship had registered anywhere on my “Can’t-take-it-back-O-Meter,” but on that day he put the needle in the red. I just couldn’t let it go. Here was a guy whom I had been friends with for years, and one who knew as well as anyone how important that old car was to me. He was all at once attacking my ambition, my determination, and, at the root of it, my sense of self.

Time flies

In fairness to my friend, I had been working on my Chevelle for nearly two years at that point. I wasn’t trying to take forever to get it done, but it must’ve seemed that way to the uninformed. I believed I was ahead of the curve, so long as we were measuring in car years.

For example, a friend of mine, a man who just so happens to be the most talented fabricator and custom-car builder I’ve ever known, laments the fact that his daily-driver-turned-project car is five years removed from moving under its own power. This guy can run circles around most men half his age, but he also can’t leave well enough alone. His exasperation with the process is palpable, but he simply can’t shake his need to handmake or tweak virtually every component on every vehicle he touches. It’s one of the traits I most appreciate and admire about him, because everything he finishes is worth the wait.

I’ve even come to accept the fact that he may never complete his most incredible project, but I certainly don’t hold that against him the way my old friend did with me. In fact, I think a small part of me may be disappointed if he ever does say, “Done.”

My dad is a more dramatic case. He took a ’53 Studebaker Silver Hawk apart sometime around 1985, and he hasn’t turned a single bolt on it since. He’s dismantled and reassembled (at least partially…) several other cars in that time, but the Stude still waits. Most folks would consider the death of that old car as a foregone conclusion at this point, but my dad still considers it to be in the planning stages. He swears he’s just getting other projects out of the way first.

Over time I’ve come to realize that, as with any near-death or soul-crushing experience, rebuilding an old car from the ground up changes a person in a way that only those who have done it can truly understand. I’m not sure if there’s some part of our souls that simply needs to be tortured, or if it’s just that we’re the type of people who prefer the journey over the destination. Either way, our perception of time becomes forever mutilated in a space where hours disappear into days, days into months, and months into years.

What’s done

I mentioned the story of my college friend a while back to Editor Pickering over burgers, and I felt the pride welling up inside as I reflected back on just how wrong my old friend had been.

If felt good to know that he had been wrong about the car, and it felt even better to know that he had been wrong about me. But it was then, as I sat there basking in the light of my own personal splendor, that Pickering stared me straight in the eyes and said, “Well, he was right. You’re not going to ever finish that car, ya know, completely. Why would you?”

Here’s a guy who knew exactly how much that old car meant to me. He’s turned wrenches with me and is well aware of how much I’ve accomplished thus far.

I sat there, staring at my burger, and I realized he was all at once affirming my ambition, my determination, and, at the root of it, my sense of self.

Pickering gets it. So does my dad. So does my fabricator friend.

We car people may be on our own schedule — one that friends, family, and even spouses may never fully understand. But at least we’re in great company.