REPRINT FROM TRAFIKJOURNALEN #3 1991
BASEBALL, HOT DOGS, APPLE PIE AND EARL PONDEROSA
Believe it or not, but my camera was big enough to shoot the whole car in just one picture.
American cars. I can’t say that I have really been in love with them ever (except for my 1930 Ford Model A that I restored in the early 70s and that still is a faithful companion that I probably never will sell, another story that we will leave for another time, maybe). But as a car-o-holic they will pop up in your life every now and then, and they do have their strong (and weak) points.
One time when it happened to me personally was in 1980 when my wife had some idea that we had to get a “safe and practical family car” which in my eyes could be about anything except for maybe a Bridgell Faith. But somehow my friend, the car dealer, had some success with convincing me that the 1974 Earl Ponderosa that he just had imported from the states should be the car that was the perfect fit for us. Practical? Absolutely, as long as you didn’t have to park it. Safe? Probably about as safe as a tank inside acres and tonnes of steel. At least to me, it felt like a good idea at the time.
The beast almost looked as a parody of the 70s. It was only six years old at the time but still looked like a dinosaur (considering both its size and that it seemed to be from a completely different era) with its brown interior, brown vinyl roof, brown wood paneling, brown everything except the paintjob in an orange colour that would have made Televerket jealous. However, I was somewhat sold on the idea, should get a good deal on it and he told me that I could as well borrow it for some days to see what I thought about it.
I arrived at home and expected to get some praise for my wise decision but as usual my wife was somewhat more skeptical to my good ideas.
“Isn’t this beast a challenge to drive?”
“Nah, it has got power steering, power brakes, power everything, automatic transmission, cruise control, to make it any easier to drive you would have to install an autopilot”, I tried.
“But I guess it will drink a lot of fuel?”
“Not more than an Olsson with automatic transmission”, I lied.
Still being somewhat skeptical she seemed OK with the idea to try it out for some days. Fact was actually that we should be at a wedding some days later that required quite a long trip, which should be the challenge that really would show what this modern interpretation of the conestoga wagon was good for. And at that moment I was still convinced that she would change her mind if she only had the chance to experience how perfectly this car was tailored to our needs.
Many of you readers probably know how much of a struggle it can be when you have to get your family ready for something. When the day that could make or break our ownership of the Earl finally came, I was totally convinced that we would arrive late when I loaded up the wagon with fighting children and a wife that managed to find about 3000 things that had to be done before we could leave home. Trying to hide how annoyed I was, I told her to get into the driver’s seat, so she should have the chance to see what the Earl was good for.
“But don’t drive like a snail now”, I told her. “We will probably be late anyway!”
“There is no way I am going to drive like a maniac with the kids in the car”, she replied. “And it would really be great to be stuck in a police control too, to make things even worse and be even more late!”.
“Yeah, whatever”, I said with an annoyed voice, “I never told you to speed, I just told you to hurry up a bit”.
When we left our block, she said that I was right, it was very easy to drive. And how comfortable and quiet it was, simply amazing.
“Yes, you can say a lot of things about the Americans, but one thing is for sure, they do know how to build comfortable cars!”, I said.
Truth is that I don’t really know how comfortable I was, annoyed about how late we were going to be, and listening to the kids arguing and fighting in the back seat. But I didn’t even bother to stop them since I was just tired at everything and basically had given up. Tired enough to make the wallowy suspension and whispering V8 put me to sleep, probably dreaming about something nice, a barn find of a Bugatti Atlantic maybe, or why not just quiet and nice children. The later thing, though, was what I woke up to when we arrived outside the church. “Great”, I thought, “they finally got tired of arguing about whatever it was”. For some reason, the parking lot outside the church was rather empty though.
“You told me that we were going to be late”, she said, “but it seems like we are the first ones to arrive. And we are definitely on time!”.
I looked at the clock on the fake burlwood dashboard and saw how early we were. “She must have been driving like a complete maniac”, I thought, and seeing the white faces of the totally quiet children in the backseat kind of confirmed my idea. I started to wonder if she had gone completely nuts, but didn’t say something, this wasn’t really the time for more arguing.
“But I don’t really like the way it handles at speed”, she told me.
“Well, american cars aren’t really great at that”, I said, “but you will get used to it”, while I was thinking “Yeah, at the speeds you must have been driving I am not surprised”.
“And I must say that the fuel gauge was dropping very fast, I thought you said that they aren’t that heavy on the gas?”
“Maybe the gauge isn’t that exact”, I answered.
What answered a lot, however, was the next time I sat down in the car and looked at the speedometer.
“MPH”
For some reason it seems like they had forgotten both to swap it out and to notice at the registration that it still was equipped with the wrong speedo for the european market.
For a couple of different reasons we did not end up with an Earl, but rather a car that ironically enough looked like its little brother, a complete dog of an IP Lily station wagon, and when we sold that one it felt like the luckiest day in my whole life, but that is another completely different story that we will save for later.
See you in next issue, and remember, everything was better in the good old days!
We ended up with an asian parody of the Ponderosa instead (brochure picture shown). Good grief!
@patridam
Well, I guess that you understand.
)
