Auto Erotica

Author’s Note:  This post involves tons of luxury automobile name-dropping.  If you suffer from car-envy, you’d better skip it.

In 1976, after a whirlwind courtship, my then husband Bill marched me into Howard Orloff’s foreign car dealership, spread his arms expansively and said, “What color do you want?”  (That question would go down in history as one of the best ever directed at me.)

I picked silver.  Jaguar threw in the rest- an XJ6L with a blue interior.  Bill plunked down $14,000 hard cash. (Can you believe that?) And I waltzed out on cloud nine with an incredibly beautiful car.  I LOVED that car.  It was a knockout- so sleek, so elegant.  I had never owned anything that nice in my life- and I took it as a symbol of Bill’s love and esteem, too.

I gingerly drove it home to the garage in our apartment building.  I nervously parked it.  Would it be okay down there with all the other cars?  Bill read my mind, and the next day he brought me door “blankets”- thick protective padding that attached to the car’s sides by magnets.  This assured the Jaguar of a good night’s rest undisturbed by careless dings from other parkers who didn’t care about it with the same rabid devotion as me.

I pampered that baby daily.  (I hadn’t even dreamt of Natasha yet.  So all my maternal instincts were channeled into the Jag.)  I drove it with a hyper-vigilance of a paranoid demolition derby contestant.  And every night, when I pulled into my parking space, I would tuck it in with its protective bedding and give thanks that I had made it through another dangerous obstacle course of narrow city side streets, crazed taxi cabs, rogue Chicago buses and careless Coke delivery trucks.

This was my routine for the first month or so.  And then one morning my new husband dropped the bomb.

“I have to borrow your car today.  Switch cars with me.”

I didn’t hesitate for a second.  “No.”

“I need to borrow your car,” he patiently explained. “I am driving some customers around and my car only has two seats.”

“No.  I do not want anyone driving my car and I hate driving anyone’s else’s.  What if something happens?  I’m not comfortable and nothing you can say will make me change my mind.”

I stood firm.  I absolutely loathe driving other people’s cars.  I have a real phobia about it.

“The business paid for that car,” he reminded me.

“Here’s the keys.”

I spent the rest of that day in a cold sweat.  I had to drive out to the suburbs in his little Mercedes 450SL and I was a wreck.  All the buttons were different, all the markings were strange, and when it started to sleet, I actually had to jump out in the Winnetka ravines and clear off the windshield by hand because I couldn’t locate the wipers.  When I finally pulled into our garage unscathed I breathed a sigh of relief that heaved me all way up into our apartment.  I was still unwinding when I heard Bill at the door.  I ran to meet him.  (Those were the honeymoon days.)

“Hi, honey!” I said with a kiss. “How are you?”

He gave me a sheepish grin.  “Actually, I didn’t have a very good day today.”

“What’s the matter?  Did you lose at tennis?” I asked, very concerned for my new hubby’s state of mind.

“No, I didn’t lose at tennis.  A van ran a red light at Mid-Town Tennis Club and totalled your car.”

“That’s really funny,” I grinned.  “Come on, you can tell me.”

“No, I’m perfectly serious.  Some kids ran a light and t-boned your car.  It’s a wreck.”

I stood there blinking.  I could not take this in.  (And let me say up front that he looked fine. Not a hair out of place.  He clearly hadn’t been hurt.)

“Are you telling me my car is outside?  In the cold?” I was in a state of shock and denial.

“Outside?  What I’m telling you is that your car is now a twisted piece of junk in a gas station near Midtown.”

I swooned.  He had to take me out of town to revive me- and promise to restore my car to as good as new.

Two months later the shop called and told me to come get it.  All seemed fine as I was driving on the Outer Drive toward our love nest.  Until I noticed a strange fog that seemed to encapsulate my car.  Other people seemed to be noticing too.  Drivers were honking and waving and pointing.  They all seemed to be aware of what I decided must be that “Lake Effect” that I heard the weathermen talk about.

Finally I thought I had better pull off and see what the fuss was about.  The “Lake Effect” was smoke.  My engine was on fire.

I ran across the street to a pay phone and called Bill.  “My car is on fire!  What do I do?”

“Pop the hood and tell me how high the flames are,” he helpfully suggested.

Uh. No.  The rest is a blur.  Somehow the car fire was doused and I got home.  The Jaguar went back to the shop where it was discovered that they had neglected to hook up the radiator hoses.  It was gone again for a very long time but this time around Bill had it show-painted for me as a consolation prize and it looked great.

The car got returned just in time to spend the next winter in the garage.  We had recently moved to Barrington Hills, a bucolic suburb, and our new house had a very long driveway.  With a snow accumulation of more than an inch, the low-clearance Jag couldn’t negotiate it.  It sat idle until spring.

After Natasha was born, I asked Bill to bring the Jag to take me home from the hospital because I knew its very cushy ride would be just the thing the ob-gyn ordered.  Then we all moved to Winnetka.  The next year I was driving my stepdaughter, Patti, around when a little old man hit us.  We weren’t hurt but the car was a mess.  Again.

“Look what you did!” I screamed at him.  “This car is a Jaguar!  This car has a custom paint job!  Do you have any idea how long that took?”

He shrugged.  And the car was gone again for months.  This time to Imperial Motors in Wilmette.  After another body shop eternity, they called and told me it was as good as new.  I picked it up, drove it 0.76 miles (according to Mapquest) and it died at the Kenilworth train station two minutes later.  They flat-bedded it back to their body shop.

When I finally got the car back it never worked perfectly again.  The electrical system was screwed up, it was always over-heating, I couldn’t run the AC for more than ten minutes and the power windows refused to cooperate.  I had to open the door to toss in change at toll booths.  But it was gorgeous.

By 1981 I still loved it but I was tired of the never-ending adventure that driving the Jag had become.  I reluctantly traded it in for the most dependable tank of a car I could find- a Mercedes 300D.  D as in diesel.  Driving that car was always a dull moment.

(This was definitely not the car I was supposed to be driving however.  Bill, in his frenzy to have a boy after four daughters, promised that he would buy me a Rolls Royce Corniche convertible if I delivered.  On April 21, 1980 I did.  But he didn’t.)

Post script:  I walked into the Mercedes dealership a couple of months after the trade-in and I was greeted by our salesman, Bob.  “How do you like the car, Mrs. Ross?’ he asked.

“It’s fine, Bob, but it’s no Jaguar.  I miss it every day,” I sighed.

“Oh, that reminds me,” he said.  “We sold your car the same day you brought it in.  It was so beautiful that it flew off the lot.”

“No surprise there,” I agreed.

“Yeah, but three days later it blew up on the lady who bought it.  Was she angry!  It’s the first time the State’s Attorney’s office was ever called in on us.  You got out just in time.

Ah well.  Looks, as we all know, can be deceiving.  Guess I’m a sucker- in cars and in men- for a pretty face.

Safety Tip to self:  Always remember to check with previous owner before buying.