ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 2, 1996 TAG: 9609040024
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK HOROWITZ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
It was Erica - teen-age, curious - who launched the question as we rambled through the neighborhood one morning:
"Could this car ever be considered a classic?"
I hadn't really thought of it that way before. It was certainly old enough to be a classic. (It was older than Erica). If it never quite had the pizzazz, the crowd appeal, of some cars in its generation - well, there are other factors that go into classic-hood, aren't there?
"Sure," I concluded. "I guess in some ways it could be considered a classic - why do you ask?"
``'Cause if it's a classic," she replied, "we could sell it for a lot of money and get a new car." |n n| It's time to say goodbye to the Nova, nearly two decades young and still pumping. A first-generation Nova, this car of mine - not the callow pretender that bore the resurrected nameplate for a few years in the late '80s, but the genuine, original article. My Nova was new when Jimmy Carter was new, when discos were hot, when the best seat on Broadway cost $16.50 and chuck steaks went for 69 cents a pound.
This Nova seated five in comfort and six after softball games. Back then, back in 1977, they called it a "compact." Now it looks like the Queen Mary. It was a family-size car bought when I lived alone. Now that I have a family, it's being put out to pasture. Tyler will be so pleased.
Old friend Tyler used to ride in the Nova - after softball games, after hockey games. He could never understand the attraction. "A writer should be driving something sporty," he'd say, week after disdainful week. "A writer can't be driving something like this."
By "this," he meant "staid." He meant "sober." He meant "orange."
It seemed like a good idea at the time, a bright-orange car - "Burnt Orange," I think Chevy called it. Once upon a time, in fact, "Burnt Orange" was a hot Nova color; you'd see them everywhere. You still see them occasionally - built to last, after all, that's what Novas were. And unforgettable, in their own highly ordinary way.
There was that vacation postcard from Tyler, who'd moved out of town years earlier. He'd picked this particular card, he wrote, not because of the picture on it, but because of the orange border around it. It reminded him of my Nova, he said, "unless, of course, you've finally sold it to a librarian."
I hadn't sold it to anyone.
The upholstery was plaid. Once upon a time, plaid seats were very popular, too; you'd see them everywhere you saw the Nova. As the years rolled by, you'd even see the same plaid holes in the same plaid places on different Novas. (I'd check.) The white squares were the most fragile; they'd wear out long before the black squares or the brown squares would.
I finally replaced the plaid, just drove to an auto-refurbishing place and signed up for a hardy tweed. With orange highlights, of course - I still wanted it to match. It was a practical decision, tweed, although in retrospect I'm convinced it cost the Nova a bit of its character. The Nova never complained.
It never complained about anything. Oh, there were the occasional balky moments after I'd leave it alone for days at a stretch. (Airport parking lots seemed particularly likely to bring out a jealous streak: Why was I traveling in anything else?) But most of the time, hot times and cold, I could turn the key, step on the gas and off we'd roll.
There were giggles once in the larger world, when Chevy tried pushing the car into foreign markets and someone finally noticed that "No va" in Spanish means "doesn't go."
It always "va"ed for me.
Was it the most perfect car on the road? Not by a long shot. The lock on the glove compartment rattled. The air conditioning died years ago.
And the various leaks, the embarrassing incontinence of increasing years? A definite plus, as far as I was concerned. I never had to change the oil; it was never in there long enough to get dirty. Liquid running out of my Nova simply wasn't a problem.
The problem was liquid running in.
Rust: my Nova's tragic flaw.
It was a small thing at first, a gap somewhere in the weather-stripping that let rain trickle into the trunk and collect in pockets near the wheel wells. When it drizzled, the trunk turned damp and musty. When it poured, there were puddles inches deep down there. It was almost charming: a sudden start, a sudden stop, and it was like listening to the ocean. I always meant to get it fixed.
Eventually the water would evaporate, until the next rain or the next trip to the car wash. (Yes, I took it to the car wash - not as often as some people took their cars to the car wash, but yes.) But before the water evaporated, it would gnaw just a little bit more of the insides away, until you could see some of the insides from the outside. I plugged and I patched, but it was already too late - cosmetically speaking, my Nova was cruising down the road to ruin.
On the other hand, Burnt Orange was looking like a better choice all the time; the spreading rust didn't look all that different from the original paint job. You want that in a car with standing water.
In the end, it wasn't any one thing that convinced me. Not the mechanical lapses - still rare, though more frequent now. Not the look of it - still dowager-handsome, if far from glamorous. Not the family's growing reluctance to ride in it for long trips ("What if it breaks down somewhere?") or for short hops ("What if somebody sees us?")
Not, for that matter, the fear that a thief could get into the trunk with a can opener, or the worry that even a low-speed tricycle bumping up against its hind quarters would simply disintegrate the thing, the whole back half disappearing in a cloud of old orange dust.
It was just time. |n n| There's a brand-new car in the garage now. After months of contemplating, after weeks of looking and testing and bargaining, there's a shiny (watertight) Mazda Protege sitting in the place the Nova used to occupy. "Azure Brilliance Mica," they call it, which is a fancier name for "dark blue" than "Burnt Orange" ever was for ... "burnt orange." The Nova has been moved to temporary quarters down the street while we decide what to do with it - whatever that may be.
Part of me wants to find it a new home. That engine will run forever, and it's only got 116,000 miles on it - nothing, really, for a car its age. There's got to be someone out there willing to pay a tiny bit of money for a whole lot of car, a car still ready and able to do the job in its golden years.
But part of me wants to say, "You've done enough." A long and distinguished career serving just one owner - why force it to adjust so late in life to other hands on the wheel, other feet on the pedals? Besides, hasn't it paid for itself many times over by now? Taking money for it seems ungrateful, almost disrespectful.
Why not call it a lifetime? Why not just dial up that certain number and have them come take my Nova off to the Great Compactor in the Sky? The more I think about it, the more I think it's exactly the right way to go.
I know my Nova would do the same for me.
Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist and television commentator based in Milwaukee. His e-mail address: horowitz@omnifest.uwm.edu
LENGTH: Long : 131 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Despite the ribbing Rick Horowitz had to endure, theby CNBBurnt Orange color of his Nova turned out to be a good choice. It
didn't clash with the rust. color.