My grandparents' cars

1965 Pontiac Bonneville

1968 Dodge Polara

This may be interesting only to me but, hey, it's my blog--so nah, nah.  

In my previous post, I mentioned my grandparents' cars: the first two that I can remember, in any case.  Above is the 1965 Pontiac Bonneville (to the best of my recollection--and upon research, I've narrowed it to the '66 model), and the one featured in this vintage advertisement looks exactly as I remember my Grandma C.'s car.  Oh, how I loved that automobile.  I can distinctly remember the large steering wheel, which was sort of an opaque gold, almost like amber. One could almost see straight through the steering wheel.  And the chrome.  Both this Bonneville and my Grandpa N.'s '68 Polara (pictured below) had a fair share of chrome.  Though they were put of shame by the automobiles of the chrome-crazy '50s, these cars of the '60s had just enough to accentuate their streamlined bodies and interiors.

So why were my grandparents' cars so fascinating to me?  I suppose it's because I didn't see them every day, so they seemed a bit more magical--and, as I've mentioned before, I was a car-obsessed child anyway.

As a kid, I loved the single slender band of taillights that extended the entire width of the Polara and how it looked peering out of my grandparents' garage.  It was hypnotizing--and the times it was parked side-by-side with the T-Bird--even more so.  It's hard to put it into words, but cars had a power and character that seems missing in today's smaller, eco-friendly models--or maybe it's just my sense of nostalgia talking.

It was the architecture, geography, and design of the back side of the car, the way the shadows of the garage played off of the contours that mesmerized me.  Children seem much more attuned to small details, the minutiae of life that adults miss or simply don’t notice.  I notice this with my own children who can immediately tell the difference between a Toyota and a Nissan, where I am simply oblivious to the finer details.  In my nostalgic streak, I insist that it was the older cars that had more character, but maybe it’s actually just the grown-up in me who doesn’t have the time or ability to pay attention to details.

Here I am standing alongside my Grandma C.'s Bonneville, circa 1971.  We were on a trip to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins in the upper peninsula of Michigan.  This was close to the height of my young automotive obsession.  The era in which I memorized the appearance of every make of car, down to the details of their dashboards and windshield wipers.

This is a 1964 Ford Thunderbird, similar to the one my Grandpa N. had.  It was usually parked along the side street of their house in Trenton, Michigan.  I used to go to my grandparents' house and spend weekends when I was a kid.  At that time, my grandpa had a side business as an upholsterer in addition to his regular job at Mobil Oil.  Sometimes grandpa would have to go visit customers and he'd invariably take the T-Bird. I always went with him on these trips and wow, how I loved riding in that car.  Once again--the chrome.  Something about the contrast of the leather interior and the chrome, and all the cool little chrome levers and controls on the dash.  It just get into my young brain and enraptured me.  Am I being a little too dramatic?  Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking.


I've been working on this post off and on for quite some time and now it's just time to publish it.  As usual with some of these posts, I'm not quite sure where I was going with it, but definitely don't quite know how to finish it.  So I send it out to there and you can take what you want from it.