Of course, now, having made the trip, and understanding the difference between the mental image and the reality, would I do it again? Oh, yeah.
Here's how it happened: Rob, a fellow car
nut at work, having found himself with no car payment and a car that did
not need replacing, stumbled across a Pantera web page one day, and a little
while later (with no encouragement, I _swear_) was faced with the predicament
of needing to get his Pantera from Orange County back to Austin.
Of course, for the person who would spend the same amount of money on a
25 year old car that would have gotten him at least 2 sensible cars, there
was only one answer. It just took me to point it out to him.
"Yeah, it should get here in about 2 weeks."
"Cool. Man, how will you wait 2 weeks? I'd be going nuts."
"Yeah, somebody else said I ought to drive it, but it's really too far."
"Hmm. You could probably split it up over a weekend and it wouldn't be so bad. I mean, we could split up driving duties." (Note the subtle suggestion - maybe I should be in sales.)
"You want to go? Yeah, you know, if we split it up, it wouldn't be bad at all."
"Aw, yeah, and you know these days, with a phone and AAA membership, you're *not* going to get stranded. How can you _not_ drive it back? Besides, it's not like the motor is some multi-cammed, timing-chain-meticulously-hammered-out-of-WWII-airplane-aluminum, goes-out-of-tune-during-full-moons exotic - it's a Ford 351. Heck, *I* almost know enough to keep it running!"
Flying in to Los Angeles, it seems like the whole area is fogged in, until you realize it's _not_ fog, and then you start to think that all these air-quality Chicken Littles might actually have a point. Orange County has a strong smell of anti-freeze, which, until you figure out that it's the town, and _not_ the car you plan to travel 1600 miles in, is somewhat alarming.
As for the car we were planning to spend the next 2 days in: if you ever drew a car as a kid, this is the car you were trying to draw. The Pantera must have been the inspiration for every mid-engined GT that followed. The windshield is only slightly less raked than the hood line, which just about slopes out of your line of site from the cockpit. The roof line is at about the window sill of most other cars, which really doesn't mean a whole lot until you're standing beside a Pantera, and realize that the window sill of most cars is at roughly your waist.
Rob's car was a not-quite-burgundy red, with the kind of paint job that always looks wet. The tires up front would be wide on most cars, the rear tires could only be described as steam- rollers, and (just like you used to draw) the rear deck lid is capped off by a real, tear-drop profile, v-shaped wing (as opposed to these new St. Louis arch looking things they're tacking on to everything from Supras to CRXs). The fabled Pantera two-halves-of-a-bench-seat buckets had been replaced with Flofit seats, but otherwise, the inside was classic Italian ergonomics, with a huge tach and speedometer as the only two gauges in front of the driver, and the oil, temp, and gas living next to a vertically mounted radio on the center console right above the (_really_ cool) gated shifter. The engine is best described by talking about the sound it makes - when it catches, it revs to about 2000 rpm and then settles into a burble that resonates in some part of your body such that you're suddenly proud to be a native of the country that built this motor, and at the same time you want to go tell the above mentioned environmental twinks to go put a sock in it, never mind the fact that the motor's got enough fumes in its exhaust to overpower the "welcome to Orange county" leaky radiator smell and probably create a new hole in the ozone layer.
Starting the car was exciting not only because of the sound, but because it meant we were on our way. Time to see what this beast could do - 0 to 60 at a rate that makes you wish for a neck brace, traveling at speeds that blur the scenery, right? Welcome to L.A. traffic. The minute we turned east (which as far as I'm concerned is the only direction you _ever_ want to go if you find yourself in the Los Angeles area) everything stopped. We traveled about 3 miles in a little over an hour before we could get to an exit and try an alternate route. Only there is no alternate route. Every piece of pavement that leads out of L.A. is absolutely packed from 4:00pm to 8:00pm. The traffic situation is also like an insanity plea for the L.A. lifestyle - how can they understand how aberrant their behavior is, when a 15 mile commute that takes 3 hours is considered normal?
Having originally planned to be at the California border by dark, we felt lucky to have made it clear of the L.A. area and called it a night. During our time in the traffic, the car did start to overheat, just to let us know that it was a 25 year old Italian sports car, but Rob also got a chance to learn the clutch and gears, which was no mean feat. The clutch is about where a normal car's gas pedal would be, and pedal effort is about equivalent to the pull cord on a lawnmower after it's been sitting all winter. Combine this with a gear box that wanted to negotiate every change ("I'm thinking I would like 3rd now - is that OK?"), and I'm glad Rob didn't find an opportunity to put me behind the wheel that night.
My chance came bright and early Saturday with those magic words, "You feel like driving?" That's like a toy store asking Disney if they think they'll make action figures to go with the next movie. So I jumped in the driver's seat, whacking my head on the right side for a change (note - in low slung sports cars, you _will_ hit your head on the door sill, no matter how much you try and tuck your head and curl your spine - years of cavernous 4 doors and SUVs must have cost me the requisite flexibility to avoid this), discovered that the shoulder belts on the 4-point harness were designed for people 5'10" and under (I'm 5'11"), and fired her up. Once again, *man* that's a cool sound. Getting going was really fairly free of drama, mainly because the motor's got so much torque that you'd probably have to be on the brake when the clutch engaged in order to stall it. Of course, I wasn't on the brake, so the car took off just like you would expect something with _well_ in excess of 300 horsepower and 20 inches of rear tread would take off. I'm not sure Rob was ready for that, but he didn't say anything, and the car seemed happy, so in seconds, we were on I-40 cruising at 90. At 90, the Pantera is geared so that the motor is turning about 3600 RPM. This is right in the power band, so any change in pedal pressure was immediately reflected in speed. A lane change, where in most cars you apply a little gas just to maintain speed, got us close to 100. The only real downside (if it can even be called that) was that I only ran through the gears one time, so when it was time to stop for gas, I had to start planning about a mile away from the exit (which is roughly 40 seconds at our rate of speed) - "OK, where's the clutch? Nope, that's wheel well, still wheel well, ah, there it is. Now where's the shift lever?"
The rest of Saturday was fairly uneventful - the weather was perfect, and highlights included the Arizona and New Mexico terrain, the meteor crater, playing dodge-the- tumbleweed (which a Chevy 'generi-car' proved to be really bad at - the front of it looked like it was wearing a wreath), and seeing the California border in the rear-view mirror. (With all due respect to California's loyalists, it strikes me the same way Vegas does - I don't understand the appeal.) We were our own mini car show at gas stations, which was neat - one kid almost missed getting back in the van with his family because he couldn't take his eyes off the car. We got the same reaction when we rolled up to Rob's friends' house in Los Alamos to stop for the night. It was doubly gratifying to get the "Oooooh, wow..." from people who don't thumb through car magazines and realize that _everybody_ digs a cool car.
Los Alamos, once the sun goes down, is cold. We had packed light (a Pantera is not known for it luggage capacity), and even though I was wearing both t-shirts, the sweatshirt, and jacket I had brought, I stayed cold. I would not get warm again until I went to sleep the _next_ night when we finally got home.
Rob's friends, on the other hand, were very cool. They took us in and fed us when we arrived at 9:00 at night, put us up, and didn't mind at all when we shook the house warming up the car to get going in the morning (have I mentioned how cool the motor sounds?).
Sunday morning started out cold, and as the car's fluids were getting up to temperature, Mother Nature decided we'd had it easy for long enough, and it started to snow. As Rob's friends waved at us from _inside_ their house, we headed down the mountains towards Texas. As a tribute to Italian car designers, this pre-wind-tunnel-testing body parted the air so smoothly that no snow actually hit the front of the car at speeds above 30. However, as another reminder that the car was not brand-new, when we decided to see if the heater worked, the answer came back "No". Ah well, we could live with that - we were going straight through and could tough it out. Better turn on the lights, though ... DANG! The lights had worked fine on Saturday, but sometime during the night, the car decided that one day of having the headlights pop up during a weekend was enough. So, being the astute mechanic/electricians that we were, we did the standard electrical system debugging:
Then the rain hit. That actually didn't slow us down much at first, but we did discover that the seals around the wind- shield were original equipment, and consequently were as effective at keeping water out as the heater was at keeping the cabin above 40 degrees. This erased any notion either of us had about the "daily drivability" of an old sports car. Fortunately, one of the provisions we had picked up at the outset of the trip was a set of shop rags (originally intended to be used to detail the car at each gas stop - that plan lasted right up until our first gas stop). We stuffed the rags between the dash and the windshield to catch all the incoming water. Then, the combination of humidity and cold meant that the windshield fogged up about every 15 minutes. At first, icy blasts from the defroster solved the visibility problem, but as the rain got heavier, we had to start using a rag-rotation system. We had four rags, 2 of which were picking up water from the windshield at any time. As the other 2 rags dried enough, they were used to defog the windshield. Pretty soon, none of the rags was dry enough to do much for visibility or water collection, and the race was on to see if we'd make it to Austin without having to resort to the center-lane reflector braille system.
We did, barely. As we pulled in to my driveway, Anneth heard us drive up and came out and gave the involuntary "Ooooh, wow". I got Rob a dry towel so that he'd be able to see on the drive back to his house, and I went in to take a _hot_ shower and get my body temperature back up to normal.
But not before waiting outside, in the cold rain, to listen to that car rumble off - yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I keep saying it, but that car sounds _cool_.
Epilogue:
Since no car story would be complete without
some stats, here are a few key numbers from the trip:
| 110 | top speed in miles per hour attained during the trip |
| 5 | the top speed achieved while leaving Orange County |
| 75 | the posted speed limit through Arizona and New Mexico (very cool) |
| 165 | the average number of miles that we went between fill-ups |
| 200 | the number of miles we went on the one leg where I didn't make a pit-stop before we started |
| 170 | the number of miles I could have gone *comfortably* on that leg |
| .75 | percentage of the gas tank capacity that you could fill before it started leaking (remember, it's a 25 year old car) |
| .98 | the amount we filled it before finding out the above key number |
| 18 | average miles per gallon for the trip |
| 2 | average number of people to check out the car at every stop |
| 3:1 | ratio of 18-wheelers to cars on I-40 |
| .99 | chance I'd do it again |
| 1.00 | percent I hope that Anneth would talk me out of it the next time |
| 3 | number of times I would have freaked (if I'd been Rob) about me driving _his_ new baby (and our only means of transport between California and Texas) |
| 0 | number of times Rob freaked - don't know how he did it |
