No Thrill Like This
By Leonard Wibberley
First Published in The Los Angeles Times Imported Cars April 2, 1961
4/18/2016
There is no car like a new car. This statement contains so much truth in this world of half-truths that it is worth repeating. There is no car like a new car.
For myself, experience with new cars has been meager but brilliant. I have bought one in my life and that but recently. And the enchantment continues. Every time I look at it, the world seems wonderful. And my $40 milk bill (I have six children, all devoted to milk) seems a mere bagatelle which such a man as I can afford most readily. (With my old car, that milk bill troubled me most grievously.)
My new car is a Jaguar Mark IX. It is painted Cotswold blue. I have been to the English Cotswolds, and I affirm that the color is correct. It is precisely the blue of the Cotswold hills in mid-April when the bluebells are blooming and the wild forget-me-nots are found in crannies of limestone.
My new car has a walnut dashboard—solid walnut, not veneer. Set into it are a number of comforting instruments. They all work. Even the clock works. There is a little wonder for you in itself, for none of the clocks in all the second-hand cars I ever bought have worked. This has always made me sad. But on my new car, my clock works and I am filled with joy.
I had no intention of buying this car. I had a perfectly good English sedan of the great vintage of 1951, which I obtained from an unsuspecting owner for a mere $600 a couple of years ago.
He would sell it only to someone who loved cars and thus delivered it to my tender care for a mere pittance—with regrets of course.
It worked splendidly, with but a few minor exceptions. The number six piston blew its head off. But one must expect such things. Then the gearbox blew up.
So we coaxed the old car to the elegant establishment of a Mr. Satori and found that the world had somehow gone ahead of me. Everyone there was concerned that a man in my position was not driving a new car.
I began to be concerned about it myself and was soon so far advanced in the hallucination that I was eyeing a new Rolls-Royce and fingering my money with a Bentley as a sort of mental second choice.
But we decided to economize and settled for the Cotswold blue Jaguar with an automatic shift (for my wife) and a widget on the dashboard by which I can drop it into second and keep it there to 60 mph. Then I flick it into high and take off like the Sixth Hussars at Balaclava, when they were told to saber those Russian gunners and be back in camp for dinner.
We promptly decided we should drive this car somewhere and my wife decided on—New York.
I had intended to drive around the block a couple of times. (We live in Hermosa Beach, California). But we went to New York. It was a wonderful trip. The car went like oil flowing over glass. At one point I took it to 110 mph on the Turner Turnpike and the clack kept working and number six piston didn't explode.
I had a book to write—I always do—and this one was to be handed to my publisher when I arrived in New York. It was two chapters short of completion. In the back of my new car there are two small tables (solid walnut, not veneer). I pulled one of them down from the rear of the front seat, turned the driving over to my wife and started writing on my portable. Anyway, the last two chapters were written at 70 mph between Tucumcari and Tulsa, a literary curiosity, I should think.
All went very smoothly. Now, whenever I am in literary difficulty, I have my wife drive the new car somewhere while I sit behind and whack at the typewriter.
As I said, there is nothing like a new car.
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