The Curious Case of Buying a Winter Beater That You Love too Much to Hurt

From Road & Track

From the February 2000 issue of Road and Track.

My buddy Bruce Livermore from Stillwater, Minnesota, called last October and asked if I would be driving out to watch the Sports Car Club of America's Runoffs at Mid-Ohio this year. Bruce, a Formula Vee driver, has competed at the Runoffs for the past two years, but this year he finished just out of the points through a series of "that's racing" incidents, known to the outside world as "bad luck," and would be merely watching this time. On foot, as it were.

" Sure," I said. "Let's drive out there. We can take my new used Miata."

"Do you want to camp this year or look for a motel?"

"Camp?" I said. "Have you ever seen the trunk of a Miata?"

"Okay, I'll call around and find a cheap motel."

Actually you can camp out of a Mia­ta-I'm sure it's been done-but you have to travel light, much as Mahatma Gandhi would have done, if he'd ever gone to the Runoffs. A simple straw mat to sleep on, a cloak of woven cot­ton and a walking staff would be pretty much your luggage limit, assuming the walking staff could be broken down into threaded sections and stored like a professional pool cue.

Anyway, Bruce did call around and find a cheap motel- and a pretty good one at that-in the town of Shelby, north of the track. It passed our strict race-weekend motel standards by having four walls, hot water and no roach­es larger than a sea turtle. In fact, there were no roaches at all. The place turned out to be immaculate. Some­times you get lucky.

We had a great drive out to Ohio and back. It rained for some of the races, but our road trip was blessed by sun­shine and warm weather. We put the top down and drove both ways on two-lane secondary roads through the small towns of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, places such as Paw Paw, Disko and Dola. No traffic, no large cities. Just the rural Midwest in all its autumn raiment.

At one point on the trip, Bruce asked, "Are you going to drive this Mi­ata all winter, after the snow falls?"

"Don't think so," I said. "This car's eight years old, but it's never been driven in the salt. The first two owners put it away every winter, and I hate to be the one who ruins it. The underside looks brand-new. I guess I'll have to find some kind of a winter beater."

A little while later, Bruce mentioned that his mom, Mrs. Elizabeth "Libby" Livermore, was thinking of trading her older Buick sedan in on a new one.

"The '88 Park A venue?" I asked. Bruce nodded.

"Hmm..." I said, my mind racing like a caffeine-crazed rat in a burning maze. "Why is she selling it?"

"Well, it's got 106,000 miles on the odometer and she wants a new car so she doesn't have to worry about repairs when she goes traveling next summer."

"If she decides to sell or trade that car in, let me know. I might be inter­ested."

"I'll mention it to her."

I knew the car well. I had driven it about a year earlier, taking Libby home from a restaurant after one of Bruce's race weekends. I remembered being amazed at how smooth, civilized and refined the car felt. I tend to buy cars from the masochistic end of the hair-shirt spectrum, of course, so big expensive American sedans always feel pretty posh to me.

But this one was especially nice. Libby is a former schoolteacher, one of those sparkling, lively women who give retirement a good name, and she doesn't miss much. She took the Buick in, religiously, every 3000 miles to Zimbrick Buick for oil changes and maintenance. She bought the car new in 1988, after her husband, Dr. Donald Livermore, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, died of ALS. It was her first big solo purchase after this major change in her life, and she shopped for it carefully.

The window sticker (which I now have before me) shows it to be a 4- door 1988 Electra Park Avenue, as­sembled at Wentzville, Missouri (home of Chuck Berry!), with an EPA rating of 19 mpg city/29 highway for its 3.8- liter V-6 engine, and front-wheel drive. Tilt, cruise, electric everything, beige leather upholstery, an optional high-end sound system, and alloy wheels. The color ($210 extra) is "Platinum Beige Firemist," and the suggested re­tail sticker price was $21,306.

A nice car, in other words, beautiful­ly equipped.

As you might already have guessed, Libby called me about two weeks later and said, yes, she would be trading the car in, and the Buick dealer had of­fered her $1800 for it. But rather than trade it in, she would prefer to sell it to a friend of the family.

Naturally, everybody on earth was trying to buy it from her- her service manager's son, the paperboy, the tree trimmer, etc. It has been my lifetime observation that retired women who drive carefully and take good care of their cars have more friends than Huey P. Long. Any one of them could proba­bly run for President and win. Eliza­beth Dole probably should have looked into this vote-getting strategy.

I, of course, would vote for Libby with or without the Buick, but I went to look at it anyway.

The Park Avenue was pretty much as I remembered it. Smooth, nice-running without a sign of oil smoke, perfect leather interior and a clean body, with a hint of light surface rust breaking out along the lower edges of all four doors. The air conditioning had recently gone a little weak, she told me, and I noted the struts were just a bit floaty, even by big cushy Buick standards, but every­ thing else worked fine. I agreed to buy it, and Libby insisted on paying to fix the a/c, but I wouldn't let her.

Later that evening Barb and I drove into Madison to pick it up.

We took Libby to dinner in the Buick- her first chance to ride in the almost unused back seat- and we had a wonderful evening. She told us her children and several friends had sug­gested she sell both "our" car and her 1986 Buick station wagon (which she still owns) and fold them into one practical new vehicle- preferably a minivan- rather than buying another new Buick sedan.

She looked at us with a humorous glint of defiance in her eyes and said, "But I don't want a minivan. I'm not a minivan person. I just can't see myself in one. I am a car person, and I suppose I always will be."

We laughed, and I said, "I guess I am too."

"I like to be able to see what's around me," she added. "That's what's so nice about the old Park Avenue. It has such good outward visibility; you can see everything. The new cars are getting so humpbacked and closed in, with small rear windows."

I thought about that and realized she was right. One of the subliminally pleasant things about the Park Avenue was its tall, unfettered greenhouse. As with an old BMW 2002 or my even old­er 1963 Cadillac, its roof felt like a fly­ing cape of metal supported by glass, rather than the dark walls of an igloo.

"Why have they done this?" she asked.

"Fashion," I explained. "Everything has to be shaped like a snail now."

Before we left that evening, Libby handed over all her spare keys and a file of all maintenance and repair records, which she had spent the after­ noon arranging chronologically for our perusal. "Take good care of it," she said as we left. "It was my baby...."

We've been driving the Buick quite a bit since we bought it, and I secretly suspect Barb likes driving it better than her Grand Cherokee. I certainly do. The Park Avenue doesn't seem to need much. I'll probably put new struts in it soon, and maybe take it to a body shop and have the lower door edges painted and resealed. Then it'll be perfect.

Which is something of a problem.

I bought the Buick so I didn't have to drive my 1991 Miata in the winter, because I needed a salt car, a winter beater. What I was actually looking for was one of these rumpled heaps you see for sale in the front yards of nearby farms: the old LTD with one primed fender, or the spent Omni that looks like it's been hit with rusty birdshot. A sacrificial, throw-away car.

Instead, I seem to have painted my­self into another corner by buying a car that's nearly as clean and nice as the Miata. Instead of an old heap, I ended up with somebody's baby. Now, of course, I'm tempted to store the Buick for the winter and look for a really old salt car. Except I can't afford to, nor do I have the storage room.

So this winter, that'll be me driving the lovely, plush, perfectly nice Plat­inum Beige Firemist Buick Electra Park Avenue through the snowdrifts and the slop, with salt spray slapping against the fenders and doors.

But I won't like doing it.

I hate the salt. There's hardly a car out there that deserves it, and this one doesn't at all. Looks like another good year for the local car wash industry.