I've been told my first spoken word was "auto," but I don't remember that. I also can't really remember not being able to drive a car. Actually, that's not true. We had a '37 Buick when I was 3 and I only remember riding in the back-- standing up entranced by the huge steering wheel, the ivory-colored shift knob, and the array of pedals. My little maroon Willys pedal car had only two. But the '48 Dodge coupe that replaced it had fluid drive, just the thing for a kid. Sometimes I got to work the gas; sometimes I got to steer. I was hooked. Somewhere during elementary school years, I took to shifting a 3-speed '54 Pontiac. It was a bear to steer that thing, sitting on a pillow at night wearing my father's fedora so I didn't attract attention. Guess the old man was encouraging me.I remember being able to identify various makes of car by the shape of their tail lights at night, later by the sound of their exhaust note, and-- like many boys growing up in the 1950's-- by the smallest details of Detroit's annual styling updates. Every fall, we'd visit the new car showrooms and marvel at the styling that made last years dreams obsolete. We also went to the Danbury Fair in Connecticut to watch the dirt-track racers slide around the 1/3-mile oval and to see the occasional thrill drivers' show. There's probably a mall gracing that site now.
High school was a challenge: I had access to a 1959 Rambler American while my buddies drove souped up '57 Chevys and turn-on-dime bug-eye Sprites. I went to the drag strip at East Haddam and to the road races at Lime Rock and Thompson. I bought a motorcycle in the summer of 1965 to take me between the three summer jobs I was juggling... in order to have the money for a motorcycle... to take me to the three summer jobs...you probably get the idea. Later, there was a VW Beetle, a Karmann-Ghia, a '65 Dodge Dart with a 273, and finally my birth into sports cars, a 1966 MGB purchased with the last $700 I had after working and vagabonding in Europe and the middle east for the better part of a year.
It was the MGB that carried me back and forth from Connecticut to Bloomington, Indiana where I started graduate school in 1971. It also forced me to learn quite a bit of auto maintenance as I struggled to replace head gaskets in snowy parking lots, do weekend ring jobs, and slop bondo in an effort to forestall the inevitable rust worm.
Since then, some kind of old car or motorcycle always seemed to latch onto my wallet-- various MGs, Healeys, a TR-3, a flock of VWs, an old BMW, a fly-yellow Porsche 911 RS clone with the loudest six-pack of Webers in captivity. And there were the 2-wheeled Hondas, a Triumph, several airhead BMWs, not to mention the flotsam my two sons would drag home. I miss them all (well, almost all) but fortunately they couldn't all stick around. They moved on to blindly enthusiastic buyers who have certainly experienced the joys of committed ownership and, I am sure, have learned a great deal.
In 1981, finding myself again in graduate school, this time in Philadelphia, my wife and I bought a partially restored 1953 MG TD with right-hand drive-- the only way to really drive British. An especially nice commission check from the good woman's work in the software industry facilitated this poorly-timed acquisition. "She-who-must-be-obeyed" immediately locked the little roadster in our 1-car garage and announced it would not come out until I completed my dissertation. By 1984, the TD was finished up and even won some car show trophies locally and at the New England MG T Register's "Gathering of the Faithful." Growing bored with the "polish-and-wait" aspects of that segment of the old car hobby, we started making good use of the car in the manner in which MG founder Cecil Kimber intended. We drove it. A lot.
The 1990's found us living outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan where inevitable car-headed wanderings led us to become acquainted with a number of automotive journalists associated with Automobile and Car & Driver, both edited in that town known more widely perhaps for Wolverines than Jaguars. As these professionals have an insatiable appetite for interesting cars yet lack substantial economic resources, their impulsive acquisitions frequently must change hands to fund their next wheeled mistress. In this way, I came into possession of one 1968 MG Midget, prepared and briefly raced by Kevin Clemens, at that time the technical editor at Automobile magazine. Beginning at Automobile and later for European Car, Kevin wrote a series of articles on how to go vintage racing without breaking the bank or ending up in divorce court. The little Midget became my cheap date, and like so many other casual relationships, teased me and seduced me and even tried to hurt me a couple of times.
Although I had participated in quite a few "track day" events with BMW and Porsche clubs, and even attended Skip Barber's performance driving school at Lime Rock for my 40th birthday, I was not a follower of wheel-to-wheel racing. It just seemed like another fun thing to do with an old MG. In May of 1997, I attended race drivers' school at Ginger Man Raceway in South Haven, Michigan under the auspices of the Vintage Sports Car Drivers Association. VSCDA is the sanctioning club for most of the vintage racing occurring around the lower Great Lakes area. I subsequently raced at every track they scheduled: Ginger Man, Grattan, Road America, Mid-Ohio, Black Hawk Farms, Indianapolis Raceway Park, and Autobahn. I availed myself of the annual Meadowbrook Historic Races at Waterford Hills, a course almost as old as I am. Occasional excursions took me to places like Mosport in Canada, Watkins Glen, Pennsylvania's Beaver Run, and Virginia International. My wife, Carol, began to refer to this excess testosterone, adrenaline and frustration as "John's folly." Hence, Johnsfolly Vintage Racing (http://www.johnsfolly.webs.com/) was born.
Playing with cars and motorcycles has been a consistent theme in my life. I've sought out adventures like the SCCA's Press on Regardless Rally, which Kevin Clemens and I ran over consecutive nights on forested northern Michigan logging roads in a 1960 Volvo 544. Other rallies followed, although my limitations as a navigator became evident. Then there was the Big Apple to Big Easy ("BABE"), America's first beater rally, limited to cars costing less than $250. This challenge was completed in an old Honda Civic remodeled" into a 3-wheeled ice-racing car. I've crossed the country several times in "drive-away" tansport cars, old pick-up trucks, and various other conveyances that seemed unlikely up to the challenge. When the New England MG T Register organized their Ocean-to-Ocean T Tourist Trophy Dash for pre-1955 MG cars, I was able to participate only marginally by running a checkpoint in eastern Pennsylvania. Carol and I did take the TD on the Register's Lap of New England rally in 1986 but a job and a young family took precedence over the Register's 50-car excursion to the U.K. and their Circuit of Britain as well as the Kimber Alaskan Challenge to the Arctic Circle couple of years later. The 2011 MG Rallye to Reno is now my chance to test the mettle of antiquated British engineering, my rudimentary mechanical skills, and an undeniably iron butt.
Half of my life is certainly over. The second half is now lining up on the starting grid.
