(OLD) BOYS AND THEIR TOYS

 In the late summer and early fall of the year a peculiar change comes over the Monterey Peninsula in California. With the arrival of ‘car week’ and the automobile races at the Laguna Seca International racetrack the sights, sounds, and even smell of the air changes as hundreds of exotic, classic, and collectors’ cars fill the roads, parking lots and even golf course fairways.  The sights of outrageously expensive and untouchable cars, the pervasive sounds of rumbling ‘on-the-cam’ or accelerating high-revving engines, and the smell of Castrol engine oil in the old sports cars brings back old memories to thousands of car enthusiasts (usually affluent people or wannabes’ who grew up in the 1940’s, ‘50’s, and 60’s) from around the world.

Even if you are not an enthusiast, you can’t be neutral about these things as you find yourself stuck in traffic, or hear the cars winding out from five miles away at the racetrack, or hope to find a parking place within a half-mile of your destination because of the many venues that are displaying these works of superb engineering and art.  The untouchables are suddenly ubiquitous.

And the prices the auctioneers get for these increasingly older and rarer pieces of machinery are staggering—most well over $100 k up to a million or more dollars.  As a minimal case in point let me share with you something I found in a file I had at home. I had written, in April of 1964 (you read that right), a for-sale ad to place in our local newspaper for the second car I had ever owned—a 1958 Austin-Healey 100-6 deluxe roadster with all the ‘extras’ such as a radio, luggage rack, overdrive and tonneau cover.  The car was in very good condition, engine just rebuilt, new paint job, 48,000 miles and I was asking $1,375 for it.  The same car in the same condition, but sixty years older, is now selling, at auction, for $55,000-$75,000 with some examples going up to $100 k. 

  

But let me go back to what precipitated what I really wanted to write about today about boys and toys.

  

Where I work at a local resort golf course I yesterday heard and saw probably a couple hundred Porsches, Ferrraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens and similar marques of 500-700 horse-power cars accelerating for hours in 2-3 second bursts of what a police officer once told me, as he stopped me as a 17-year-old in the aforementioned Austin Healey, for “exhibition of speed and power.” The officer thankfully gave me only a warning.  He had to explain the language of the law to me after he observed me ‘accidently’ lay down about a 7’ strip of rubber as I pulled out from a stop sign.  Of course my ‘speed’ only reached about 20 mph (hence the warning instead of the ticket) before I backed off and my ‘power’ only amounted to a little over 120 hp compared to the cars I witnessed today in their constant “exhibition of speed and power” of 0-50 or 60 in about 2.5-3.0 seconds flat.  My A-H could do about 10 sec. flat. 

Interestingly it soon became apparent to me as the hours rolled on was that the drivers of these cars really wanted was to have was people look at them and their car and the person sitting beside them.  That person was always an attractive woman from 20-40 years younger than the driver (who was a man typically in his late 40’s to his late 70’s). These exhibitionists typically drove in little packs of three to four cars. Onlookers were always first attracted by the sound of gearing down and then the air being rent by 2-3 second bursts of fierce acceleration. (The captive –but not captivated—women were rarely smiling.) 

Now here is the thing about these old boys and their toys:  Psychologists are virtually unanimous in saying that these rich old boys are simply trying, in their old age, to project a rather pathetic image of power and ‘manliness’ in their display of “look at me and what I’ve got!”  Probably all they’ve really got is a huge ego, a big bank account, insecurity and a need for attention and a heavy right foot.

Is it much different—except for the bank account and the age of the girl—than a 17-year-old boy and his (or his father’s) car? Not in my experience as a boy who grew up, and fortunately out-of-it, in the 1960’s.