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Scott Hollifield: We all remember our first clunker
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Published: August 20, 2009
I got cash for my first clunker, but it wasn't a government rebate.
It was $100 or so from a guy at a gas station who figured he could salvage enough parts to turn a slight profit from a vehicle that had been wrapped around a locust tree.
My first clunker - and I've had a series of them, according to the government's definition - wasn't the first car I drove on a consistent basis. That was an early-'70s Gran Torino station wagon with a dented front end and a missing grill, making it resemble the toothless grin of someone who had been in too many street fights. It was the inherited, down-but-not-out family clunker, something a 16-year-old could use to get from nowhere in particular to noplace special with a stop in between for a double cheeseburger until he successfully scored a more fitting clunker of his own.
It wasn't exactly a chick magnet, especially with a skinny, smart-aleck teenager behind the wheel. Very few, if any, young ladies slid across the vinyl bench seat to cuddle on a moonlit night while Foghat's "Slow Ride" played on the factory-installed FM radio through a low-fi in-dash speaker.
The Gran Torino announced its presence not only with a toothless grin but a hideous power-steering screech that sounded as if someone were throttling a goose. It wasn't pretty, and I can't say I was sad to see a ragtag group of carnival folk drive it away to parts unknown. They deserve a $4,500 rebate simply for removing it from my life.
My real first clunker, the one I could really call my own, was a 1972 Jeep Commando, about a dozen years past its roll off the assembly line. It was the color of baby poop if the baby's diet consisted of nothing but yams.
No gearhead, I knew little about my Commando except this: It had four-wheel drive, it had a V-8 engine, and an earlier model had been driven by Dean Martin's character in one of the Matt Helm movies, the spy-spoof series of the late 1960s. If it was good enough for a booze-addled, low-budget James Bond knockoff, it was good enough for a skinny, smart-aleck, cash-deficient teenager.
I later learned - in addition to the fact that it shook violently when hitting bumps at speeds over 40 mph - that my clunker's legacy began in 1966 when Kaiser Motors introduced the Jeepster Commando to go head to head with the likes of the Ford Bronco and its counterparts. AMC - home of the Gremlin - bought the line in 1970, dropped "Jeepster" from its title and killed it in '73.
Somewhere during its development, I imagine engineers had this conversation:
"We've combined the worst aspects of a traditional Jeep with the worst aspects of a station wagon."
"Good heavens, who's going to drive a vehicle like that?"
"Mainly booze-addled, low-budget James Bond knockoffs and skinny, smart-aleck, cash-deficient teenagers."
I had actually downgraded musically from the Gran Torino. The Commando came equipped only with an AM radio that roared static when passing power poles. I accessorized with a used eight-track player and a set of speakers I encased in homemade boxes wedged behind the front seats, secured by electrical tape and the wheel wells that jutted into the passenger area. Several songs from Van Halen II synchronized perfectly with the violent, bump-induced, post-40-mph shaking.
It was the very definition of a clunker: an old, dangerous, gas-sucking, poison-spewing metal monstrosity.
And was it was so much fun.
As with many of today's clunkers, mine ended up crushed. As previously mentioned, I did it with a tree. No $4,500 rebate. No new car. Just that hundred bucks or so.
Oh yeah, I got a column out of it, too.
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