At Home Mechanic

Sundays may be the Lord’s Day and a day of rest, but there is no rest for those seeking to buy a new home. Sunday is the day of the Open House, a ritual where homeowners looking to sell their house allow perfect strangers traipse through their home. Prospective purchasers complete the rite by tramping through countless homes they can never hope to afford.

On a recent Sunday my lovely intended, my daughter and I set out to cruise a particular neighborhood that is honestly out of our economic league, but dreams die hard and it does not hurt to look. We did not find a house, but we did spot a car.

Sitting forlornly at the curb in an upscale neighborhood overlooking the Pacific Ocean was a car that I had not seen on the street for nearly 25 years. An obscure car that was never very popular here but one that made an impression on me in my mis-spent youth. It was a 1970 Opel GT in reasonably good condition, covered in a patina of dust and rusty brake rotors which tells me that it has been sitting in one spot for some time.

Think back 35 years to the Chevrolet Corvette of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Swoopy and low slung, it had a low pointed shovelnose, a rounded cockpit and terminated in a cute bobbed tail. Got the image? Now imagine that car built on a three quarter scale with a four-cylinder engine that measured less than half the capacity of the Corvette’s.

The Opel GT was the answer to the question nobody was asking, “What would a European-built Corvette look like?� Well apparently the big thinkers at GM corporate headquarters asked that question and they commanded their German subsidiary, Opel, to whip up a petite-sized clone of the American Resin Rocket.

In Europe, with steep gas prices, a fuel sipping “sports� car that reminded the neighbors of an exotic American Muscle car made some sort of sense and they sold reasonably well across the pond. Over here in the land of 30 cents per gallon gas, nobody was much interested in a wacky little wannabe car.

Back when acne was my most pressing medical concern, the Opel GT struck a nerve in me. I was never much of a fan of ground pounding muscle cars, my tastes then (as now) run to nimble little cars that can carve corners, stop on a dime and squirrel up a twisting mountain pass. While the Opel GT may not have been the ideal candidate for that sort of activity, its cute shape and size suggested that it had the capacity to show its heals to American Iron on the snaking canyons roads that my group of teenaged delinquents used to emulate our Formula One heroes.

Back to the present: Like Mia Farrow and orphan children, I feel compelled to give unwanted cars a loving home. I can feel the neglected Opel’s pain, left to rot in the elements on the mean streets of a community of ocean-view mansions.

The Opel cries out to me. "Save me! Love me!�

But it also told me in a voice that only I can hear. “I will return your devotion by being hard to fix, difficult to find parts for, never run as well as you would hope and drain your bank account. I will cause you to neglect the “hobby� car that currently lives in your garage.�

Finally it told me, “I am not really the car you need or want right now. But I am one of the many unrequited loves of your impressionable youth and your middle-aged angst may possibly be soothed by owning a car that reminds you of your high school glory days."

That is a lot of talking from an inanimate object. Note to self: Maybe it is time to seek professional help. Of course the professional help I would look for is a fabricator to design an intake manifold for a set of Weber Carbs to hang on the side of the Opel’s cute little SOHC head. {Must snap out of this.}

No, I will be strong. I must resist the temptation to leave a note for the owner of the Opel asking if he would consider selling it to me. I must concentrate on saving my money to pay for college tuition, home purchase and wedding party/honeymoon. Even though my equally car-mad fiancée tells me that it would be, ’OK to buy it cheap and store it until you are ready to work on it’ I have to be the fiscally responsible one. Money does not grow on trees and my supply of the green stuff is finite.

Besides, what would I do with the Opel? I already have a canyon carving, auto-crossing, little two-seater that perfectly suits my needs for an impractical sports car.

But the Opel would be the perfect platform for a Quarter Mile Hero. I could drop a Chevy small block V8 into the front, tub the back end, lace it all together with a roll cage and go searching for 10 second time slips. Not that I have ever had a desire to go drag racing… but you do not get an opportunity like this every day.