B.C. SISTERS CHANNEL THELMA & LOUISE
They are not Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon from the 1991 road trip movie gone very wrong.
But they are sisters Carolyn and Louise and they went on an epic journey of their own in an old convertible.
“Carolyn’s husband passed away and mine ran away,” says Louise Soga of their trip to Memphis to see Graceland — Elvis Presley’s mansion — in her sister’s 1964 Pontiac Parisienne convertible. Just like Thelma & Louise, this trip could have easily ended in a wreck.
“We felt like Thelma & Louise and could have been outlaws, but we didn’t want to go off a cliff into the Grand Canyon like they did,” Soga says. “We drove through mountain passes in a blizzard with the windshield wipers not working well. We outran a tornado in Oklahoma with so much rain we couldn’t see anything. We wouldn’t stop to put the top up and we got soaked.”
She says the car leaked so badly with the top up in torrential rain while going through Montana she had to create a funnel system with straws.
Sister Carolyn Obieglo has owned her Canadian-built 1964 Pontiac Parisienne convertible since 1974 when she was 16 years old. Her father always tinkered with cars and believed his two daughters and a son should own their own cars when they were old enough to drive.
It was all about establishing a good credit rating by financing a car and earning money to make the payments.
“My father wanted to make sure we could take care of ourselves financially if anything ever happened,” Obieglo says.
The midnight blue convertible with its white interior had been traded in after 10 years by the original lady owner from White Rock after just 3,500 miles. It was like new and cost $1,000.
“It was cool to have a convertible because there wasn’t a lot of them around,” Obieglo recalls.
“It was very good for meeting boys.”
The convertible was front and centre for the blind date with her future husband and it became their wedding car. The car moved with the couple all over B.C. as Obieglo’s husband pursued a career in the forest industry.
“It spent many years stored in barns and under tarps. That wasn’t very kind to her,” Obieglo says.
It was the couple’s dream to have the car completely rebuilt and, in 2005, Carolyn and Wolfgang drove the car to Las Vegas to renew their vows at a drive-thru chapel after 26 years of marriage.
But tragedy would strike three years later when Wolfgang was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
“We always had this dream to drive the car across Canada and we decided to take the trip before he went into treatment and might not be able to do it,” Carolyn recalls.
The couple went on a 48-day trip travelling through the Great Lakes country to Newfoundland and back through the U.S.
In March 2011, Wolfgang died, and the following year the two sisters decided it was time for the Pontiac to go on a second epic journey.
“I was on the computer one night and saw there was a car show at Graceland. I asked Louise if she would like to go, figuring that it would never happen. But she said yes,” Obieglo recalls. The sisters planned the trip out, including where they would stay every night. “We just got in the car and drove. We have a good time together.”
After more than a week travelling to Memphis, the car show turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.
“They didn’t have a long-distance award and it was a small show although the cars were really nice and unusual,” Louise says. “There were some Elvis cars and his airplane and lots of Elvis impersonators.”
They were on the road a long time and were amused when Americans couldn’t say the word Parisienne — the model name for the Canadian-built Pontiac. The U.S. model is called a Bonneville.
“When you drive a classic car across the country, everybody comes and talks with you,” Obieglo says of the car she has driven more than 500,000 miles in the past 45 years.
“My husband said keep going and don’t give up. The car has really helped with that. Life can be lonely, but if you have a classic car, it’s an open door for people to come up and talk to you.”
Soga puts it more plainly. “The car is a man magnet. We flirted with truck drivers and met so many good people along the way,” she says.
Many people followed the sisters’ journey on their Facebook page, Her64, and website, Her64.com.
Obieglo says her old Pontiac convertible has been very reliable. But this year, it has been on the back of a tow truck three times.
“I decided to get the engine rebuilt. It would have been cheaper to get a new engine, but I wanted to keep her original,” Obieglo says.
She is now planning a third epic journey for her venerable Pontiac convertible.
“I haven’t done Europe and I’m going to try to do it.”
Her son lives in Sweden and she would love to ship the car to Europe.
“It’s an adventure I’m working on. The car is a pleasure to drive. When you get behind the wheel, it always makes you feel good and young again. It’s an attachment you get to a hunk of metal that never leaves you.”