Eckford’s vehicles: From Monte Carlo to Mercedes
First vehicles:
“My very first car was a Monte Carlo that my uncle gave me when I was 18. It was massive, and when he gave it to me, he included a VHS tape of an ad that Guy Lafleur had done for the Monte Carlo back in the day. Lafleur did it without his front teeth in, and at the end of the ad, with a big grin, he says ‘ Nutting separates me from tis Monte Carlo.’ It’s so beautiful.” The primer grey Monte Carlo — “I always intended to paint it but never got around to it” — served Eckford for many years on the Sunshine Coast, until he traded up, sort of, for his dream car. “It was a 1967 Triumph Spitfire with the good old Lucas box in it. You’d go through a puddle and everything electrical system in the car would short out. When I look back on it now, it was a screaming piece of s&%$; it broke down all the time and to fix it was expensive and tough to get parts. But when it ran, and you had a day like today, blue sky and sunshine, it was a little slice of heaven. “I went utilitarian from there as I was doing a lot of skiing and hiking. I got a Ford F250 flatbed. Yeah baby! How’s that for small town! It came from a mine in Winnipeg, and this thing had worked hard. It was indestructible.” His next car, a Subaru Wagon GL he bought off his parents, had “the best four- wheel drive ever. It was an awesome vehicle.” Then he went car- free for a number of years: “Firstly I was living in the West End; secondly I had no money. I’d take transit, ride my bike and run.”
Current vehicles
“We’ve got a 2002 Mercedes- Benz ML320, which we’ve been really happy with it. We did a lot of research before we bought it — that’s how old I’m getting; I research a car before I buy it. Lame! — and it’s been a wonderful vehicle. It runs like the day we got it. “And we’ve got a 2009 VW Routan. It’s got a little more oomph than most minivans — I was going to say ‘ sportfeel’, ( in announcer voice) ‘ The Minivan with a Sport- Feel!’ But for the kids it’s great for accessibility, and secondly, it’s like a rolling multimedia machine. It’s got three DVD players in it, so with my daughter in the very back, the two boys in the middle seats and my wife and me up front, we can all be watching and listening to different things during a road trip.”
Next vehicle:
“We’ve talked really seriously in the past six months about a sports car, but for us right now there’s better and more important things to do with that money. We love the BMW 6 Series, the cabriolet. Everything for me now is convertible, convertible, convertible.”