The Last Word
Brian Gower finds himself tempted by some American metal.
Brian Gower contemplates procuring something for the weekend.
My first barber was a small, fatherly man called George. He had a sidekick called Terry, who looked Italian and laughed a great deal, while dancing around making large gestures with his long arms as the hair of his customers flew off in chunks.Terry was popular with the Teddy Boys of the area, because he knew exactly what they wanted and was an artist with comb and scissors - although even George sent me off with a distinct touch of the current fashion.
My mother would leave me there on quiet weekday mornings and ask George to see me across the main road afterwards, so that I could run home. I found it a congenial environment until, aged fifteen, I ventured in one Saturday afternoon to find the place full of uncouth older blokes.
I immediately transferred my custom to a solitary practitioner along the road - a genteel man with grey wavy hair and a manner wedged halfway between priest and doctor, but who always asked me, as I paid, if I wanted "anything for the weekend". If I had known what he meant. I could have answered glumly, "Well, a girlfriend would be a good start", but I hadn't a clue what he was offering. By the time when I could have said a grateful "Yes please", I had ceased to entrust my flowing locks to barbers and bought what I needed for the weekend from a chemist.
However, back at age fifteen, my idea of the perfect weekend was being fed by the music of The Beach Boys, interspersed with cool jazz (Stan Getz and
Miles Davis), and further stoked by the colourful pictures in Hot Rod magazine. It was from this highly-charged publication that I developed a very un-English appreciation of old Ford coupés with 'blown Chevy mills', chromed side-pipes, velvet upholstery and many-layered paintwork that sparkled - plus all of the Detroit classics that had no need of extra adornment. Importantly, they all seemed to come equipped with a pretty girl in the front passenger seat.
At the time, there were no diecasts to reflect this heaven-on-wheels, but kits were to be had, mostly
in 1/24 scale, accurate as far as I could tell, and with multiple-choice assembly instructions for 'Street', 'Custom', or 'Drag-strip' versions. One of these kits was a one-option-only concept car - the Pontiac Club de Mer. I must have been in my early thirties when I stumbled across the Hot Wheels diecasts in a sweet shop in North Cheam. I wasn't collecting at the time (openly), but I couldn't resist a Model-A Ford hot-rod and a prohibition-period Cadillac sedan, nor the Corgi Toys Quartermaster dragster and the jacked-up yellow Mustang - Milligan's Mill - that were placed in my field of vision.There was also a green beast called Gus's Gulper.The last two were Matchbox Superkings models.All were accidentally left somewhere along with four post-war Dinky American cars and a whole lot more that I mustn't dwell on lest I weep.
Fortunately, life sometimes gives us other opportunities and I lay the evidence before you here. My most recent find is a '36 Ford Coupé in flaming copper-orange metallic.There is a delightful dickieseat, which the previous owner has not knocked the 'lid' off, despite some enthusiastic play. I believe that it was made in the late 1970s.
Plundering every outlet in my locality has yielded three concept cars - a lime green experiment in design that led to the '57 Corvette, not too far from the eventual production car, a 1959 Stingray concept showing most of the key elements of the 1963 car, and something seemingly based on the E-Type Jaguar called the Fast Felion, which presumably exists somewhere.The Stingray concept was also produced in 1/43 and 1/18 scales by AUTOart.And my choice for the weekend? None of them I'm afraid.After all my indulgence with American excess, all I will ever want or need is a 1966 Rover P5 Coupé.