The search for the Gingermobile continues...Looking online and on eBay for likely candidates, I've come up with one problem. Most of my potential Gingermobiles are American-built and a huge percentage of them are automatic. Does this present a problem?
Quite frankly, yes. Part of the appeal of a big, powerful car is the level of control you have with a four or five-speed manual gearshift. My old Gingermobile - the same car Adventure Eddy drives - had a five-speed transmission that made it a thrill to drive.
Most America cars, though, have automatic transmissions - including, would you believe, beasts like the General Lee. The irony of a so-called 'race car' with a three-speed A727 Torqueflites transmission is not lost on me...
In England, I had nothing but scorn for people who only drove automatics - but the two Lincolns I've owned stateside have actually softened my opinion on auto transmissions.
Most American automatics (of the vintage I'd consider) have column-shifts. These are the great, big levers on the steering column that you have to wrench into 'drive' or 'park'. There's something inordinately satisfying about column shifts. To some extent, they compensate for the emasculated sensation of driving an automatic car.
Secondly, most potential Gingermobiles have big, torquey American engines. The experience of driving a five-litre V8 with an auto-box is much different to driving a tinny 2.0 with an automatic transmission.
An automatic Toyota Corolla, for example, drives like a dodgem car. There are four or five gears in the automatic transmission and on the road, it shifts between them with a series of clumsy, clunky whines.
My Lincoln, on the other hand, has a wonderfully unsophisticated three-speed auto-box. Because the 302 cubic-inch V8 delivers so much power at low revs, you don't need to have any more than three gears to get a good control of the engine. The Lincoln coasts silently and, when you need it to, you can slam your foot down to 'clunk' down a gear and off the car roars like a torpedo.
With the elevated driving position and springy suspension, the big American 'land yachts' are actually inordinately fun to drive.
So I've decided that an automatic transmission isn't a Gingermobile deal breaker - but I'd certainly prefer a stick-shift. A clutch, a gearstick and a winding road combine to make a truly delicious driving sensation and that's exactly what I'm looking for in a Gingermobile.
Bond liked fast cars and he liked driving them. Most American cars bored him. They lacked personality and the patina of individual craftsmanship that European cars have.
They were just 'vehicles', similar in shape and in colour, and even in the tone of their horns. Designed to serve for a year and then be turned in in part exchange for the next year's model.
All the fun of driving had been taken out of them with the abolition of a gear-change, with hydraulic-assisted steering and spongy suspension. All effort had been smoothed away and all of that close contact with the machine and the road that extracts skill and nerve from the European driver.
To Bond, American cars were just beetle-shaped Dodgems in which you motored along with one hand on the wheel, the radio full on, and the power-operated windows closed to keep out the draughts.
But Leiter had got hold of an old Cord, one of the few American cars with a personality, and it cheered Bond to climb into the low-hung saloon, to hear the solid bite of the gears and the masculine tone of the wide exhaust. Fifteen years old, he reflected, yet still one of the most modern-looking cars in the world.Ian Fleming, Live and Let Die
1 comment:
I'm with you on the manual transmission - my old, admittedly POS Toyota was a stick, and that made it so much more fun to drive, tiny 4-banger that it was.
Hold out for the stick. :)
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