Car Stories, the Secret Agent Man

 

I don't like to brag,
but the first new car I owned
was a classic British sportscar.
It may not have had
all the bells and whistles
of a modern automobile
and it definitely sacrificed
gas efficiency for horsepower,
but it did have a few cool features
rarely found on cars today,
like a bulletproof screen hidden in the car boot,

twin retractable machine guns above the front bumper,
and the always useful car accessory,
a passenger ejection seat.

It's a 1964 Aston Martin DB 5.
And remarkably, now after 6o years,
I'm proud to say that I still own it. 

Despite its age it has very low mileage,
has always been garage-kept, 

and still has the original tires.

The first models of the DB 5
were painted a silver birch colour.

But I paid extra
for one in gold.

When the film Goldfinger was released in the fall of 1964, my dad Russell, an officer in the U.S. Army, was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany and I was 10 years old. Though I might have picked up some advance promotion of the film, I doubt I paid much attention, as we did not have a television as the only broadcast signals were from German tv stations. So like most of the American service families, we got our news of the world from the Armed Forces Radio network. 

My folks and I saw Goldfinger at the post cinema where this spy thriller was a big hit with American servicemen and me too. A few weeks later around Christmas time the British toy company Corgi released this replica of James Bond's iconic Aston Martin DB 5 that was used in the movie. I couldn't resist buying one. It came in a display box along with secret instructions and an extra bad guy. Bond—James Bond, sits in the left-side driver's seat and levers on the chassis edge activate the car's special features. The ejector seat's power is quite impressive, easily the equivalent of 300 yards or more. In 1964 it was the coolest car ever. 

Yet the reason I cherish this toy car is not because of the film. It's because after I acquired it, with my own money I might add, I became hooked on reading all 12 of Ian Fleming's 007 novels. Whenever we took a long trip while in Germany, I was always in the backseat reading a new 007 paperback. Even on our return to America in 1967 when we crossed the Atlantic in an old converted troop ship, I spent the week in a deckchair with another Bond thriller. Though many years have passed and my taste in literature has evolved from secret agent thrillers to science fiction adventures to historical novels and now mostly real histories, I still attribute my first love of reading to Bond—James Bond.

Yet in my youthful daydreams
I liked to pretend I could be that secret agent
behind the wheel of a fast sportscar.

The little BMW Isetta, which I featured two weekends ago in Car Stories, the Putt-Putt, came out of hibernation when we moved back to the US in 1967. Our home was in Newport News, Virginia not far from my dad's work at Fort Eustis. For a few months I think he used the Isetta for his regular commute but during its time in storage the Putt-Putt acquired various engine and suspension ailments, so my dad was constantly having to take it apart. 

In my duties as assistant mechanic I was sometimes allowed to get behind the wheel, as seen in the photo above, but I never actually drove it. My right eye wink is an early symptom of my increasingly bad vision at this age. My folks finally took notice after my nose caught my dad's fastball during a game of catch. I never saw it coming. The doctor's diagnosis after he restored my crooked snoot with a quick twist was, "Your son needs glasses."

The Isetta didn't have any secret agent gadgets, but judging by this picture of my dad, taken by me on the same day as the previous photo, it could easily accommodate an ejection seat like Bond's DB 5. My dad wears his Sears Craftsman brand mechanic's coveralls and his favorite German felt hat. He's also chomping down on a pipe, a smoking habit he fortunately abandoned. Yet I have to admit that after he gave up all tobacco it made choosing gifts for him much more difficult. Shopping for smokers was so easy. Tobacco shops seemed to offer an endless choice of smoking paraphernalia with fancy lighters, novelty ashtrays, curious briarwood pipes, and assortments of exotic cigars. 

Here my dad is putting the Putt-Putt to bed for the winter out in our backyard. There's about a half-inch of snow on the ground and my dad is wearing his German ski pants and boots along with a colorful French sweater. He's taken the Isetta's wheels off and propped it up on cinder blocks, a condition that just about every car he owned suffered through. My dad also acquired a second Isetta at this time that was pretty rough and rusty. It was also a '58 model and robin's egg blue. I don't think it ran and he kept it in the garage like a Frankenstein monster in order to salvage parts from it. By the end of that winter in 1967-68 both little bug cars were sold and replaced by a bigger better beetle. 

It was a caffè latte 1967 Volkswagen convertible. My dad may have paid for it but I'm sure my mom chose it, and for several years it was her car, even though in this picture she's in the passenger seat. (The non-ejection kind.) It had a four speed manual transmission with engine in the rear. The top required a little effort to unhook and fold up, but it was super fun to drive in our part of Virginia which was close to the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. 

A few years later it became the car in which my dad taught me to drive. We lived in Virginia Beach then and my dad found an secluded area at Fort Story free of traffic and pedestrians where the army trained soldiers to operate heavy equipment. It was there I learned to master the art of the clutch, three-point turns, and turn signal etiquette. Within a few months I earned my folk's trust to drive it solo during my last year of high school. 

When I started university the VW became my regular wheels, while my mom moved to another car we will meet in a moment. The Beetle was a reasonably safe vehicle but in my first year commuting to classes I put it to the test. On returning home over my usual route, I failed to notice that traffic was stopped on my exit ramp. At the last moment I slammed on the brakes but it was too late. I collided with another car stopped on the ramp and damaged both vehicles. My dad took a picture of course. It's just one of thousands of photos my dad took of vehicle mishaps. 

The smushed bumper and hood may not look like much of a dent but the front suspension was distorted and the expense of repair was not worth the value of the car. Volkswagens in those days were cheaply made and hammering out those metal curves was expensive work. Instead my mom got a new car and I inherited her orange wonder car.  

It was a car that only a secret agent might drive.

This orange 1970 Honda Z600, was a two-door coupe that my mom Barbara initially used for her regular commute as an elementary school art teacher. It had a 598cc two cylinder engine with 5 speed manual transmission with the stick projecting from below the dashboard. The Z600 was 123 inches long, 51 inches wide, and 50.4 inches tall. Basically a breadbox on wheels. It only weighed 595 kg (1,312 lbs) and powered by its little motorcycle engine it literally screamed down the highway. 

The top speed was maybe 90+ mph, though I will never admit to trying to exceed that limit. It's real virtue was fantastic gas mileage, usually 40 mpg and sometimes over 60 mpg! Yet despite its small size I can attest that this tiny car could  hold an entire horn section of four men and their instrument cases too. At least for a short trip to a late night doughnut shop.

Here my mother stands beside the Honda wearing matching orange shorts and floral top. She looks a bit distracted as if she hasn't yet realized my dad is taking a picture. Both color photos are scanned from 35mm slides taken when the car was brand new and had a temporary license plate. The driveway and car in the background belong to our neighbors.

Readers may have noticed a vintage car in the background of the first photo. Of all the cars, trucks and vans my dad owned, over 25 on his list, not counting the second junk Isetta, this dull green sedan with its chrome radiator grill and unmistakable hood ornament was his favorite car. 

It's a 1959 Mercedes-Benz 219 four-door sedan or saloon car in European terminology. I don't know exactly where my dad found this car, his notes only refer to the purchase year, 1973, and that he became its second owner. This car had all the superior qualities we've come to expect from the Mercedes marque, but it also included a number of inferior traits of a vehicle made in the 1950s. 

The heavy doors made a sumptuous and satisfying KLUNK when they closed. The bench seats were upholstered in a smooth Germanic version of "Corinthian" leather. (Here's a bit of automotive trivia. The phrase, "rich Corinthian leather" made famous in 1970's Chrysler commercials by celebrity spokesperson, Ricardo Montalbán, was a made-up name for a common upholstery material manufactured in New Jersey. It was coined by the Chrysler ad agency to imply their cars had premium luxury qualities.) 

Though this Mercedes was not a luxury model it still had classy German engineering elements that set it apart from American cars which is why my dad admired it. Like the Isetta, the VW, and the Honda, when you drove this car people took notice.  

The steering wheel was a huge narrow ring made of faux-ivory plastic. Beeping the horn was easy to do on a ridiculously large chrome circlet. The shifter was a 4-speed stick mounted on the steering column and the clutch was gentle and silky smooth. The dash was made of real wood, either teak or beech, I think. A large analog clock occupied the center which seemed a particularly luxurious frill as most American cars did not have such things. The leather bench seats were sprung in a way that gave the car a plush pillow ride. Though I didn't drive it much, its driving qualities were impressive.

However the big problem with this car was that it leaked. A lot.  Engine oil, transmission fluid, radiator coolant, brake fluid, even windshield wiper fluid. My dad kept a box in the trunk filled with extra containers of oil/fluid in the event of emergency. Any one of these issues would have been reason enough to get rid of the car. Nonetheless my dad accepted it as a challenge and he was determined to keep it running.  

In the background of the first photo of the Honda Z coupe are wooden braces leaning against small pine tree. This was a makeshift engine hoist my dad made. In this photo the Mercedes' engine block and transmission hang from a chain hoist making it look like an eviscerated animal carcass at a slaughter house. To remove an engine everything around it had to be carefully disconnected while taking a careful account of all the nuts, bolts, and brackets that were fastened to it. How it went back together I don't remember, but somehow my dad did it. My participation was holding the flashlight or handing him the correct tool when he was on his back wedged under the car. This required learning the difference between imperial and metric measurement, a skill that still occasionally needs study for my own projects. 

Before retiring from the army, my dad was assigned to a unit in Atlanta and for a year put tens of thousands of miles on the Benz, as he called it, driving back and forth from Virginia to Georgia. Like most cars built in the '50s the Mercedes had no air conditioning, just the triangular vent windows. Driving around Georgia in the summertime was a sweaty and uncomfortable activity. 

After retirement the effort to maintain the Mercedes became more difficult for my dad. So it was  installed on cinder blocks high enough to keep it above floods brought on by storms and high tides which were a regular nuisance at my folks' home situated on an inland saltwater bay next to the Chesapeake. My dad converted the car into an auxiliary shed where he stored cardboard and newspapers for recycling. Eventually he sold it to one of my mom's colleagues, a school teacher who restored vintage Mercedes. I hope its wheels are still rolling. 

In my last year of college, while still driving the Honda, I started earning extra money by working for my horn teacher. He needed cheap labor for his real estate side-venture of remodeling old apartment houses. At the time my limited carpentry experience came from building a few tree houses, but I had a few tools and enough time, if not skills, to be useful. I soon discovered that I enjoyed making sawdust, breaking up old plaster, scraping paint, and crawling around dank moldy basements. However the little Honda was not the most practical vehicle for this kind of construction occupation. 

One day a newspaper notice for an auction caught my attention. It was at an old industrial building near my university and the listing included lots of power and hand tools. So I went down to see what I might pick up. Most of the factory's stuff turned out to be beyond my budget or needs, but one of the last items up for auction was an antique cylindrical stove, the kind found in country stores or old barns. It was small, about four feet tall, and crudely made of cast iron and steel, but it didn't seem too heavy, maybe around 50-60 lbs. I can't explain its attraction, but maybe because this was around Mother's Day I decided it would make a novelty ornament that my mom could display in her garden. So I bid on it and in seconds I bought it for $15. Now I only had to get it home.

What I had not observed was that this stove was made of mostly rusty sheet steel riveted around an iron base. It presented no problem lifting it into the back hatch of the Honda, but even with the back seat folded down the stove occupied more space than I expected. As I took off I quickly  discovered the stove contained decades worth of coal and wood ash. Within seconds I was enveloped in a black dust storm and opening the windows only made it worst. Somehow I got it home where my mom graciously accepted my gift as she laughed at my soot covered face.  It took several attempts at vacuuming and cleaning before the car was halfway decent again.

For many years that old stove served as a bird/squirrel feeder and plant stand in my mom's garden until it finally disintegrated into red dust, but its real value came just a few months after I bought it. 

My parents decided if their son
was going to augment his musical talents
by becoming a junk dealer and jack-of-all trades,
he needed a new vehicle. 

The secret agent man became the guy with a truck.

For my successful graduation from university, with a diploma that says Summa Cum Laude, but I don't like to brag, my parents presented me a new 1977 Toyota pickup truck. It was green. At the time Toyota trucks were manufactured in Japan but assembled in California. This model was a long bed, a foot longer than the regular Toyota Hilux but both were a compact design that was then very different from American pickup trucks. It was from the second generation of Toyota trucks with a 2.2 L straight four cylinder engine with a five speed stick shift. As you can see in this black & white photo where I'm parked in the same place as the Honda, there was no back seat, in fact the bench seat had no useful space behind it. My instrument and tool cases rode in the passenger seat. It had AC but I had to add a radio/cassette player. 

This truck changed my life in more ways than I can describe. Not only did it prove practical for my early adventures in house renovations, woodworking, and music too, but it made me everyone's useful friend whenever they needed to move something too big for a regular car. Refrigerators, sofas, patio furniture, hot tubs, upright pianos and pump organs. I carried it all in this little truck. This next picture shows me and my best friend Jeff Shepard unloading an antique pump organ  from the Toyota which I then restored for him. Despite intricate mechanisms and lots of brass reeds, a pump organ case is mostly air compared to a similar-sized piano. My story of Mister Jeff includes more adventures with this truck. I miss him more than I can say. 

Following my dad's example, I did all my own oil changes and regular maintenance. After a few years in Virginia Beach's saltwater climate the green faded and rust appeared. I fixed that by hand painting the whole body in two tones of grey Rust-Oleum paint. Inspired by my dad's perseverance in repairing his cars, I even rebuilt the Toyota's carburetor adding three years to its life. 

In 1985 when I won an orchestra position in Savannah, Georgia, this truck hauled all my music gear and woodworking tools 400 miles south to my new home. It took four trips. A couple years later I taught my English bride how to drive in a foreign land, she having never needed to learn in rail and bus friendly Britain. The Toyota might have lasted longer but the advent of my son in 1989 meant we needed a larger vehicle.  So with 111,000 miles on the odometer the Toyota was traded for a silver Mazda truck that had a king cab with enough space for a child seat. Three trucks later I have a 2006 Nissan Frontier sitting in my driveway. It has its own stories to tell.

This last photo was taken in the fall of 2018 with me and my mom sitting in the back of her final car, number 23 on her list, a 2018 Honda Fit, not much bigger than the Z600. My cousin took it as she and her family were leaving after a short visit to Asheville. It's a theme shared by thousands of similar family photos. A camera never comes out on an arrival but only at a departure. 

This picture is bittersweet as my mom and I both knew she would soon lose her right to drive. At age 87 her physical and mental abilities had diminished to a level that meant she was no longer safe behind the wheel or even to live alone in her little house, 15 minutes from my home. With great effort she accepted me as her chauffer and cast away truck loads of stuff in order to move into a one-room assisted living apartment. It was not easy and at times very painful but in the end we did what was best.

But I want to finish with a happy car story. This silver Honda was purchased brand new in May 2018. Only two years before she had decided she needed a smaller car and I helped her trade a Volvo sedan for used 2016 Honda Fit. It was fire engine red, her favorite color. But she wanted a better car.

One afternoon that spring she and I took the red Fit into the Honda dealer for regular service which ordinarily would take only 15 or 20 minutes. As I perused a car magazine in the dealer's waiting room I looked up and saw that my mom had disappeared. I found her out in the new car lot talking to a young woman, a sales agent. Before I could stop her, she was negotiating a trade for a new deluxe model Fit that included leather upholstery, heated seats, and moon roof. I couldn't persuade her differently so we were escorted to the manager's desk and began arrangements to close the deal.  

This gentleman was a very kind fellow who seemed genuinely attentive to all my mother's stories. And she had a lot to tell. She began in 1951 with the story of choosing a car with my father, a Willys station wagon. This was followed by the great road trip of 1953 in the second Willys jeep when she, her mother, and my dad's grandmother drove cross country from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles. Then came stories of driving in France, Washington state, Kansas, Germany, and more. 

After over an hour of waiting she had only reached 1968 on her car timeline and it was now past 6:00. With apologies I broke in and insisted we finish up. I knew that once she started on the tale of the two VW  campers; the tragic biography of the Peugeot diesel sedan; the long chronicle of the seven Volvos (the seagull story takes at least fifteen minutes to tell); and the comic anecdotes of my dad's VW Eurowagon we would be there until midnight. 

Within minutes we signed the virtual papers on a gigantic desk tablet, my mom delicately using her little finger to sign her clear cursive signature. For the remainder of that year she got to drive it around Asheville using her innate sense of direction to navigate even the most confusing of shopping mall parking lots. When I finally took away the keys, though she resented having to give up her freedom, I know she understood it was for her protection and the safety of others. 

For this month's Sepia Saturday series on Old Cars I've dispensed with my usual focus on antique musicians' photos in order to show off a few of the vehicles that contributed to my family's history. Maybe in olden times I might have written about horses and mules, but I don't have photos of them. My mom and dad both loved driving cars, enjoyed traveling, and always had a story to tell about each car they owned and every trip they made. If there is one sentiment that they taught me it is that in life it's the journey and not the destination that counts.

To conclude this multi-car story,
here is the scene from Goldfinger
when Q, the irascible quartermaster of
the special weapon and gadget division of Britain's MI6 secret service,

first introduces Bond—James Bond, to his Aston Martin. 

And of course,
I must include the scene where
the Aston Martin demonstrates all of its tricks.

Pay attention to the cars driven by Goldfinger's minions.
They're the same Mercedes-Benz sedans
that became my dad 's favorite vintage car.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where every car has a story (or two) to tell.

Car Stories, the Rural Mail Carrier

 

I collect antique photographs of musicians
that belong to a sub-category of collectibles
known as "occupational photos".
Typically these are photographs
of people holding the tools of their trade,
such as musical instruments for example,
or posed doing some activity in their line of work,
like performing in a band or orchestra.

Yet outside of my musical collection,
in my own family's photo albums,
there are surprisingly very, very few photographs
of my close relations or distant ancestors at work. 

Except for this one.

This picture of a man in an old-fashioned open automobile
putting letters and packages into a country roadside mail box,
is my mother's grandfather and my great-grandfather, William J. Dobbin. 
For over 30 years William was a Rural Letter Carrier
in Pope County, Minnesota.  

He put a lot of miles on his cars. 

1909 Maxwell Model LD
Source: New York Public Library digital collections

The car William Dobbin is driving was made by the Maxwell Motor Company, once a major manufacturer of automobiles that was first established in 1904 as the "Maxwell-Briscoe Company" of North Tarrytown, New York. The model is a 1909 Maxwell Model LD. It was promoted as "an especially stylish car, the aristocrat of its class...It is the logical car for physicians, contractors, and those wanting a car for general purposes."  The Model LD was also recommended to ladies "because of its comfort, the luxury of its appointments, quietness and ease of control." With a basket on the back it could also hold a lot of envelopes and package.

1909 Maxwell Model LD
Source: New York Public Library digital collections

The Maxwell Model LD had a two-cylinder engine rated at 14 hp. The transmission had two forward gears and one reverse. The wheelbase was 84 inches long by 56 inches wide and the car weighed about 1,150 lbs. The Model LD came in green and red with a base price of $825. A folding canvas top and storm front cover cost extra. 

According to a tribute that was published in the Glenwood newspaper on my great-grandfather's retirement from the postal service in 1938, when he first started delivering mail in October 1905 he used a horse and buggy. Of course this method of transportation took longer and was often difficult, sometimes impossible, during Minnesota's snowy winters and muddy springs. 

In 1912 he purchased a "high-wheeled Acme, [that had] 15 horse power with high speed of 12 miles per hour. It had solid tires and used 5 gallons of gas making the 28 miles around the route. Starting from the post office that machine would roar as though it was trying to tell Mr. Dobbin how it would eat up that hill ahead of it. Then part way up it would quiet down as though it had changed its mind about going up. Mr. Dobbin says a sick horse used to worry him some but that was nothing compared with the 15 horses that were condensed in that car. " 

William bought the Maxwell in 1914 to replace the Acme. In this era, rural mail carriers drove their own vehicles so I don't believe he purchased either car as brand new. According to his history in the newspaper report, the Maxwell didn't last long as from 1916 to 1925 he drove second-hand Model-T Fords followed by a new Star automobile in 1925. In 1927 he acquired his first "enclosed car", another Star. Then a Durant (which made the Star), a Chrysler, a Chevrolet, and two Fords.  

This next photo is a studio portrait of William J. Dobbin from around 1930, I think.

William James Dobbin was born in Ballymoney, Antrim County, Ireland, now Northern Ireland, on 17 February 1874. In 1883 when William was eight years old, he and his family emigrated to Cobourg, Ontario, Canada but they only stayed there two months before moving to Pope County, Minnesota. As a young man with only a grade school education and one year of high school, William became a teacher in nearby rural county schools for a couple of years. In September 1902 he married Birdie May Peacock and for a year they tried running a farm in Leven Township. In 1904 William sold the farm and invested in a feed mill and wood yard in Villard, MN. 

However it wasn't quite enough to support a family, so in 1905 William took advantage of a major change in how government jobs were awarded by taking the Civil Service examination for a mail carrier's position in Pope County. He scored 98.9%. Over the next 30+ years, practically every day, he delivered countless postcards, letters, and parcels to residents of the farming community around Glenwood.  It was a "load of mail!"

In this snapshot from 1939 which was sent to my mother from a Minnesota cousin, William J. Dobbin stands next to a heap of newspapers, boxes, and packages. It's an impressive collection of paper, but by this time William may have worked in the mailroom and relegated duty of deliveries to a younger man. 

In the Glenwood paper's tribute for him the report noted that William had recently acquired a Ford V-8 coupe. I believe that is the car he is standing next to in this last photo. It was taken in winter with several inches of snow covering the road and landscape. There is no date on the photo but I believe this was taken in the 1940s near the end of his life. I like how he has hung his hat on the car's bumper.

1937 Ford V-8 catalog
Source: The Internets

I found several examples on the internet of the early Ford V-8 coupe. The model pictured on the Ford 1937 brochure seems the closest match. It has the same dart-like hood ornament, football-shaped headlights, and enormous radiator grill with the little V-8 badge. 

 

1937 Ford V-8 catalog
Source: The Internets

William James Dobbin died in February 1946 a few days short of his 72nd birthday. My mom was then only age 15, so I never knew him. But I believe his son, Wallace R. Dobbin, my grandfather, shared some of William's charm and wit that makes me feel I can understand the person behind his smile. You can see some of that in my 2020 tribute for my mother, At the Lake.  

In the late 19th and early 20th century, mail order catalog companies like Sears, Roebuck & Co., and Montgomery Ward & Co. greatly expanded the geography of America's retail markets. Rural folk were no longer isolated by their distance from big cities and through these giant compendiums they now gained access to a huge variety of products, tools, and materials. 

Likewise newspapers, journals, and magazines at the turn of the 19th century offered inexpensive subscriptions to a wealth of information, political discourse, and cultural reviews. Publishers sent out new editions every month or every week. And, of course, postcards became the big medium in the 1900s. They were the instant social messaging of the era, when a note sent in the morning might get a reply by that afternoon. 

Rural letter carriers were the trusted couriers for this great wave of correspondence, media, and goods. And evidently William Dobbin was respected and appreciated for his dedicated delivery service in Pope County, Minnesota. By 1930 he was the president of the Minnesota Rural Letter Carrier's Association, the labor union representing hundreds of men and women who delivered America's mail. It's a connection to union labor that was shared by his son, Wallace who worked for the railroad yardmasters' union, and by me, too, representing musicians in our musicians' union. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where even an old car can take you to the future.

Car Stories, the Putt-Putt

 

This is not a toy.

It's a steel screw-gear jack easily capable

of lifting 750 lbs. of automotive mass.

It was once stowed away under the seat

of the tiny car perched on the jack saddle.

Actually, no. That's a toy car.

But it is roughly a 1:30 scale model

of a real micro-car my dad once owned

that came equipped with this German mechanical jack.

The car is long gone, now 56 years past,

but the toy car was a gift I gave to my dad

many years ago to commemorate his favorite car.

He called it the Putt-Putt.
It only had one door.

It was a 1959 Isetta 300 manufactured by the Bayerische Motoren Werke AG or BMW for short. My dad purchased this unusual little car new in Tacoma, Washington in the fall of 1958. It is number 4 on his list of 21 vehicles that he owned in his lifetime. 

At the time, my dad, Russell E. Brubaker, was a captain in the U.S. Army and assigned to a Transportation Corps unit at Fort Lewis, Washington, now known as Joint Base Lewis–McChord after a merger with the U.S. Air Force. Our home was in nearby in Taccoma, Washington about 10 miles away from the base and since my dad's work hours could be variable he and and my mom decided they needed a second car. 

The original design of the single-door Isetta came from an Italian automobile company and was manufactured under license in several different countries including Argentina, Spain, Belgium, France, Brazil, Great Britain, and Germany.  However it was the BMW version that became the best known and supposedly was the first successful model the company produced in the post-war years. Between April 1955 when the first Isetta was released and May 1962 when the company ceased production, BMW built a total of 161,728 units of the Isetta. 

From 1954 to 1957 my dad had been stationed in France, where I was born, and in 1956 he had seen a French VELAM Isetta which was owned by a Hungarian neighbor who worked on the army base in Orleans. In the 1950s the U.S. military was more generous than in later decades and officers were allowed to import American cars to use while stationed in Europe, so in 1954 my folks were driving our 1953 Willy jeep station wagon around France that must have turned a lot of heads. Meanwhile it was the French and German cars that attracted my dad's attention.

The previous two pictures were taken on family picnics in Washington's Olympic Peninsula, but I'm not certain exactly where. Surprisingly my dad didn't take many photos of this car. I couldn't find any B&W photos so these two were scanned from 35mm slides. To be specific, slides from slots 68 and 151 in box #5, labeled "58-59". There are approximately 300 slides in each metal box and around 60 boxes. Fortunately my dad recorded the subject, date, and location in a handy paper index included in the boxes. Unfortunately some boxes got rearranged and have become the photographic equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle. 

Amazingly my dad saved the original Isetta manual, which I now have in my family archives, and in it he notes that he purchased this white Isetta on 30 September 1958 with 35 miles on the odometer. Decades later, in one of his many notebooks filled with handwritten lists, accounts, and recollections he wrote a few pages about some of our first cars. For the Isetta he says, "Great 2nd car - two places (seats) w/ Mike + Dog in back. 60 mph when downhill with wind at our back." 

A year later in the fall of 1959, my dad got orders to return to Korea, this time serving in the Transportation Corps instead of the Infantry as he had been during the war. Unlike military duty in France, families were not permitted to accompany soldiers to Korea, so my mom and I were sent back to Hyattsville, Maryland, outside of Washington, D. C. to stay with my grandparents. By this time our family had acquired a lot of stuff and though the military paid for professional movers to haul our household items around, cars were not included. My father's solution was to build a triangular trailer-hitch to tow the Isetta behind our 1957 Dodge Suburban station wagon on a great cross country trek. 

In this color slide from somewhere on the road trip, the two cars are linked together at some picturesque lakeside parking lot. My mom stands on the far side of the cars and I think I must be there too, visible through the car window. Our dog Moochy, a yellow cocker spaniel, is on the far right. It's an interesting to see how small the Isetta was compared to the Dodge. Here's a second slide from the same trip.

The Isetta was 89  inches long and 53 inches wide, and weighed around 353 kg or 780 lbs. It was powered by a 300cc motorcycle engine coupled to a 4-speed manual transmission. The official top speed was 53 mph though, as my dad said, it could go faster. The sound of the single cylinder thumper engine earned it the nickname, Putt-Putt. It's big appeal though was in fuel consumption, getting an astonishing 50 to 90 mpg!

In contrast the Suburban was nearly 18 ft long with two passenger doors and bench seats that flipped up to get into the second row, along with a huge tailgate door. It had a V-8 engine with 5,328 cm³ / 325 in³ displacement that produced 245 hp on its 3-speed pushbutton automatic transmission. The Dodge probably got about 11 mpg as described in several classic car websites, though my dad never mentioned it. Afterall gas was cheap in the 50s. Like most cars of this vintage, it had no air conditioning, no seat belts, and only an AM radio with one speaker. And since America's interstate road system did not yet exist, this must have been was a long, long trip. As I was only five years old then I don't remember any of it. By the time we arrived in Maryland, the Isetta had 8,200 miles which, even including the mileage under tow, is an impressive number of miles in its first year.

By chance the slide next to the one of the Isetta parked at the beach was a picture of my dad that my mom took.  Wearing oil-stained fatigue pants, hat, and jacket, he sits on the garage floor repairing something on the Dodge Suburban. My very first memories of my dad are of him fixing stuff, almost always a car. In those early times, because a young army officer's pay did not go very far, my dad did all his own oil changes and routine auto maintenance and whenever there was a serious breakdown my dad would always figure out how to fix it. Over time I became his assistant who held the flashlight, fetched wrenches, and kept an eye out for misplaced nuts and bolts. Maybe he was not an expert mechanic, but he knew enough to get a car running again, even if it required repeated adjustments and lots more swear words.

During his second tour in Korea, my mom used the Isetta to get around Hyattsville. She regularly drove with an extra adult passenger that put me and sometimes another small child crammed onto the rear deck behind the bench seat. She and my dad enjoyed the fun of driving an automobile and shared an enthusiasm for all cars, so many of their vehicles were chosen by her. And this first micro-car would not be her last.  Later when I became a driver, she passed down her small cars to me. The first was a VW convertible beetle and then a tiny 500cc Honda Z-coupe. In fact, I inherited her last car, a 2018 Honda Fit which I drive everyday now. It gets a frugal 40+ mpg which is not too bad, but nothing like the Isetta's mileage. 

After my dad returned in 1960 he was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas and once again we travelled out to the west in a two-car hitch. We lived in three different homes there. The first was a rental house in nearby Junction City, Kansas and the next two were army quarters on post. In this picture my dad stands in front of the Isetta that is parked in a narrow garage drive at our second home. It was an older residence that was built with Kansas limestone blocks. It probably dated to the time of the Indian Wars of the 1870s when General George Armstrong Custer served there. All I remember is that it had bugs. Lots and lots of BUGS! Whenever we turned on a light in a dark room, hundreds of roaches would scatter.  

My dad has taken an uncharacteristic macho stance in this photo with a stern expression, that, to me, looks like he's about to scold someone for something. I think he drove the Isetta then as his daily work car which, not surprisingly, marked him for questionable scrutiny. One time his fellow officers played a prank on him by picking the Isetta up and carrying it into the lobby of  the post's officers' club. 

After three years there he got orders for Germany and after I finished third grade we set off to return to Hyattsville. The plan was for my mom and me to stay temporarily with my grandparents. I did half of fourth-grade there, and then in late December 1963 we flew to Frankfurt, Germany to join my dad. The Isetta was stored in a barn on my Uncle's farm near Frederick, Maryland. It wouldn't get started again until three years later when we returned to the US and moved to Newport News, Virginia near Fort Eustis, the headquarters of the U.S. Army Transportation Corps. 

By this time my dad had moved onto other cars. Due to its bad transmission which wouldn't stay fixed in Kansas, the old Dodge was replaced with a 1962 Pontiac station wagon which accompanied us to Germany. In 1969 he traded it in on a red Volkswagen camper van. This would the first of three VW vans that he owned. 

On our return to Virginia in 1967 my mom restarted her aspiration for a teaching career, so she picked out a sporty 1967 Volkswagen convertible. "Only $1 down!" reads the note on my dad's car list. Five years later I drove it during my first year at college until I learned an important lesson about not paying attention to traffic. I totaled the beetle in a front-end collision on an interstate exit ramp, but luckily its brakes and rear-engine design saved me from serious injury. Never assume anything when driving a car.

Since in 1967 I was still too young to drive, the little Isetta sat in our backyard under an old army tent. Ever the optimist, my dad still had a notion he could get it working again. So it was joined by a second Isetta, blue and white I think, that somehow my dad acquired "For Parts". When he got orders for Vietnam, he sold both Putt-Putts, probably to another army guy. The original one had 24,545 miles on the odometer. 

And that's why I have not one,
but two screw jacks and two manuals
for a 1959 BMW Isetta. 
All offers entertained.

Seriously, no reasonable offer refused.
I'll even throw in a free toy car.

Here is a German television commercial
promoting the BMW Isetta, 1955 - 1962.

It begins with the larger "sedan" size Isetta 600,
which had a side door that opened
to a second bench seat behind the driver.

And for a modern view of this remarkably fun car

here is short video of a restored Classic BMW Isetta.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where time machines
get the best gas mileage. 

Car Stories, the First Spark

This is a car that's travelled a lot of miles. Over it's long life the wheels have rolled over hard bricks and gritty concrete from Maryland to Washington state; pushed through red clay and soggy mud from Kansas to Virginia; and even toured the parks and gardens of France and Germany. Now it sits parked at my home in western North Carolina after a century of countless journeys with my family. 

It's not surprising that it has survived so long as the A. C. Williams Company made it of cast iron. In 1844 the company established its first foundry in Chagrin Falls, Ohio producing chain pump reels, spouts, and plow points. By the late 1860s it began using new coke-fueled furnaces and expanded into a line of tool and wagon parts along with hardware items. After two devastating fires in 1889 and 1892 destroyed its factories, the A. C. Williams Co. moved its foundry plant to Ravenna, Ohio. 

By the turn of the century, the company had a good trade in a line of flat irons, also known as "sad irons", that were used in homes and laundries across America for pressing clothes. Since these irons were very heavy for the company's travelling salesmen to carry, the foundry produced miniature sample irons that were lighter weight and which proved very popular with children as well as with its adult customers. The company soon began producing cast iron novelty toys like banks and wheeled vehicles like this car. Though the company's principal products were cast iron machine parts made to order for various tool companies, from 1900 until 1938 its workers produced hundreds of thousands of toy horse-drawn wagons, automobiles, trucks, tractors, and even airplanes. By the 1920s  the A.C. Williams Company was recognized as the largest cast iron toy manufacturer in the world. The company is now known as the Lite Metals Company of Ravenna, Ohio and its early and transitional history is found at its website.

Here is a similar toy car that has more of its original yellow  paintwork. 

A. C. Williams Co. cast iron car
Source: The Internets

These are solidly built cars, though the gas mileage does suffer because of the heavy weight. My car was originally bright red but time has slowly replaced much of its paint with a patina of grass stains and mud. However it does have the original tires and no rust, which I think is pretty good for a car that's a century old.

Though there are no marks in the casting for the A. C. Williams Co., it wasn't difficult to find examples of this particular toy car in numerous listings on antique dealers' websites. It's probably worth between $50 and $100 today depending on the market. 

It is usually identified only as a "Coupe". But I wanted to know if it was a replica of a real automobile and  I especially wanted to learn which vintage. After some deep digging in the internet archives I think I've found the right car.  

It's a 1923 Packard Roadster.

1923 Packard Roadster
Source: The Internets

Car manufacturers of this era are often hard to distinguish one from another unless you can get a good look at the little details like hood ornaments or radiator grills. My cast iron toy car doesn't have that level of detail, but when I saw this photo taken in 1923 by a Packard factory photographer I could see car's outline and features matched my toy. The Packard Motor Car Company built high quality cars in Detroit, Michigan from 1899 to 1958. Its chief competitors were two other luxury brands: Pierce-Arrow of Buffalo, New York, and Peerless of Cleveland, Ohio. 

In its time the Packard roadster was a kind of powerful, fast sports car that a sportsman or a movie star might own. It's an obvious choice for a toy maker to model and you can see it in the long front hood for the 6 cylinder Packard engine, the folding convertible top, and the extended rear trunk large enough for a hidden folding passenger compartment called the "rumble seat." Unfortunately it's not incorporated on the toy car, but this popular feature was imitated by many other car brands. Here's a picture of a restored 1923 Packard Roadster painted in a nifty robin's egg blue. 

1923 Packard Roadster
Source: The Internets

Now more than half a century ago. my dad, Russell Brubaker, gave me this cast iron toy when I was a little kid. He often told me he had played with it when he was a boy and, as he was born in 1929, the 1923 Packard fits into his time line, but I've always suspected it was an older pre-owned model. Though he never said so, I'm sure it was passed down to him from the older boys in his Brubaker family, Lawrence and Clifton Brubaker who probably drove it first on the farm of their father, Harvey Brubaker. 

It's a long tale, too complicated to include on my story about family cars, but suffice it to say that my dad was raised by his grandfather and grandmother, Harvey and Ruby Mae Brubaker. Lawrence and Clifton were his uncles, 15 and 13 years older respectively. Harvey is pictured in this photo standing next to a very similar automobile with a high running board, spoked wheels, and folding canvas top. With a suitcase in hand, he looks like he's going on a trip. For most of his life he worked in "truck farming", basically acting as a distributor who transported farm produce like vegetables, eggs, and milk from rural farms to urban markets.  

Harvey Lincoln Brubaker and Ruby Mae Pratt were married in 1901 and originally lived in Brenkenridge, Missouri. You can read about them in my story from November 2012, Dr. & Mrs. Halstead on Election Day 1920. But by 1920 the Brubakers had already lived on 13 different  farms in Missouri, Virginia, and Maryland. This information comes from a beautiful journal that Ruby wrote in 1946, listing every home.

It was a tough life that didn't make them rich, but it was good enough that Harvey and Ruby raised five children, and in 1929 take on one more, my father. By that year they lived in a rented house in Reisterstown, Maryland, east of Baltimore. Sadly, Harvey died in January 1937 at age 58 when my father was just shy of eight years old, so there are few photos of them together. Harvey's car, possibly a Ford model-T, is so similar to the Packard's shape, that I feel certain my dad linked the toy car to memories of his father/grandfather.

For my dad that toy car was just the start of a long passion for cars, but as a young man it took him a while before he actually got to own one. He was the first in his family to go to college, the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland outside Washington, D. C., but he didn't have a car and used two wheels to get there. It was a stubby Cushman motor scooter that I don't think ever got faster than 35 mph on a downhill run. 

Once he graduated from the university's ROTC program and became an officer in the U. S. Army, his first real cars were more of a leased vehicle. Here he is posing with two military jeeps not too dissimilar from the Packard roadster with running boards and canvas tops.  

The first picture was featured in my story of August 2018, Everything In Focus, about my dad's deployment to the Korea War in February 1952 as a young second lieutenant in the 38th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed "Rock of the Marne".  This was also when he discovered the wonders of cameras and photography, which is why I have these photos.

The second picture isn't marked and I'm less certain where it was taken. I think it was during his second tour in Korea in 1959-60. By this time he had transferred to the U. S. Army Transportation Corps, a relatively safer duty than the infantry, made first lieutenant, and acquired a son, too. This move into the logistical arm of the military had the advantage of opening up many more  opportunities for my dad to play with trucks, cars, jeeps, and sometimes even ships and airplanes too. He always took great pride in keeping engines tuned, tires rotated, and oil checked. And like the boy scouts' motto says, "Be Prepared", he always stored a little kit of wrenches and screwdrivers in every vehicle's trunk just in case of a breakdown. 

That little Packard roadster has been carefully garaged in countless shoe boxes, desk drawers, and parked on bookshelves at dozens of Brubaker homes as it followed first my dad and now me around the world. Every time I take it out for a spin, I think how amazing it is that a little cast iron toy powered by imagination could inspire my dad's lifelong passion and enjoyment of cars and all things mechanical. And I guess its magic spark still motivates me too.

Burrrmm, brrrmm!

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone has their own car story to tell.