One cold November afternoon, Adam called me out of the blue. 15 minutes ago, he said, someone had listed a 1964 Dodge Dart for free on Boston Craigslist. It was in somerville, a 5-minute drive from my house, and would I mind going to check it out? Adam is no stranger to beautiful, horrible old rustbuckets; he and his fiancé own a 1963 Mercury Comet, and a 1974 Austin Mini between them. If he thought it would be a good thing, then it must need some serious love.
So I went to check it out. The owner, a museum exhibit designer, had owned the car for at least 10 years, and it had been in the family for at least a decade more. He had advertised it for several months at $2000, only to discover the twilight zone of selling used cars. Lots of nibbles, but no firm interest. Posting it for free seemed to change that fairly quickly, but it meant that only the craigslist diehards were going to nab it in time.
Enter Adam. In one of our periodic fits of group-delusion, we had decided we were going to participate in the BABE Rally. BABE stands for Big Apple to Big Easy; the “rally” part really has more to do with getting there at all than any kind of speed contest.
This is because you’re not allowed to spend more than $250 to buy your “rally” car.
The Dart, at a cost of $0, was a brilliant choice. Apparently I was the first one to arrive; his mobile phone was ringing off the hook while we went for a drive. Aside from some cracked tires and a hood in some serious disrepair, all seemed in reasonably good shape — at least, for a 43 year-old rustbucket from Somerville.
I drove it around the block in the pouring rain. The windshield wipers were terrible, the play in the unassisted steering made it a bit like piloting a boat. But it started, stopped and turned. “I’ll take it,” I said, and after a small amount of paperwork, the Dart was sitting in my driveway.