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Biomotive – 2000 Ford Contour SVT
This Ford was the first new car I bought, trading in the Volvo T5-R. I test drove an Acura Integra (nice gearbox, but sort of boring), the hot at the time Civic (wrong size for my body), and a Mercury Cougar (I thought it looked kind of cool, but was maybe too weird for me). All the sudden, every Ford dealer had a couple of Contour SVTs on the lot. I took a test drive. It was fun to drive, had plenty of space, and the engine noise came in a solid second place for 2.5 V6s I’ve owned. Ideally, I would have preferred a green one. This statement is true for almost all cars I’ve owned that were not green. The black exterior didn’t harmonize with the midnight blue interior – why didn’t they offer a black interior? And, being a Ford, I hoped it was a ticket out of the high dollar maintenance of the Volvo. It was. During its time with me, it only asked for a fuel pump outside of cheap oil changes. As a bonus, the pump was kind enough to fail a block from home, and 30 miles away from warranty expiration.
The dealer taped a 2000 Susan B Anthony dollar to the owner’s manual, and a certificate of authenticity and SVT Owners Association hat came in the mail a couple of weeks later. You know you’ve got something special when you have a certificate of authenticity, though I doubt many folks were counterfeiting SVT Contours.
I sold it a family that were replacing another Black over Midnight Blue SVT Contour that belonged to a family member. I think that was the last time I sold a car over the curb, and it was reasonably painless.
Biomotive – 1987 Suzuki GSXR 750
A great second bike. Maybe.
I bought it under pressure from a friend (the same one who taught me to ride the GS650). He bought a GSXR 750, and knew a guy who had a brand new CBR900RR, and figured I needed to join his speed/death cult. I was willing, and bought a race-prepped GSXR-750. Slabside.
It couldn’t have cost too much, since I was not flush with cash at the time. I’m betting it was sometime in 1992 when I bought it. The bodywork had been replaced with plain white panels, held onto the frame with a combination of the factory pegs and zip ties. The bike had no turn signals, and liberal amounts of safety wire held the cases and oil drain plug in place. The Yoshimura exhaust guaranteed a high level of both neighbor annoyance and John Law attention. I only had it for a couple of years, and got pulled over twice, with only one ticket. I was able to convince the local constabulary that it only sounded like I was speeding, and that non-operable turn signals are not the same as missing turn signals. I was careful to indicate a right turn with my left hand raised, elbow at 90 degrees as I turned up 12th from Lamar on my home.
Even in its most ugly form, the bike was a genius ride. It’s balanced, rheostatic control of almost unlimited power, and telepathic handling made plain that it was a more a bike than I was a rider. It just wanted to go fast, it didn’t care if it was in a straight line, around a corner, in a sleepy neighborhood, or on the highway. Blast down to Galveston for a Hundredaire’s Weekend? Sure. Bring your earplugs. Return the things your freshly-ex girlfriend left at your place? Even better. Let’s go. Play Highway Frogger with 18-wheelers and dozing commuters up I-35? Whatever, dude. I am here for you. And the GSXR would almost certainly call you “dude.”
East Texas go cart track, and guidance from the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association.
Behold the eternal ProvNov. And no, that is not me or my bike. It is from that weekend, though. I have a bunch of picture of my bike on the track, but I put them somewhere special. So very special I have no idea where they are.
The point of the bike was to race. The point of the guy who applied gentle pressure to me to buy the bike was to race. So, we raced. We trailered the bikes (he had swapped his GSXR for a EX500 by this time, with maybe a Montessa and a XR500 in between) behind his VW Westy and headed to Oak Hill raceway in Henderson. Don’t look for it. It ain’t there anymore. I was a little trickle of asphalt drizzled across an East Texas valley. It was a cool place.
Spoiler: I was, and continue to be, what is defined in the WERA/CMRA/AMA rulebooks as a “dog-slow mullet” on the track. Race school was a perfunctory discussion of the flags and what they mean, advice to go where you look, and how to hold your arm up when you are exiting to the pits. A couple of laps around the track behind an Expert, and you’ve earned your ProvNov yellow T shirt to wear over your leathers. Now line up to race.
A couple of factors contributed to my slowness. None of them were the bike. It was primarily my fear. I couldn’t overcome looking over my shoulder for merging traffic. I was afraid of getting hurt, and wouldn’t trust the bike. There was the performative aspect, with people watching and judging. Going slow didn’t help, only made it worse. A little more instruction may have helped. It was muggy like East Texas in July is. Taking practice laps with the Hayden brothers buzzing past on Moto Liberty prepped TZ250s didn’t help. Yeah, future World MotoGP Champion Nicky Hayden, and his brothers Tommy and Roger were at the track, their preteen selves making the world seem slow.
It was my 30th birthday, too. Being old isn’t an excuse, but I was old. A bolted the license plate on, stripped the tape from the headlights, and headed to Dallas to visit a friend. I chased a cat on a GS1000 on a triple=digit flight up Highway 175 past Gun Barrel City. On the last leg back to Austin, I pulled under an overpass during a thunderstorm, only about 20 miles from home. I was beat. The bike just wanted to go.
I’ll never be a racer, but the day at the track made me a lifelong fan of motorcycle road racing.
I sold the GSXR to someone who was planning on exporting it to the Middle East somewhere. I bought a bike that was at the other end of the performance scale.
Biomotive – 1995 Volvo T5-R
I have a hard time remembering the 1990s much. I can recall 1987 month by month, but much of the Clinton Administration is lost to a foggy haze. I lived alone in the same apartment building, worked variations of the same job I backed into for the same company, and was sort of boring. My identity had stalled out, still trying to figure out the difference between what I was and what I thought I was supposed to be.
My daily in the late 1990s was a Volvo T5-R in T5-R yellow. (Not this actual one, that sits in the Volvo Museum, but it looked just like it) I bought it used from the Volvo dealership, trading in my Alfa GTV6.
I saw it regularly sitting in the used part of the Volvo dealership’s lot. It was hard to miss. I could afford it. It was a good car. It held the road without a rattle or squeak in complaint. The interior was black leather and Alcantara, with a 6 CD changer in the trunk, and a non-operative cell phone in the center console. It was the first car I owned with heated seats, good for the dozen in Austin when one’s butt needs warming. The big beautiful brutal wheels shod in low profile Pirelli P-Zeros looked cool to me. I hit a big pothole driving down FM 969 at night. The impact put a big dent in the rim, but the tire held (it was not a cheap fix). The hood opened to a full 90 degrees, allow access to the mechanic friendly engine bay according to a mechanic friend. I drove it to one of the impromptu Friday night car meets in the What-a-Burger parking lot up off I-35 near Round Rock. Shoehorned between the chopped Mercurys and the fart-can Civics, no one seemed to notice. That no-one noticed may be more on me than that of the car. I am not much a “let’s meet some strangers” person. Not that I don’t want to, I just really suck at it and I think my frustration comes off as just too dorky.
One of the three collisions I been in was in this car. Up on 183 near Pecan Creek Parkway, when they were still building the elevated roadway, I slowed and stopped behind a line of cars waiting on a red light. Zooming up behind me, the teenage pilot of a 4th Gen Pontiac Firebird didn’t notice the chain of brake lights and whacked the back end of the yellow brick. My bumper got knocked askew, but the Pontiac suffered a significant rearrangement of its complex plastic snout.
Who was I trying to impress with this car? I was lonely, but maybe a pale yellow Volvo wasn’t the best way to attract a mate. Was I trying to express that I was safe, yet sporty? Was it an easier way to work my Swedish heritage into the conversation? Was it some complex thing about my mother? (She learned to drive on behind the wheel of black PV544. She said she cried when the car was sold.)
I did drive it on at least one date. Or I thought it was a date, since I spent most of time in panicked confusion and self-delusion.
I remember driving with a couple of friends up and down some hills west of town, waiting for the readout of instant MPG to go past 99.9. (It never did.)
I suffered the fate of the dude who really can’t afford a used European fancy car. Making payments and maintaining the car wore me down. I traded it in on a Ford.
I spotted a yellow wagon T5-R at Radwood last year. I didn’t realize how much I missed it. It was a good car. Would definitely buy again.
Was it the right car for me at the time? Probably not. Why would a lonely, introverted, awkward guy with a mildly boring career drive around in a bright yellow Swedish hot rod? You got. Compensating for something.
Wednesday Matins
It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life for me
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Biomotive – 1973 MGB and 1971 MGB GT
1973 MG B. White with the cool chrome wire knock-off wheels. Two batteries behind the seats wired positive earth. If the batteries fail on a hot summer day when out for ice cream, you can fill them with water using the little paper cone cups and water cooler water from Baskin Robbins.
And the twin SU carbs are frustrating to synchronize, especially when you father is sitting on a lawn chair, drinking scotch and “supervising.” (The whole father drinking in a lawn chair watching you bust knuckles elbows deep in a British engine generated some real trauma that I still deal with.)
My sister and me with the roadster, X11 looming in the background. Removing the wheels with the knock-off wrench and mallet was a rare pleasure.
Aftermarket 8-track player. When my sister was the B’s primary pilot she would shove her Steve Miller, Bad Company, and Jethro Tull 8 tracks as far back under the seat as she could. She had promised dad that she wouldn’t listen to music in the car since she got busted by law enforcement for clowning with her friends and not coming to a complete stop a block from the high school. Many years later, when I was joyously swooping the MGB out of Twinkling Star parking lot in Paducah, Kentucky my passenger decided it was a good time to start clowning, attracting the unwanted attention of McCracken County’s finest. The car wasn’t fast, or handle particularly well, but it did encourage clowning, the type of clowning .
It was my prom car (other options: the Jeep Commando or the Chevy Citation X-11). I’ll only say I am very sorry. I was a dork, and stupid. Although I couldn’t help the catastrophic thunderstorm, I could have not driven the wrong way down a one-way downtown. And the sing-along with Verdi’s Requiem set the tone for the evening (Was it the cassette of the 1964 recording with Guilini conducting Schwartzkopf, Ludwig & Gedda? At some point the 8-track got the 8-track replaced with a casette player. Probably.)
My brother rolled the MB into a ditch. It had a new tape player now, and the cassingle of David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” stuck on auto repeat. Put him off Giorgio Moroder, but not Bowie. Insurance had it put back together (I remember visiting the body shop doing the repairs, and spotting a freshly painted but dusty late 68 Wimbledon white/blue stripe GT350 lurking in the corner. The car’s owner hadn’t paid the body shop, so there it sat.) The MGB followed my brother to Illinois, Kentucky, and then back to Illinois with new owners.
I enjoyed driving the 1971 MGB GT more than the roadster. Although it was also white, it was lower to the ground, faster, a real guilt-free gas to drive. And it did not have the eleventy-dozen snaps for the top and tonneau cover. Primary memories were driving it to and from work when I worked for a riverboat towing company in Paducah, Kentucky. A small bit of joy, my butt skimming the wavy paved roads home from the dock, bilge on my boots and dressed in diesel. I can’t remember what became of that car. It had a good soul.
Biomotive – 1983 Suzuki GS650G
Of course it didn’t look like this when I rode it. But it was my first motorcycle, so it is special. The first of the two sequential Suzuki’s that I’ve owned, this cemented the brand in my psyche (it was the Era of Kevin Schwantz). Creamy delivery of power in a nimble chassis. But what did I know. It was my first bike. I dropped it pulling away from a stop sign.
This GS was probably only seven or eight years old when I took custodianship, but they had been a hard seven or eight years. All that remained of high style Katana-inspired bodywork was the grey front fender. The tank and seat were off some generic GS, the side covers zip-tied on, all rattle-can black. Someone had put aftermarket Marzocchi shocks on the back, and I got a set of nice Dunlops spooned on. It was a fun ride, easy enough to ride for a first bike, fast enough to make it interesting. I remember one winter where I was my only transport, as part of some manly sidequest It had a shaft drive, as a result I never learned proper chain maintenance until maybe a couple weeks ago. I took it on a long ride through the Devil’s Backbone with my sister on back, following a friend on his CB750A. There’s a picture of that day somewhere.
I sold it to get another bike.
Probably should add some criteria to these entries:
Was it the right thing at the time? Yes. Absolutely
Do I wish I had it now? Maybe mint one, but that one? Probably not.
It was the gateway drug, and there have only been a couple of months that I haven’t had a motorcycle since then.
The One In Five 