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Probably the best car I ever had was this wonderful '53 Chevy.

The styling was lovely. The curves were proportioned just right. The color was yellow (actually a golden yellow) and white (on top). It was a two-door model so there was lots of room in the front.

The engine was almost the same straight 6 that the '31 had, except it had a down-draft carburator, and, of course, more horsepower. But it was just as easy to fix as the '31.

The transmission was a "vacuum assisted stick", which meant it was easier to shift than would be the case if there were no vacuum assistance between the gear shift lever (on the steering column) and the actual transmission.

I wish I could remember why I sold it. I think it was because I went to grad school and thought I needed something better. My mistake. Someone got a true classic when they bought this from me in 1960.

My next cars after the above 1953 Chevy, were a 1954 Chevy, a 1964 "Unsafe at Any Speed" Corvair, a Buick Special, a Jeepster, an Opel GT, a Ford extended length van, a Buick diesel station wagon, and, of most importance, "The Fiero"!

The body design, as well as the engine placement, was patterned after the mid-engine Ferraris, but at about 1/10th of their cost. The car had an inner sheet metal shell (welded), which was covered by an independent flexible plastic skin. The base color of the finish was bonded into the plastic skin, and the gloss came from the application of multi-layers of clear coat lacquer. My car was a metallic red.

This construction, while expensive to make, made the car almost immune from the usual parking lot dings, etc.

Luggage space was kind of a joke. Passenger seats (2) butted directly up against the gasoline tank and firewall (very risky for you in a crash!). The front nose area of the car carried the water and oil coolers, and a full-size spare tire. Forget about putting bags in the front or behind the seats. Instead, there was a semi-vertical volume behind the engine at the very back of the car, into which one large and one small bag could be slipped. There was one huge downside to this - after riding for an afternoon in this position, the bags were actually hot to the touch. Any clothing in them would have been neatly pressed into the folds it had when packed. In other words, you put a very nice press into the weirdest places on your shirts and blouses if you didn't pack them right.

The car's performance was, in brief, thrilling. The engine was hot. It had lots of acceleration. It would scoot right up to the interstate speed limits and more from a dead stop without even getting close to the red line. A standing quarter-mile was clocked at 93 m.p.h. at Brainerd. It had the most delightful exhaust burpple of any 6 cylinder engine I have heard. It was a rush to drive, since whipping back and forth between lanes, fast and sudden passing, and accelerating up and onto fast lanes from on-ramps was well within its routine performance capabilities.

But, it was the oil cooler that did it in. Those long hoses that the carried all of the transmission oil from the rear of the car to the front end coolers and back would occasionally burst when you had the car revved up and accelerating. When one of them would blow, oil went everywhere, the transmission went dry in a matter of blocks (not miles), and life in the fast lane quickly ended. So, after a couple of those, I sold it.

Here it was above, in tiptop form, with my son Tom at the wheel outside his dorm at Luther College.

My first car was not really a car. It was a 1949 Whizzer motorbike. I was 14 when I had mine, and it was the absolute delight of my life, costing me at least one steady girlfriend (she said I spent too much time with my bike and not enough with her). I don't have any pictures of it, but the one at the right (taken from a web site) shows a 1949 Whizzer that had about the same features. With this bike, my Dad (Lester Walters) taught me engine design, function, and repair, skills that took me well into my post-doctoral research career. The one cylinder, 125 cc, 3 hp engine on this bike often needed repair too. You started the bike by popping the clutch while pedalling furiously, preferably downhill. The gas/air mixture was more or less adjusted for temperature on the fly by adjusting the carb screws while riding. Engine idle was always problematic. The belt from the engine to that big drive loop on the rear wheel had to partially slip for the clutch to engage and grab tightly when it was released, making it always a challenge to keep from stalling or slipping away from a stop in a low-speed, high-rev roar. The ride was strong though. The engine did have a lot of torque and would pull uphill with a steady bop-bop-bop that was quite satisfying. It went much too fast for a bicycle, and had neither head nor tail lights. Riding at night was out of the question unless you hung a lantern off the right handlebar (which I did). Helmets were unheard of.
	My real cars all started here. My Dad split the cost of a 1931 Chevy with me ($25 each) when I was 16. The two of us then went to work on it. We rebuilt the engine, the clutch, the rear axles, all 7 tires and wheels, the tar top and the body. The sheet metal on the body was thick - 1/8" on the fenders. This picture was taken in Wing Park in Elgin, IL in 1955. I am on the left fender holding onto the radiator cap. My friend Gregg Fohrmann is on the other fender. Gene Walz is looking around the car in front. I had just finished a winter in the car and the tires (which had painted white walls!) were in bad shape. In front of the radiator was a heavy-gauge, wire-mesh screen that I know today would be a real collector's item. The car had never been in a wreck - the bumpers were perfect. They were themselves thick steel, and held onto the frame with heave spring steel about a quarter of an inch thick. The head lamps were perfect - they just didn't put out much light. It really wasn't safe to drive it at night. The windshield cranked out a few degrees at the bottom for air conditioning. The doors and interior were all in great shape. For some reason, there was hardly any rust on the whole body. The upholstery was in great shape, with no tares in the cushions or the top and side fabric.
Fully dressed this is how the '31 Chevy looked, parked at the curb at Elgin High School in 1956. Unfortunately, at this time, I had no color film (was there color film in 1956?) so this is B&W. The wire wheels were hand painted fire-engine red, the fenders gloss black, the body metallic green (10 coats of hand painted and rubbed lacquer) the tires painted white, and the chrome rubbed with Coca-Cola® to remove the rust and then polished with Turtle-Wax®. The top was painted with black roofing tar several times a year to keep it water tight. Notice that the car had no dents! The body was rust free and undented. The running boards had no rust underneath their rubber tops either, in spite of the fact that they caught all of the winter slop. What doesn't show are the 3 rear axles I had to replace, the new muffler and tail pipe system, the new clutch, the new pistons and rods, the lapped valves, the new head gaskets (twice!) and the new wooden floor board (hand sawed from 3/4 inch plywood). Every weekend I worked on the car whenever the weather allowed. And, we had no garage! This was a real driveway project.
	This picture at the left shows the "seventh wheel", factory mounted on the rear of the car. I have been told that not many of the '31 Chevy's were sold with this feature. Most of them had luggage trunks on the rear. The tires for this car were 4.75-5.00 X. 19". They were available in the Ward's catalog, but I could not afford them. So, it was off to the junk yards to buy what I could. A tire could be had for a couple of bucks, which was still a lot for a kid who earned $0.75 per hour and thought it was a good wage! If you look closely at this picture you can see that the left rear tire is a knobby and the right rear is a relatively new junk yard special. It was a good thing I had the three spares, because I had 21 flat tires in the two years I owned this car. One night I came out from work and found two of the tires flat. I put the two spare wheels on from the fender wells. Then on the way home, a third tire went flat. When I got home all three spares were rolling! I always fixed my own flats (remember the "two-screw driver" trick for getting the tires off the rims?) and put Sears tire boots inside the tires to keep them running. There was a time when I had boots on top of boots on top of the inner tube patches.
The car had a 6 cylinder engine. It was essentially the same engine Chevrolet used right up to 1954, except this one had "updraft" carburation, meaning the gas vapors were pulled up into the intake manifold instead of being drawn down. The carburator was hung below the manifold. This made it easier for the fuel pump (which was always breaking down) to draw gas from the back of the car. In the winter, my Mom would get up early and boil two kettles of water. I would pour them on the intake manifold to get it warm enough to vaporize the gas coming up from the carburator so I could start the car. I drove around then and picked up my friends to take them to EHS. If I parked in the sun, the engine would stay warm enough so that I could start it after school. I had one of the few cars that would start in the winter. No one could figure out how such an old car could do so well in the dead of winter. But we knew! It also was a chick magnet.