Cars with teeth

Cars with teeth.

Auto eroticism

                                                                                                                 

                                                                                     

Behold! His Mighty Hand. Or something. I feel as if I'm in one of those Cecil B. DeMille epics where Moses discovers the burning bush and takes off his sandals and falls on his face.

For this is The Ultimate Car. 

YES.

The 1939 Bentley Embiricos.

What is a Bentley Embiricos, you may ask? Hell if I know, except that of all the gorgeous, bulbous old cars I've ever looked at, this one is the most flagrantly, lavishly erotic.

Erotic, because why? Because its bulbousness, femaleness, shyly covered rear wheels implying an intimate boudoir or bridal chamber, contrast startlingly with slyly tapered, fiercely-pointed fenders, an even more fierce point at the tail, and squatty primeval-looking predatory "legs" that throw the whole machine into a kind of snarly crouch.

This is less a car than something alive. Something with animus, with soul.

I don't know who Embiricos was, and I don't care much (except I feel a bit guilty and negligent not researching him for this post). Some race car driver, or someone who could afford to have a whole car designed after him - like Edsel, except this one was GOOD. The Embiricos appears to have been manufactured for several years, from about 1936 to 1939, but I can't see much difference in it from year to year. It just goes from exotically gorgeous to exotically gorgeous.

It's funny, because to me it has more of the look of a '40s car, with all those pregnant-looking bulges. But at the same time there is the pointiness, even angularity, and a raciness that implies gazelle-like speed. You could take this thing out on the track back in 1939 and beat the hell out of all those pathetic Bugattis and whatever-else-was-around.

I think it's obvious by now that I know nothing whatsoever about vintage cars. But I know what I like. I have the most embarrassing reaction to them. I want to sit on the roof of this thing, facing its rear bumper, and just sli-i-i-i-i-i-de on down.

(and omigodlookatthoserearwindowstheymakemewanttoediieeeEEEEEE)

There is a name for this fetish-y thing I'm talking about. Can't remember it, but there was a whole TV series about it, My Amazing Whackadoodle Addiction or Compulsion or something. A woman was going to marry the Eiffel Tower, for example, but I guess he said no. Another woman wanted to marry a carnival ride (which didn't work, by the way - I didn't get that one at all, for if a ride doesn't work, how would you get off?)

I don't really want to marry cars like this one. I want to have lustiferous affairs with them, ride around inside them to the creak of leather and the woah-woah-woah-woah-woah hummy sound of an old-fashioned car engine. I've heard that riding in these things is sort of like being in a Sherman tank (not that I've ever been in one of THOSE either), in that they seem simply huge inside and out. 

Every year, Bill and I go to a local car show which is made up of about 85% vintage: cars older than 40 years. The oldest of these, a Ford predating the Model T, had a crank. The one I first had a real Jones for was a little red Corvette (do they come in any other colour?) that I wanted to slip into my pocket. But in the last few years, the '40s models, wide and swaggering, chugging along like mighty seagoing vessels, have done it for me. 

And yet, look at this one! It predates them all. And from every angle, it looks like a different car. It even looks downright modern from the side. This front view looks very race-car-ish - as a matter of fact, it's downright futuristic, like the Batmobile or Supercar. It looks as if it could easily take off and fly, its rear jets blazing.

But the sleekness from the side. . . oh God. Gulp. I want to lick it, to swallow it. It's just that kind of car. You could put it on a stick in the summer and consume it. 

I'd sing to it. Wrap it up in a blanket at night (one-o-those tarp thingies).

I'd wish upon it, instead of a star.

I'd knock on it, instead of wood.

"BEHOLD, HIS MIGHTY HAND!"

Just another eggplant

I have never been able to cook eggplant. My mother knew. She fried it, in the way people fried things then, in a lot of hot bubbling Crisco, and she fried it very slowly. The breading would become very dense and crisp from concentrated juices, and the middle was almost like a custard, smooth and jelly-like, with that salty-sweet punky eggplant taste and the slippery texture of the seeds.

Nor can I find it duplicated in a restaurant, though the occasional Greek place has a nice moussaka with a creamy, almost gelatinous texture. But enough.

I've posted before about how I have a thing for cars. Well, no. I hate them. I don't even drive, which is yet more evidence of my freakishness. I hate what cars have done to the environment and believe they are probably about 75% responsible for the planet's impending doom. Nobody thinks about this, but I do.

And yet.

It was years ago, a some-enchanted-evening moment when I saw this car, not exactly the one pictured but of similar shape and vintage. It was eggplant-and-cream, two-toned, with a lot of chrome in between.  It swooshed along elegantly as if driven along by some liveried chauffeur in the 1940s. And something happened to me then: I was transfixed. It was erotic, nothing more or less. I was electrified. Had that car been anywhere near me, I would have attached myself to the roof and held on for dear life while it accelerated madly and blew through red lights. I would have slid down that hunched, crouched back, the back with no wheels, tensed and animal-like. I would have wrapped myself around those balloon-like fenders, so blown-up that they're ready to explode like in that obscene Popeye cartoon where the tire blows up. 

The creature swanned around, did one more turn around the strip mall (for my benefit, no doubt), then disappeared. It was likely going to be displayed in a car show somewhere. I was not yet going to car shows - I didn't "know", not the way I know now. Now I go, and I look for that car, which according to Google is a 1940 Mercury Westergard custom. I may never find it, but I keep on looking. In spite of what everybody seems to think about me, I have always been the most wretched kind of optimist.

Mystery solved?

   

Could this be the one? 

Like the Handsome Prince, I have sought Cinderella for years now. I've schlelpped around a very big glass slipper - glass boot maybe  - trying to find The Car, the gaspingly beautiful car I saw a long time ago, years ago, when I was standing at a bus stop.

I don't care two figs about cars. I don't drive them, and I think they are the worst culprit in global climate change. I hate them, in fact. But every once in a while. . . 

I seem to favor the late '30s - early '40s models, maybe because they were featured in hyper-romantic movies like Casablanca. I love the bulges, the sleek lines, the tiny freakish rear windows you could barely peep out of.

Anyway, I was standing there minding my own business, when something sailed past me. A ship in full billow. It was huge, sleekly curved, and two-toned, painted gleamingly in maroon and cream with chrome trim. I remembered that there was a local car show on the weekend, and wondered if it had come from - somewhere - to take part in the annual orgy of hopeless yearning.

It did a strange thing then. Rather than drive on, it turned into a demi-strip-mall, but the driver didn't get out. He (I could just barely see it was a he) drove around the perimeter in a half-circle, very slowly, then pulled out and drove away.

Was it preening, primping, parading just for me, or were there other gawkers? It was obviously a vanity move. Look at me. Rather, look at "it", this treasure from another time, beautifully restored in probably about a billion hours for a billion dollars.

I realize now that in spite of the similar coloring, this isn't the car. There was more chrome on it, and the colors were placed differently, separated sort of diagonally.  It sloped down more dramatically at the back, and was quite a bit longer, with those odd covered back wheels I could never understand, giving the impression the car was growing out of the pavement. And it didn't have a running board, meaning it was probably a year or two newer than this photo.

For a long time I thought it was a 1940 Mercury Westergard, and I guess it's possible. Anything is possible, except I've never seen a Westergard (even in a photo) that wasn't gleaming cherry red. Seems like some sort of an automobilic law. 

But this is the closest I have come. It's called a Stowe Vermont Packard, which means  nothing to me except that many of the car photos I'm collecting now are Packards. 

It's not the car. But maybe a distant cousin. 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm