The Rumble Seat

In the 1920's through the end of the 1930's, cars in roadster, coupe and cabriolet body styles were offered with either a luggage compartment or a seat in their rear deck. A rumble seat (American), dicky seat (British), aka mother-in-law seat, is an upholstered exterior seat which opens out from the rear deck of an automobile, and seats one or more passengers.  

As shown in my digital painting of a 1930 Buick above, the rumble seat was an inexpensive way for automakers to make what was essentially a two seat car into a four seater. The first mention of rumble seats dates to around 1912. The last car to be built with a rumble seat was the 1949 Triumph 2000.

I was eight years old, the one and only time I rode in a rumble seat. My friend Johnny and I were playing in his yard when a young man arrived in a very rough Ford Model A Roadster. He was there to take Johnny's teenaged sister out for a drive in the old car. Of course Johnny and I were all over it, climbing in and out, laying on the front fenders, honking the horn and generally being a proper nuisance. After much pestering we convinced the young man he should take us on their outing. Surprisingly big sister was quite enthusiastic we come along — only now have I realized perhaps she wasn't as keen on the young man as he was for her.

By Valerian Ruppert available on FineArtAmerica.com

There's two ways to get into a rumble seat. If the car is like the old Ford I rode in, you just climb haphazardly up the fender and hop in with nary a care for the paint and bodywork. If we're talking about an immaculately restored classic it's not so easy. There are two hockey puck sized circular steps, one on top of the rear bumper, the second on the right rear fender to be negotiated. I cannot imagine anything more stressful than accomplishing this while the car owner looks on. One slip and there goes the paint!

But once you're in, you'll find a comfortable seat and a commanding 360 degree view. If you're in a roadster with the top down, you can communicate with the front seat passengers, but you might have to shout to be heard over the combined "rumble" of wind, engine and tire noise. The rumble seat of a coupe feels more isolated – you're sitting behind the roof of the car, where the trunk would normally be. However most were fitted with a roll down rear window, so the front passengers, could crank it down if they so desired. Otherwise, it could get pretty lonely back there. 

I’m sure there are some that could tell stories of bitter cold, driving rain and howling winds, but I didn’t find any. The stories I found were all smiles and good times, if you'd like read several, click or tap Remembering The Rumble Seat. Those who rode as children, recall feeling like they were in a parade, and couldn't help waving and smiling to people on the sidewalk as they sailed past. Young men liked the narrowness of the rumble seat, it meant your date couldn’t get very far away. Plus if it was chilly, she'd have to snuggle just to keep warm.

As cars got faster, the popularity of the rumble seat started to wane, and by 1940 most automakers no longer offered them. They were part of the mainstream motoring culture for more than thirty years, but now are but a quaint chapter of automobile history. Nowadays, many classic car owners won't allow riders in their rumble seats on public roads. The fast pace and congestion of modern roads, combined with the lack of crash protection and safety features in a rumble seat car just don't mesh. But if you and your significant other ever get the chance to ride in a rumble seat on a secluded country road or in a parade, don't pass it up! I can guarantee you'll both be grinning ear to ear the whole time!

In closing, renowned illustrator and artist, Norman Rockwell captured the exhilaration of rumble seat riding for a magazine cover, shown below for your amusement.

"The Drive"

Early June is my absolute favourite time of the year to do "The Drive." This excursion is not about driving to any particular destination, but simply enjoying your car on interesting roads. The route should be on well-paved, winding backroads with light traffic. "The Drive" doesn't have to be on roads new to you. In fact, a familiar loop you've built up over many outings can be most enjoyable. Also, a week day is preferable as it's likely to have less traffic to interfere with "The Drive."
Preparation begins the day before. Check the weather forecast, it must be for clear and calm. Take the car out for a quick shake down and fill it up with gas. After supper, hopefully your car, parked in your driveway will be in shade – do whatever is needed to thoroughly clean it inside and out. Take your time, fuss over the details and enjoy the process. With it now gleaming, the car goes back in the garage. Enjoy the rest of your evening, but don't stay up late, a good night's sleep is essential.
Get up early, shower and have a light breakfast. Put on a comfortable shirt, your favourite worn-in jeans and light-soled shoes. Supple well-worn driving gloves and good sunglasses will enhance your enjoyment of "The Drive."
Go out to the garage and raise the overhead door. Next check tire pressures, oil, coolant, windshield wash. With the pressures and fluids all good, start the car and back it out of the garage. Leave it running. Turn on the lights and check that all are working, including brake and turn signals.
Start off slow and easy, letting the engine come up to operating temperature. Most likely, the first few miles will be in the city, but once it's just you, your car and the road, consider "The Drive" to have officially begun. Have your favourite play list called up and it will be background to the scenery rolling past. I recommend "The Drive" be no more than 200 miles, and I like to include two stops. The first will be mid-morning for coffee. I like a place that has, of course, good coffee and comfortable outdoor seating with a nice view. If there's a fresh cinnamon bun to be had and maybe the day's paper to review, more's the better!
You're now in the middle of "The Drive" – this is where you have the windows down, the tunes are off and you concentrate on how your car responds to your input. I don't have to race to enjoy driving, but if you've got the road to yourself, you can drive at a pace that won't land you behind bars but is swift enough to work the car and test your skill. I like this part of "The Drive" to be no more than ninety minutes in length. Any longer, and concentration can start to wander.
It's now time for the second stop, lunch. It doesn't have to be fancy, in fact, there's nothing better than a Pub that serves a good burger and again has outdoor seating – stay away from the beer! That's for later.
Consider the last part of "The Drive" back to home as the cool down section. Put the tunes back on and just cruise along. If you find yourself slouching comfortably behind the wheel, that's OK. Your thoughts may not be about driving, but how the rest of the day will play out. Perhaps it'll be a nice dinner with your significant other or maybe you'll take in movie or a concert.
Swing into your driveway, but don't put the car away. There should be a lawn chair, and a cold beer situated where you can enjoy both, plus admire your car and wind down all at the same time.

Epilogue: Those astute readers will have picked up on the fact I have not mentioned the type of car needed for "The Drive." Any car will do, as long as you enjoy driving it. 

My Honda Super Cub

From Wikipedia...
The Honda Super Cub, is a motorcycle with a four stroke single cylinder engine ranging in displacement from 49 to 109 cc (3.0 to 6.7 cu in). Having been in continuous manufacture since 1958, with production surpassing 60 million in 2008, the Super Cub is the most produced motor vehicle in history. The Super Cub's US advertising campaign, "You meet the nicest people on a Honda", had a lasting impact on Honda's image and on American attitudes about motorcycling, and is considered a classic case study in marketing.

I bought my all-white 1964 Honda 55 Super Cub in the spring of 1966 for a hundred bucks. At the time, I had absolutely no idea "The Cub" would later be renowned as the most produced motor vehicle in history. To me, it just was the cheapest "motorcycle" I could find. Now I know calling it a motorcycle is a bit of a stretch, but it did have a motor and two wheels so it does qualify, but just barely. I bought it in Penticton, and my friend Bruce gave me a ride there on his Yamaha Catalina 305 to pick it up. The trip down was a LOT faster than the return. Bruce's bike could easily cruise at more than the legal limit, whereas the Cub's maximum cruising speed on the level was about 40 mph, much slower on the hills. Bruce showed great patience by matching my speed all the way back home. I'm sorry to say I lost touch with Bruce soon after high school. We'd been friends since grade five and he was very helpful and supportive when my Dad died suddenly in 1968. I know he went on to university and became a teacher. Last I heard he'd settled Prince George – I wonder where he is now.

Getting The Look Right
I didn't ask my parents if I could buy this little bike, I just did it. After the uproar over its purchase died down, I set to work making the Cub less wimpy-looking. First to go was the plastic leg guards. Next I "bobbed" the back fender – this entailed hacksawing it off just below the taillight. Now we're getting somewhere! Fortunately the heavily side-valanced front fender was made of plastic. So it was easy to shorten and cut off the sides, ending up with a slim "sport" fender like the Honda S90 had. It was still just a Cub, but now I didn't mind being seen riding it. Only one thing was left to do... get rid of that big suffocating muffler! In my search for a new exhaust pipe, I made a wonderful discovery – one of the chrome-plated wand sections from the family vacuum cleaner fit perfectly onto the Cub's head pipe. I now had a straight pipe exhaust that both looked and sounded great! I must confess I never did admit to "repurposing" part of the Hoover. I can still hear my stepmom grumbling to herself, stooped over as she worked the vacuum missing half of its wand – sorry!

Cheap To Run
Now that's an understatement! The Cub did 175 miles to the gallon! In the year and a half I rode it, I can remember only one time actually PAYING to fill it with gas. It was when, for some long-forgotten reason, I decided to ride to Kamloops, a distance of about 105 miles. It took a full tank of gas to get there so I had to fill up for the return trip. A full tank of premium, cost me 34¢! (A gallon of gas back then cost 40¢ and those rocket scientists reading this would quickly deduce the tank held less than a gallon.) Normally, when the Cub needed gas, I'd stop by a service station when one of my friends was working a shift – if the boss wasn't around, they'd let me drain the pump hoses. Three hoses would fill it up!

All It Took Was A Dime
I tried to keep it a secret, but somehow my friends found out the key was broken off in the ignition switch. A dime was the perfect thickness to fit in the groove over the broken key and turn the ignition to the ON position, an easy kick and away it went. If I discovered the Cub was missing, it would either be visible two or three blocks away, or it would re-appear in ten minutes or so, with John, or Dennis, or Gerry aboard, grinning mischievously.

Top Speed, 50 mph Drafting
I rode that little Honda with no mercy. It was almost always at FULL THROTTLE. Top speed, with me sitting up, about 42 mph, if I bent over with my chin on the top of the handlebars, I could get to 45. Drafting behind a bigger bike, it would go 50. Great fun, but at that speed the engine was revving much higher than it ever was designed to do. The valves would float, meaning their springs couldn't close the valves quick enough to maintain contact with the rockers. Top speed runs often ended up bending the pushrods. I got pretty good at quickly pulling the top of the engine apart and removing said pushrods. Then on the kitchen table, I'd roll the bent pushrods back and forth, prodding them back to straight. I can't help but smile when I remember the family sitting down to supper at a table that many times, an hour previously, had looked like a workbench in a motorcycle shop.

How Things Change
When I first started riding motorcycles, a lot of my friends had Honda 90's or Suzuki 80's (top speed about 60 mph). Next up were bikes we would have called mid-size, Suzuki 150's and Honda 160's (top speed nearing 80 mph). A really big bike would be a Suzuki 250 X6 or a Honda 305 Super Hawk (top speed 100 mph). When the Honda 450 and the Suzuki 500 came out, we just couldn't understand why anyone would need a bike that big! 
Nowadays there are 125 and 250 motorcycles and scooters around, but real street bikes now start at 600 cc. These rockets can easily exceed 155 mph (that's 250 kph). Let's not even talk about big sport bikes like the Suzuki Hayabusa which has a top speed in excess of 190 mph (300 kph)! I'll admit sampling that kind of performance would be invigorating to say the least. But do we really need a motorcycle that can break every speed limit in North America in first gear?
It was a simpler and I think happier time back when I was riding that Cub. There was no internet, no iPhones, no GPS, TV's were black and white with one or two channels, pant legs and ties were slim, and to every 16-year-old boy's delight, skirts seemed to get shorter every year! Our family rented a nice three bedroom house for $85.00 a month, gasoline as previously mentioned was 40¢ a gallon (or about 9¢ a litre), a nice steak dinner at Mr. Mikes was $1.49, and the base price for a new Corvette convertible just over $4,000.00. In the almost fifty years since then, nearly everything has changed. That is, except the Cub – worldwide, Honda still makes about four million of them every year... Wow.

Don and his Cadillac Convertible

I'm the youngest sibling in a blended family of six. My brother Don was the third oldest, putting him in the middle, upper half. He would not dispute being called the black sheep of the family. His was a rather colourful life, involving a few close scrapes with the law, a stint in the army, three wives and a long and successful career as a professional wrestler – just google his stage name, "Lumberjack Luke" or look for the book titled "I Ain't No Pig Farmer" by Dean Silverstone which features him on the cover. Sadly, we lost Don in 2009. At his memorial service I shared a story, from over forty years ago, that involved him, me and his 1960 Cadillac Convertible. Although this story is more about him and me, it does also include a few useful insights into the proper way to wash a car, so I've decided to share it again.

It was late April and I had turned sixteen the previous February. At the time, like many teenagers, I was partial to sleeping in on Saturdays. By the time I got up, around 11:00, the house was deserted, or so I thought. I was in the kitchen making myself breakfast when I heard a noise from the living room. To my surprise, there was Don stretched out in a sleeping bag on the sofa, his one open eye glaring at me for waking him up. He had driven back to Kelowna for a visit, arriving in the wee hours of the morning. 

After breakfast he said, “Come outside and see my new car.”  Filling our driveway, was a 1960 Cadillac convertible. A car from the era when chrome and tailfins ruled the day. “Wow,” I said, “that thing is huge!” Don just grinned; he could tell I was impressed. 

It was early spring, the day was warm and the sun was shining. But Don had driven over the pass through brutal winter conditions and that giant car was grime from its seven foot wide multi-faceted chrome front bumper all the way back, nearly twenty feet, to the tips of its tail fins. “Want to help wash it?” he asked? “Sure!” I said perhaps a little too quickly. I’d helped Dad wash the family car, a little Morris 1100. I knew all about washing cars, or so I thought. I ran to get the hose and bucket, while Don opened the trunk, saying he had “All the other stuff I would need.” 

First, it was fill the bucket with warm water, not hot, just warm. Don mixed in the special car soap, while I took up the hose, and was told, “thoroughly wet it down, from the top to the bottom.”  I won’t go into all detailed the instructions I got, let's just say he had a specific way he wanted things done. Don found a comfortable spot to sit on the low concrete wall alongside the driveway – from there he could supervise and issue instructions. There was a special brush to scrub the convertible top, and a big sheepskin wash mitt for the paint. "Whatever you do, don't let that mitt touch the ground!" he barked. As I scrubbed the car with the mitt, he kept reminding me, "Rinse the mitt in the bucket, keep the car wet, always work from the top down!" There was steel wool for the whitewall tires, and a long-handle vegetable brush to scrub in between the pieces of the grilles. Cadillacs of that era had one on the front and another grille, nearly as large, on the back. Each filled with little nooks and crannies all needing detailed cleaning. Once the car was clean and rinsed all the way round, Don had me wet it down again and then as quickly as I could, dry it with a chamois to make sure there were no water spots.

Don started the engine, and lowered the top, then he said, “You’ll find it much easier to vacuum with the top down.” And I must admit, it IS much easier to vacuum the carpets and clean the seats and door panels in an open-top car. Even windexing the inside glass is easier when you can do it standing up! 

We were done, and the car gleamed from stem to stern! Both teacher and student stood back and admired it. With its big whitewall tires, snow white paint, red leather interior and sparkling acres of chrome, this was 5,000 pounds of pure automotive excess.

“Let’s go for a drive,” said Don starting the car. “I gotta change my soggy shirt,” I said, running into the house. When I came back out, the driver’s door of the car was wide open, and there was Don, sitting in the front passenger seat, grinning ear to ear. I just stood there dumbfounded. “Jesus Christ!” he drawled, waving me into the driver’s seat, “You earned it!”

Some European cars never seen in North America

Volkswagen Scirocco

Years ago when VW brought out the first Golf (aka Rabbit), they also sold the Scirocco sport compact coupe in North America. It was based on the golf platform, but had a body that was much lower and sleeker. Volkswagen thought of it as a replacement for the Karmann Ghia coupe that they produced from the late fifties and into the early seventies. 

Fast forward nearly forty years and those Germans are keeping the 3rd generation Scirocco, a sleek little two door hatchback, all to themselves. The reason, they felt this great-looking, fun to drive coupe might negatively affect sales of the competent but visually boring Golf GTI... duh!  

Audi A3 Convertible (current)

Audi has the cornered the market on cars with clean and simple lines. While out on a stroll in Sinsheim Germany the other day we came across several Volkswagen and Audi cars on display. The one car in the group that stood out was the A3 Convertible. In addition to the typical Audi flawlessly executed styling details, what really keeps this car looking so nice is the soft top. The trend today is away from the soft top to retractable hardtops, but the cuts in the body necessary for them to function messes up the look of many such cars. I know the hard roof has its advantages but it comes at a cost beyond just the financial.

Good News! I’ve read the 2015 A3 convertible is coming our way with an all wheel drive option. It won’t be cheap but...

Smart Roadster (2003 – 2005)

I woke up on our last day in Germany, looked out the window of our hotel room and what did I see? A very clean example of the Smart Roadster Coupé, with all the Brabus options. The Coupé has the extended glass "roof" over the engine bay, giving it more luggage space than the lesser model with the short roof. Too bad the car in this picture isn't situated next to another car for a size reference – a Miata would look massive next to this. 

Smart only made 43,091 of these cars from 2003 to 2005, and never sold them in the North American market. This car would have come from the factory with a 99 horsepower engine. Until one takes up the challenge of driving fast in a relatively low horsepower car, they won't know what pleasure can be had from wringing every last bit of "go" out of one. Something a Porsche Turbo driver will never experience, even going twice as fast.

Wikipedia says, “For those who have driven it, and fallen in love with it, it has proven to be an excellent driver's car with fuel consumption in the high 40s or low 50s miles per imperial gallon. Running costs are low and the car is one of the few true sports cars built in the spirit of the 1950s classic British sports car. Influential British motoring television show and magazine "Top Gear" praised the Roadster, awarding it Fun Car Of The Year for 2005.”

Sadly it was discontinued, not by slow sales, but production issues that put warranty costs over $5,000.00 (Cdn) per unit. Too bad.

Peugeot 1007 (2004 – 2009)

Here's an oddity we stumbled upon in Cologne. If you were to take a small minivan and chop out the section containing the front doors and seats, then weld the front and rear back together, you'd have this car. It has only one door on each side - a power sliding door if you can believe it. Too weird. But then again, in tight European parking spaces, those doors make a lot of sense.

Ford Ka

Picture a two door Ford Fiesta that got left in the dryer a little too long. This mini-sized tall hatchback has outgrown its quirky first generation design is now quite a tidy-looking little car. I'd buy one, but then I happen to like small cars. I saw lots of these cars zipping around all over Germany, but never got the chance to get a picture, this nice shot thanks to google images.

Volkswagen California

Looking a lot like the old Westfalia camper vans, this mid-size by European standards even has a pop-up roof like the old "Westies" had. Sadly, it will never travel the state its named after.

Convertible Everything

Earlier in this post I criticized retractable roof cars as being less visually appealing than their soft-top brethren. While that is true, it doesn't mean they aren't without merit. I saw lots of different retractables, some that looked quite nice, especially if you choose a dark colour so the awkward body joints are less noticeable. As my friend JD says, "If the top goes down, the fun goes up!"