My First Car

Most guys remember every detail of their first car. It’s right up there with the first time you got to second base with your girlfriend. It’s a huge step. It means you’ve left childhood behind and you’re now operating on a more exalted level. The old bicycle that used to get you around, sits forgotten in the garage. You knew you were grown up, even if your parents tried to put a damper on your enthusiasm with their cautionary tales of speeding and drinking and driving. I can see my first car as clearly as if it were parked in my driveway today..

With most guys in North America my age, this momentous event happened the day they turned 16. And without fail, it involved an American car, usually an Impala or Bonneville or a Mustang. Nobody drove a Japanese make then and European cars were out of reach for most kids. I was a late bloomer. When I joined the US Army at age 20, I didn’t know how to drive. My father was always chauffeured everywhere and there was no need to learn how to drive. When I got posted to a Military Police Company in Germany, I spent my first four months overseas riding around the German countryside with a staff captain from 4th Armored Division Headquarters, talking to the mayors of the various villages through which we had driven our tank division on the way to Grafenwoehr, a vast military training area east of Nuremburg, which had been used for maneuvers since the Kaiser’s time.

Because I spoke German, it was my job to negotiate payment of damages caused by our passage through their lovely villages. They all seemed to be in need of new roads, bridges and fences. If the price of potatoes or rye or sugar beets was below expectations, our tanks seemed to be the answer to their prayers. The US Army paid top dollar for damages, much better than what they could get selling their crops on the open market. Our division’s tank drivers must have had the worst driving record in the Army, if you looked at the supposed havoc they left behind in the many villages on route to the maneuvers.

My captain, who was the official Maneuver Damage Control Officer, didn’t speak German, so it became my job to negotiate. Besides, he liked Bavarian beer too much to care. I did pretty well. The Germans didn’t mind paying me a commission for my efforts to get them just compensation for the damages they claimed. The Army didn’t care either, because at the end of the day the German government covered the cost of the US Army’s presence in Germany in those days.

After three months of this duty, I had earned enough to get my hands on a 1954 Mercedes 300d. The Germans called this car the “Adenauer,” because this was the car their chancellor rode around in. It demanded respect.

This car was a real pimpmobile for that time. I was a four-door sedan with rosewood paneling all around, cloth curtains, which could be opened and closed electrically, on all the windows and, best of all, fully reclining front seats that turned the interior of this car into a very comfortable bed. The car was black with a beige cloth interior and weighed close to two tons. It was built on a pre-war chassis and had a modern 3-liter straight-6 engine that produced 175 horses. It had a standard 4-speed manual transmission, with the gear shift lever mounted on the steering column.

This is significant, because if you shifted gears too vigorously the lever would come off in your hand and you were stuck in whatever gear you happened to be driving in at the time. If you were in fourth gear when the gear shift lever disconnected, it became very difficult to slow the car down. It had no power brakes. You’d think the emergency brake would come in handy at a time like that. But it was dicey as well. It was activated by means of a handle connected to a rather dainty chain under the dashboard. This chain had a tendency to snap, if you jerked the brake handle too forcefully.

The car also was equipped with a supercharger that could be engaged manually once you were in fourth gear and past 100 kph. It pushed the car’s top speed to over 180 kph and reduced its fuel efficiency to less than 8 miles per gallon. This meant you had to travel main roads only, since there were no filling stations on country roads. Keep in mind, in those days there were no speed limits on German roads. One of this car’s other interesting features was a hydraulic load leveling suspension, operated by a switch on the dash, which allowed you to raise or lower the car’s rear end, depending on what load you had in the back. It was a beauty. The only problem was that I didn’t have a driver’s license and didn’t know how to drive stick. As well, the car didn’t have valid plates. I couldn’t register it. For that you needed a valid driver’s license.

To remedy that, I got my roommate, who was the old man’s driver, to teach me. We took my car onto the back roads around our garrison and I learned how to drive or, to put it more truthfully, to terrorize the dogs, geese, chickens and people in the many small villages around the city. To obscure the fact that the car lacked registration, I packed mud over the expired date stamp on the plates. No need to worry about police, because as a member of the MPs, I was immune from arrest by the Germans.

I soon mastered the complexities of the clutch and was fortunate enough not to hit anything or anybody. I did find out that once the supercharger was engaged, it became very hard to slow this beast down. The brakes didn’t grab very well. The car also didn’t have power steering. It required maximum effort to muscle it around corners. Parking was a real struggle. Driving this car was not for the faint-hearted. But I persevered and after four weeks of scattering chickens and dogs and the odd group of panicked Germans, I went to our motor pool and took the Army’s driving test. The test vehicle was a deuce- and-a-half truck. To shift gears in this monster required you to double clutch. I passed.

To me that Benz was a means to an end. To the Germans it was a symbol of respect. This was the top of the line. It was a symbol of the 1950’s in Germany. You couldn’t tell from the outside that it was six years old and had 150,000 kilometers on its odometer. Only people with real money or influence could afford to drive a car such as this. The fact that I was only a Private in the US Army became irrelevant. In the eyes of the locals I was somebody to be reckoned with. It immediately improved my odds with the local ladies. They loved to ride in it and be seen in it. They invited me to their homes, introduced me to their parents, who were not adverse to the perceived importance of that Mercedes parked in front of their door. The reclining seats turned out to be real handy and a major bonus.

About a month after I got my driver’s license, I was driving with a German fellow, whose daughter I was dating at the time and who was the mayor of Jebenhausen, a small village about 10 km from base, on the main highway between Ulm and Goeppingen. I had the supercharger engaged and was doing about 160, when I came over the top of a hill and up behind a slow-moving produce truck with oncoming traffic. I tried to down-shift and brake hard, but not in time to avoid crashing into the back of the truck. Its trailer hitch buried itself in my radiator. Screeching metal and hissing steam, but we came to a stop. Nobody was hurt. The car’s engine was still ticking over. We both got out. There wasn’t a scratch on the truck. My grill and radiator were a mess. I got back into the car, put it in reverse and floored it. The car broke lose, the grill didn’t. The radiator was pretty much a total loss.

After a brief conversation with the mayor, the truck continued on its way and the two of us walked up to the closest farmhouse about half a mile down the road, where we asked the farmer, if he could give us a tow to Jebenhausen, where there was supposed to be an excellent garage. The farmer thought he could. Going back to base was out of the question, because an accident meant the automatic suspension of your driving privileges. The farmer hitched up two oxen and led them to our car, where he hooked a chain around the front bumper and proceeded slowly down the road with the sorry looking Mercedes in tow.

We were a sight to behold. In any case we made it to the garage, where soon half the town showed up to gawk. The mechanic told me it would take a couple of weeks to get the parts, but that he could fix it and make it look good as new. Then he introduced me to his brother. His name was Fritz Flederwisch and he was a house painter. He told me that he would be happy to re-paint my car and make it look like new. I asked him to paint the car fire-engine red, while he was at it. He thought I was out of my mind and told me that he would paint it any color I wanted as long as it was black. Only black would do. End of story.

I didn’t feel like arguing with him about the positive qualities of other colors, particularly their attraction to women. But I did mention to him that I needed to show some change in the look of the car, otherwise no one on base would believe me that I had a paint job done and they would start to ask questions and then my accident would come to light and my drivers license would be in jeopardy. It would mean the end of our beautiful relationship and all those maneuver-damage payments. Mr. Flederwisch pondered this dilemma for a long while and then he said that he could see white as an alternative to black, but that was as far astray as he was willing to go. So white it was going to be.

After this momentous decision we all proceeded to the Golden Hind pub and got drunk on Baerwurz, a nasty licorice-flavored concoction made from the roots of various herbs that was supposed to be good for you and tasted god-awful.

Three weeks later, I had my car back. It looked weird, gleaming white with a beige interior. I’m sure I owned the only white Mercedes Benz in Germany. Nobody on the base was any the wiser, but the Germans all stared wherever I went with that car. I couldn’t hide. They had never seen a white Mercedes before. It just wasn’t done. That is, ‘til they saw my GI license plate. Then they nodded. They understood – a crazed Ami. That explained everything. The ladies didn’t seem to mind.