In planning for The Great Wetback Episode Of ’86 my emigration to the U.S., I’d made prior arrangements with a rental car company to reserve and pre-pay a 3-month rental, so that I wouldn’t be stuck without wheels on my arrival. I went with a prepay so that I could pay in rands and not in dollars because #CurrencyConversionRape, and would only have to pay the sales tax when I turned it in. (In those days one could do such a thing because the rental companies loved getting paid in advance, especially — as was the case here — when made using a corporate club card e.g. Hertz #1 Club or Avis Preferred, National Gold etc. I don’t think you can do this anymore.)
So I arrived at the airport in Austin, and made my way to the rental counter clutching my prepaid contract with some confidence because the club card showed that I was an employee of one of the company’s largest clients worldwide. The rental counter lady looked at the contract and gave a little frown, causing my heart to sink, but it turned out I needn’t have worried.
“We don’t have any of that group’s cars left, but we can give you another, so if you don’t mind [smile], we’ll just upgrade you, and as you’ve prepaid, there’s no extra charge.”
“Okay. What car will you give me?”
“I’m afraid the only one left is a Chev Camaro,” she said, and looked at me anxiously. “Will that do?”
Then she gave a puzzled look at the sight of a customer sinking to his knees while uttering an apparent prayer of thanks.
It looked like this, a Camaro Sport Coupe, only in black:
In retrospect, when I sank to my knees I should have been asking “Why me, Lord?”, because this was the beginning of a three-month ordeal.
As I tootled around Austin with Trevor — who had himself emigrated some eight months earlier — a couple of things became apparent.
a) A Texas summer should not be coupled with a black car, of any size or description, and b) the enormous rear window actually had a greenhouse effect on the car’s interior.
In other words, Gentle Readers, driving this thing around Austin was akin to driving around in an oven set to Broil.
Worse yet, the Camaro had an anemic V6 engine, so like my earlier experience with the Silver Bullet, it had no poke whatsoever. Trying to coax any kind of speed out of the thing simply meant that the need for a gas refill would appear sooner rather than later.
Of the handling, we will not speak. Okay, do let’s talk about it because it didn’t have any. It slewed around corners at any speed, the steering was vague and imprecise, and because the car was wider than a blue whale, maneuvering through traffic was a nail-biting experience for one not accustomed to driving such a beast. I don’t know how Trevor felt about it, but all I can recall is several instances of sharply-indrawn breath and muttered “Fucking hell, that was close.”
How I survived the three months without a fender-bender or a scratch on the car is a testament to both luck and the ability of other drivers to avoid this sweating maniac’s clumsy driving.
And have I mentioned how hot I was, that summer in Austin? I soon found that the only way to get into the car without fainting from the heat was to open the front door, start the engine, then get out quickly, close the door and scurry back to our apartment for about fifteen minutes to allow the Camaro’s A/C (which was excellent, I will admit) to bring the interior temperature down to, say, 98 degrees. Some might say that I should have just lowered the windows to allow the breeze to cool the thing down, to which I should remind everyone that it was June/July/August in Austin, Texas. (I remember driving back from a trip to San Antonio, and passing one of those signs outside a bank which showed the temperature to be 95, at 2am. So don’t talk to me about daytime temperatures and lowered windows.)
Amazingly, when I was ferrying any of the local girls out to dinner or lunch (it happened a few times), they didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat. Clearly, they were acclimatized and I wasn’t — despite having just come from Africa.
Anyway, the time came for me to hand the thing back to the rental company, and while I was left without transport for a few weeks (#VisaDelay) it wasn’t as big a problem as I’d thought it would be because as it happened, I was shacking up with one of those local girls and she had no problem with lending me her car on the few occasions when I needed one while she was at work.
Then my visa was approved and I left Austin to take up my job at the Great Big Research Company — just in time for my first encounter with a Chicago Winter.
But that’s another story.
Having grown up in Chicago, I wait for the next installment with bated breath. Should be a good episode!
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chicago+blizzard&iar=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.nbcchicago.com%2F2021%2F02%2FGettyImages-1302490249.jpg%3Fquality%3D85%26strip%3Dall%26fit%3D3000%252C2001%26w%3D1575%26h%3D886%26crop%3D1
Don’t know how to post a photo, but that’s what they often look like. lol
JC
So it’s starting to click – your unAmerican dislike of American cars started with being stuck in the worst of the 80’s cars, which were second only to some of the sheer awfulness of the 70’s cars. got it.
As a lifelong Texan, when I tell people the heat is Texas is worse than anywhere else, I mean the HEAT IN FUCKING TEXAS IS WORSE THAN ANYWHERE ELSE, even motherfucking Africa. Glad you concur.
As a simple fact, the best way to manage the intense heat of a parked car is to roll down all the windows, start the car, put A/C on high, and IMMEDIATELY start driving. Not go sit in your apartment for 15 minutes. The greenhouse effect means that with ambient temps of, say, 95F, the inside of your car is at 120F. By driving with the windows down, you are exchanging the 120F air in the car with the 95F air outside, which immediately cools your car by 25 degrees. Then all the A/C has left to do is take it from 95 to whatever is comfortable for you. Your method forces to A/C to start at 120 and it’ll take fucking forever to cool down to anything reasonable.
Also, even with the V8, those camaros were dogs. All the V8 did was use gas faster. In the 80’s, I was driving a car from the 60’s and easily outrunning anything from the factory, even the v8 models. It wasn’t even close. The big 3 were still unsure of how to figure out the environmental plumbing and were largely ignorant of how to set up fuel injection.
So if you were “upgraded” to a base Camaro with the Secretary 6, no HP with the Vinal Seats in the heat absorbent black, then what did you originally sign up for? Some small imported penalty box with the pretend A/C ? The Rental Car agent did you a big favor.
Yeah, what Don Curton says above, except that a black car with all that glass will be closer to 140F than 120F after a brief time in the sun. Opening the windows to cool it down to even 105F ambient is a marked improvement, and it makes the AC work less to bring the temp down to something livable.
My brother-in-law had one of these with the V6 and a 5 speed. It wasn’t horrible. One thing about this body style was that the passenger seat sucked. It was lower to the deck than the driver (the catalytic converter was under it. They raised the floor to make it fit.
Black on Black is nuts in Texas. I got an Avalon with that used. It was the only car I could find at my price point during cash 4 clunkers. Miserable. My kids mostly drove it. You’d have to put a towel on the steering wheel or it would roast your hands.
These kinds of cars were rare when I came here 25 years ago. Now, they are all over. It’s how we identify the transplant locusts. They don’t know any better. The sun absolutely batters the paint. In three years you’ll see it dull.
Every time I read stuff like this I’m glad to live in the cool and dry climate of Calgary Canada. We have a few very cold days in mid-winter but very rarely, every 5 or 6 years, a snowfall like JCinPA showed. And 100F happens for maybe 5 days a year.
I realized in my late 50s that I actually hated our annual trips to Mexico. Heat, humidity, sweat, sunburn, bugs, yuck. Wife dragged me on a Caribbean cruise last year and I hated that too, when I left the nicely air conditioned ship to wander about in some grubby, sweaty, third world dump.
London and most of Europe in October or November are about right for me.
That generation Camaro had an anemic 2.8L v-6 in the base car. I had a buddy that was given an 84 with the 2.8L as a college graduation from his grandparents. In 96 I helped him pull the worn out 2.8L and drop in a 4.3L that had ben gone through. He still has it and did a full restoration about a dozen years ago. It only sees daylight for car shows since then.