My very first experience driving an American car was in 1982, on my honeymoon with Wife #1. Our itinerary was first to drive from Manhattan to Boston / New England and back to Manhattan via a different route:
…thence down to New Orleans, over to Disney World, and back up to Manhattan via the East Coast, likewise taking a different path:
This was not a brief visit — we had sufficient vacation time (in Seffrica, as in most places in the world, paid vacation time was three calendar weeks, and we’d both accrued a couple more thereof), so we took five weeks to complete the round-trip.
On arrival at JFK, we spent a few days in Manhattan to get over jet lag and to see the World’s Greatest City. Unfortunately, we arrived in late September during a) the hottest summer of the decade and b) a NYC garbage workers’ strike, so when it came time to leave, we did so with some relief because when it came to searing heat in city streets and an unbearable smell of rotting garbage, I wasn’t to encounter anything similar until I went to India, many years later.
We’d accumulated considerable coinage during those early days, mainly because I couldn’t count change quickly enough for impatient New Yokkers, so I just threw bank notes around at every purchase. But when I tried to convert the coins back into dollar bills, the tellers at two banks told us to get stuffed because we weren’t customers. As we weren’t customers (and unlikely to become such), therefore, I felt no shame in snarling at all of them for their shitty service.
But that was a blessing in disguise, because when we hit our first tollbooth getting out of Manhattan, I ended up in the cash-only lane, and was only able to get us out by flinging handfuls of change into the basket provided until the boom lifted. (In fairness, it was the first tollbooth I’d ever encountered.)
We’d specified a compact car from Hertz — thinking we’d get the typical small car like a Mazda 323 (First Wife’s car) — but to our amazement, our “compact” car was a six-seater family saloon, a Plymouth Reliant.
(This is the actual color of the car we rented.)
I thought we’d been given a large car by mistake, but was assured not by the rental clerk. (I’d like to say that this was my first experience with American Portions, but we had been to Katz’s Deli and ordered their pastrami sandwiches. We ended up eating less than half of one each, and took the remainder and the other one back to the room for road food.)
But on to the trip.
Amazingly, the car drove reasonably well — a little harshly over the concrete slabs on the interstate highways, but the 2.2-liter engine worked fine* and we weren’t in any hurry to get anywhere anyway, so the car was never called on to perform any heroics. But the handling took a bit of getting used to; my car back in Johannesburg was an Opel Ascona:
…which was a little bigger than a K-car, but having been built to German-GM standards and not U.S.-GM standards, it handled really well — almost to Mercedes levels.
So the K-car was an interesting drive, to say the least, but as I said, not being in a hurry, it was no problem and there were no mechanical issues.
*I did think that the engine was remarkably lifeless for one of 2.2-liter capacity; the Opel had a 1.6-liter engine, and it had far more poke than the K-car. (In retrospect, I think the crappy no-lead U.S. fuel may have been the principal culprit — how I missed, and still miss, the 100-octane no-ethanol rocket fuel of the old days.)
The trip concluded back in Manhattan, where we turned in the Reliant to the astonishment of the rental guy at the mileage we’d covered. (In those days it cost a little extra to get “unlimited” mileage for a rental, but I paid it gladly, especially when I learned what the per-mile overage charge would have cost.) I’d also heard horror stories about fill-up charges for gas, so I bought a 5-gallon gas can and filled it back somewhere in (I think) Delaware, and that was sufficient for us to top off and turn in the car with a full tank. So the gas consumption wasn’t too bad either.
All in all, therefore, my first experience driving an American car wasn’t too bad, car-wise. (Oh, and the front- and back bench seats were just ideal for honeymooners, if you get my drift.)
That would change in future trips, as you will see.
