Vintage Wheels
Three women on their classic cars, and why they’re so driven by autos of the past.
Photography – Gigi Stoll
Intro by Elinor Nauen
Introduction by Elinor Nauen
When I was 16 and got my first driver’s license, in my home state of South Dakota, I wrote in my diary how “powerful and free” I felt. How did I know at 16 that cars would be a lifelong preoccupation, when I had yet to drive fast or even be alone in a car?
Yet somehow the myth had already seared my synapses. I was moved by the lovely lines of ‘50s beasts (and eventually, the gorgeous imports). They made my heart beat in time with every white stripe the road ate up beneath me. I saw the glamour of speed even though our law-abiding family of six never went fast. (In a station wagon driven by my mom, I should note. My dad didn’t drive.) I went on to become an auto journalist and publish two books with “cars” in the title.
What is it about cars? “Free and powerful,” my prophetic teenage words, still rip me up with pleasure and hope. With a car I can go see this beautiful country of ours, I can drive into the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York, to the mystical Bear Butte of western South Dakota, along the Great River Road from Lake Itasca in Minnesota down the Mississippi to New Orleans. The longing for a road trip never leaves me.
I once owned a 1973 Ford LTD, a car not much smaller than my New York apartment. The best talk I ever had with my husband of 30+ years was in that LTD late one night: the intimacy of driving and talking, of being close without having to find a place for your eyes to go.
I’ve lived in downtown Manhattan for a long time now, and no longer own a car. I feel infantilized; I think: What kind of adult doesn’t own a car? Plenty of New Yorkers, obviously, but not a New Yorker who is also a girl from the prairie. I also no longer drive every car at top speed, once a point of pride.
Women have been feeling powerful and free in cars since the invention of the automobile almost a century and a half ago. The first woman to have a driver’s license in the U.S. (Illinois #24) was Mrs. John Howell Phillips in 1899. She said driving her own car is “woman’s best tonic.” She drove at top speed, too: 8 to 10 miles an hour. Cars got women out of the house, out of bad marriages, out from under. It didn’t take long to figure out that no one knew you in the next town over.
Beyond the romance, for many of us, is the practical: a lot of women appreciate a car’s engine as much as its beauty or movement. Learning to keep my cars running made me feel even more powerful (as did simply getting my hands greasy).
Not that I was ever much of a mechanic! The women in this feature are much, much better than the shade tree mechanic I barely was. For me it was get my beater running or hitchhike. For Susan Harder, Monica Novo and Sammy Levin collecting vintage cars, knowing their histories and intricacies, and keeping them in tiptop shape with their own tools is something they take seriously and enjoy.
Cars make them feel ‘free and powerful’.
Meet the Women
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