Drive

by Tim Falconer

  Among the cars he kept at the club were a red 1996 Camaro, a brown 1996 BMW 320 and a 1980 dark green Ford Falcon. The Falcon was Ford’s answer to the small imports that had somehow snatched nearly 10 percent of the U.S. market. To Americans, it was an inexpensive compact, but since it could seat six it was big enough to be a family car. Introduced in the fall of 1959, the Falcon was such a hit—the company sold 417,000 in the first year—that Robert McNamara, the man behind the project, earned a promotion. In 1960, he became the first president of the company who wasn’t a member of the Ford family. His stay at the top was brief, though, because before long President John F. Kennedy appointed him Secretary of Defense.

  Ford made and sold the Falcon in the United States until 1970, but the car had an even longer and more successful life in other parts of the world, where many saw it as a mid-size model. In Australia, it remains the company’s best-seller. And in Argentina, the Falcon was not just the most-produced car, with half a million built between 1962 and 1991, but also a hugely important one culturally. The Falcon was a racing car, a family car, a taxi, a police car—and, from 1976 to 1983, a sinister symbol of the country’s military dictatorship and the “Dirty War” that the generals who ruled after the coup d’état waged against their own people. Death squads used dark green Falcons to “disappear” trade unionists, artists, students and anyone else who might oppose or question the junta. Since the squads illegally arrested, tortured or killed an estimated thirty thousand people, the car now stirs bitter emotions for many Argentines. (Lawrence Thornton’s 1988 novel, Imagining Argentina, does a hauntingly good job of capturing the ominous mood those dark green birds of prey created.) Even today, some people in Buenos Aires won’t get into a taxi if it’s a Falcon, and a tour operator in the northern city of Salta, who would have been just four or five when the dictatorship crumbled, told me, “I don’t like it when I see a Ford Falcon. I get bad memories.”

  But not everyone feels that way. “It’s a car that always works. It is faithful, noble and safe,” said Coelho. “The mechanics are simple. It always runs and it doesn’t leave you on the road.” And, as it turned out, the three men who had joined us were from the Club Amigos del Ford Falcon. One of them was Oscar Mota, an organizer of that 350-member organization, whom I’d arranged to meet. He’d brought along two younger members, Adrian Alejandro and Daniel Dominquez.

  Just as we were introducing ourselves, another man appeared and announced, “Food is ready!”

  “Will you have your meeting while you eat?” Carmen asked.

  “No, we’re done,” replied Coelho. “Otherwise we’ll fight. Now we’ll continue talking about cars.”

  We walked back to the parilla and into a festive scene. The room wasn’t much—the white walls were covered with framed drawings of old cars, club photos and a large flag of the club logo—but about thirty boisterous men, all talking at once, sat at a long, thin table covered in a white tablecloth and filled with white plates, bottles of wine and big plastic containers of Coke. As we walked in, the men abruptly fell silent, swivelled their heads and stared at the woman entering the room.

  We joined Dominquez, Alejandro and Mota at a small, round table at the end of the long, thin one. The dinner was sausage, seriously well-done beef and salad; the conversation was cars. The son of a Falcon owner, Dominquez, a curly-headed man who works for a doors and windows business, first fell in love with the car when he went to races as a boy. After selling one four years ago so he could get married and buy a house, he bought a 1979 Falcon Sprint a year ago. The clean-cut Alejandro, who was dressed in a white sweater and works in foreign investment for an oil company, bought a 1978 Falcon two years ago for ten thousand dollars. His father has owned a Falcon for thirty years. Their club’s only requirement is that members must keep their cars in good condition, meaning that the owners of the many beat-up ones on the streets of Buenos Aires need not apply. Alejandro admitted that most wives, including his, aren’t that supportive. “They don’t understand what we feel,” he said. “We polish our cars. We pet them. So they don’t get it. They don’t understand the way we take better care of our cars than of our wives.”

  A burly guy in his forties with curly dark hair and large wireframe glasses, Mota looked a bit like hockey great Phil Esposito and had the hands of a working man: thick, rough and lined with grease. All of the men on Mota’s father’s side of the family were car lovers and he now owns three Falcons: a 1962 model built in the United States, a 1969 Futura and a 1979 Sprint. When Carmen wondered why he needed three, he said, “They are different.”

  I suspected that the mechanic was taciturn at the best of times, but he was clearly skeptical about us, and his apprehension grew as we inched toward the topic of the Falcon’s controversial history. His answers were short and curt, with none of the flamboyant pride we’d seen in Ferro. In fact, I figured he’d brought Alejandro and Dominquez along as backup.

  Sure enough, Dominquez, who would have been a small boy during the Dirty War, was the one who spoke to the controversy. That government, he pointed out, also had Torinos and Chevrolets, but drove Falcons the most for the same reason everyone else did: they were the most reliable. And that part of the car’s history doesn’t disturb him any more than a Jeep lover would mind that armies use Jeeps. “The government gave it a bad reputation, but the car isn’t to blame for those acts,” he said. “The people who blame the car rather than the military are just looking for something to blame.”

  Once we moved past that subject, Mota relaxed a bit and told us that he spends about six hours a week on his cars and that his wife shares his passion. He would love to own a Ferrari but can’t afford one. Eventually, without saying a word, he left the table, walked over to where the photos hung on the wall and took something down as the men at the long table razzed him loudly. He brought it back and handed it to us. Under the glass were a photo of Mota’s gleaming turquoise 1962 Falcon, a Ford logo and some text that began, “I have a heart that’s blue and oval,” and went on to explain what each of the letters in Ford stands for: F is for strength; O is for pride; R is for racing hard and reliability; D is for the destiny that put the Falcon at his side to be his companion, his loyal friend, more than something that just transports him, his guide, his Ford for life. “If I die of old age,” it ended, “you will keep on running.” This quiet man, for whom expressing emotion did not appear easy, had written a love letter to his car.

  13 Glendale

  “The Biggest Wins”

  THREE WEEKS into my road trip, I’d travelled over 3,200 miles and it was time for some automotive and personal maintenance. The car needed an oil change and a good cleaning, and I needed to do a load of laundry and get in a workout. So I dropped my machine off at a nearby Grease Monkey franchise and then walked a few blocks to a Bally’s for some overdue exercise.

  My hotel was in Glendale through chance more than anything else. I’d checked in there on Friday evening because it was close to Denver University, where Scott and I went to see a hockey game. I spent Saturday night in Colorado Springs and, after hiking in the Garden of the Gods on Sunday, returned to the hotel because it was the most luxurious place I’d stayed so far on my trip and the early-week room rates were more appealing than what I could get downtown.

  Bisected by Cherry Creek, Glendale is an inner suburb of Denver dominated by offices, shopping malls and apartment buildings. The small enclave’s density of more than five thousand people per square mile is not particularly high, but it’s not an inviting environment, so it’s the sort of place that gives succor to those who say a dense existence is an unpleasant one. Of course, the real problem is not the density but the urban design. The streets are too wide and the traffic lights are timed for drivers rather than pedestrians. What really surprised me, though, was the impatience some drivers had for those of us on foot.

  Fortunately, no one ran me over and I made it to the gym and back in one piece. So I took my tuned-up vehicle to a nearby car wash. It cost $16.95,
about what I pay at home, and I was surprised to see everyone in front of me tipping. Americans do tend to be more generous tippers than Canadians, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone tip at a car wash. Then I saw how long the employees spent on the car after it had gone through the wash— they polished and buffed everything. One man with two bottles went to work on the wheels, and the boss made another guy go back at the dash and the inside of the windshield twice. I was so impressed that I pulled a few bucks out of my pocket. My car hadn’t looked that good in years.

  THE ANNOYED LOOKS on the faces of drivers forced to wait as I crossed the street—with the lights—in Glendale was at least better than the complete contempt drivers have for pedestrians in Argentina. Buenos Aires is, like many European cities, a great walking town, but pedestrians have to worry about two things. First, everyone, it seems, owns a dog and yet no one poops and scoops. This presents a dilemma: enjoy the beautiful architecture or play it safe and watch underfoot. Second, when it comes to crossing the street, even at a light, it’s definitely a case of pedestrian beware.

  My wife and I arrived in Buenos Aires on a Sunday afternoon and, despite having heard stories about the traffic problems, zoomed into town. The streets were still damp, but the rain had stopped and there were hardly any cars on the highway or near our hotel in San Telmo, one of the oldest barrios in the city. After checking in, we walked among the antique stalls along Defensa, which becomes a pedestrian mall on Sundays for the market. But even at the cross streets, and when we got to Plaza de Mayo, we saw few cars.

  Though it’s in South America, Buenos Aires has a European feel to its cityscape, cuisine and culture because of waves of immigration from countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany. Almost 2.8 million people live in the city, which has a density of more than 35,000 per square mile, but the population isn’t growing because so many residents are leaving town. The metropolitan area has a population of more than 12 million. Ruben Ferro, the car club vice-president, told us many people have tired of the congestion and crime in the city and are moving to the suburbs and even into gated communities. “So they need to have two or three cars,” he said. “We are getting more American.”

  Sure enough, at 5:30 Monday morning, the roar of cars woke me up. Although ownership rates are much lower than in the United States, they are rising; in fact, the city is adding between three and four hundred thousand cars a year and, as the number of old clunkers on the road suggest, retiring few. Almost everyone drives stick, and small cars predominate: Volkswagens, Renaults, Peugeots, Fiats, Hondas, small Chevrolets, Ford Fiestas and some old Falcons. Minivans, SUVs and pickups are rare and tend to be driven by people who need them for work. With so many old cars on the road, toxin-spewing tailpipes are common. Unlike Mexico City, though, Buenos Aires is on the plains and the good winds blow most of the pollution away.

  Rather than orderly congestion, the traffic is a (mostly) fluid chaos with much bobbing and weaving. The lane lines appear to be mere suggestions as Porteños, as the residents call themselves, prefer to squeeze more cars across a road than it’s designed for. Meanwhile, signalling lane changes is evidently optional—and probably even a sign of weakness. Everyone goes in every direction at once and stop signs are rare, so if there’s no traffic light, cars slow, look and go. Once, Carmen and I took a taxi to meet a friend who lived outside the downtown core. At one point, our taxi had to go through a busy street and there was no signal or stop sign; it slowed and then began to creep across. A couple of cars flashed their lights and kept going. Finally, our cabbie just bulled his way to the other side. More than once during my stay, I was sure we’d be T-boned. Yet no one ever hit us and I never even saw any fender-benders, though dented cars were everywhere.

  The best place to see Buenos Aires traffic is on the Avenida 9 de Julio, a north–south boulevard that is 140 metres wide and is actually made up of three parallel roads. All that open space in a dense city is an impressive sight, but nineteen lanes of thick traffic create too much noise and pollution to make outdoor patios appealing. They also suggest the planners favoured cars too heavily—at the expense of pedestrian safety. And with the completion of connecting motorways in the mid-1990s, traffic on the boulevard tripled. “You could say it’s three streets,” observed Andres Borthagaray, the former undersecretary for traffic and transportation for the city, “or it’s a motorway.”

  I met Borthagaray for an espresso in the lobby bar of the Panamericano Hotel on Avenida 9 de Julio. Now the director of the city’s strategic planning council and a member of the steering committee at the Institut pour la Ville en Mouvement, an urban think tank sponsored by Peugeot Citroën, he has thick, dark hair parted on the side and showed up carrying a trench coat and a black briefcase and wearing a blue jacket over a salmon-coloured shirt and a blue V-neck sweater. He looked like a twelve-year-old dressed up for his school photo. A bow tie would have been the perfect final touch. An architect with training and experience in urban planning as well public policy and government, he said, “Political skills are the most important to get things done.”

  Borthagaray drives his Renault Megan mostly on weekends, preferring to take the subway or a taxi to work. “I like to drive. I feel the difference between a good car and a standard car. But it’s not my number one priority,” he said. “For me, the question is not whether one should have a car, if one can, but whether the car is the best way to go for everyday trips downtown.”

  Given the good walking and the cheap and plentiful taxis— there are thirty-eight thousand licensed cabs in the city and a lot of unlicensed ones—my wife and I hadn’t been in a rush to ride the subway (called el subte). Frankly, she was reluctant because of her experiences on the Mexico City metro. But I convinced her to take it with me to the Panamericano and she was pleasantly surprised. While it was old—the first station opened in 1913—it was clean and safe and the riders appeared to be from a mix of socioeconomic classes. It was also, at three o’clock in the afternoon, packed.

  Still, not even 10 percent of Porteños take the subway, and the percentage of people commuting by all forms of public transportation is actually shrinking as more and more people drive. The government has neglected the commuter rail infrastructure, and the system has become less reliable with the shift in focus to building motorways in the last couple of decades. Today, more people drive their cars than ride the bus, which had been the most popular form of transportation in the city. And while the subway system is expanding at about a kilometre a year, Borthagaray thinks it should be expanding even faster. He’d also like to see the speed, comfort and condition of the buses improve. On the roads, he suggests higher parking fees and HOV lanes for carpoolers and buses. He respects people’s freedom to travel the way they want, but if their choices hurt society as a whole, “The ones who decide to do that should assume part of the responsibility.”

  Argentina is among the most dangerous places in the world for car crashes, especially for pedestrians. Driver fatigue, alcohol and dangerous passing are the major causes of highway deaths. As for the pedestrian slaughter, Borthagaray attributes it to three factors. One, many intersections are uncontrolled. Two, inattention to car safety means that many vehicles are in such bad shape that the brakes don’t work. Three, driver education is poor, drunk driving is too common and there’s a general indifference to the rules of the road and the vulnerability of pedestrians.

  “I don’t get the impression there’s much enforcement here,” I suggested.

  “You have the right impression,” he replied with a little laugh. “That’s one of the big problems.”

  Indeed, although there’s a heavy police presence in this country, traffic infractions seem to be the last thing on the minds of the cops. Part of the problem is that the police are federal, with little interest in municipal matters, so driving infractions are a low priority (this doesn’t have to be the case—the police in Paris are federal and they enforce rules better than they do in Buenos Aires). “We are cynical,” he admitt
ed. “On the one hand, we want more enforcement. On the other, we don’t respect the law.” He thinks education campaigns about the high death rate could make it possible for Argentines to accept more enforcement, but so far all the government has tried are two-day blitzes that no one takes seriously.

  Until enforcement improves, pedestrians will have to be ever vigilant—and not just in Buenos Aires. “It’s the law of the jungle,” one car lover in the northern city of Salta told me. “The biggest wins.”

  WAYNE CHERRY, GM’s retired vice-president of design, spent twentysix years in Britain and Germany with the company, so he’s familiar with driving habits on both sides of the Atlantic. “In Europe, people have a lot of discipline in the way they drive,” he told me, noting that over there, drivers communicate with their lights, use their turn signals and respect lanes. “And in America, they … kind of … don’t. I think that’s part of the pioneering spirit.”

  He then told a story about finding himself in a discussion about turn signals after he returned to the States. At one point he asked, “Why do we need them? Nobody uses them here.”

  If he thought the United States was bad, I replied, he should go to Argentina. Without missing a beat, he said, “Well, see, there are no pedestrians in North America, so that helps. There are no sidewalks and nobody walks.”

  His tone was jocular, but I wondered if it was a case of true words spoken in jest. He was, after all, a former auto exec. But while there certainly are places where no one gets around by foot, a few American cities are ideal for walking. And others are making an effort to encourage pedestrians, as I discovered when I left Glendale and moved into a hotel in downtown Denver.