My dad was a car guy. He’d grown up in a family of carmakers dating back to the earliest days of car manufacturing in the United States, and even farther back if you count his ancestors who came here as carpenters who made their living as wagon wheel craftsmen. My dad knew cars.

He used to tell me about getting a new car every year. His uncles all worked at Studebaker, so they would set it up so he could drive it right off the assembly line. I can imagine the thrill of being the first driver of a shiny new Studey, and the pride his uncles must have felt for passing their mechanical and electrical skills on to the younger generation. My dad’s family bragged that he was the one who could dismantle a car down to a pile of nuts and bolts and put it all back together again. I never had any reason to doubt that.

Studebaker in Meijer parking lot by Dan Breen

I think after he met my mother, his personalized, once-a-year car purchase simply became a thing of the past. Their honeymoon, in the early 1950s, was a long drive through the Smokies and the photos are charming – they had one camera and they were alone, so the photos are of each of them, not them together as a couple. He’d photograph her, and she’d take a turn to photograph him, having a picnic someplace on a blue and grey plaid blanket. My dad kept that blanket in car, after car, after car. It was a constant, maybe a kind of security blanket.

But after raising two children and driving a succession of reasonable and practical American family cars, some of them Studebakers, others were Chevys or Buicks, he went a little rogue and bought a tiny Italian sports car. My younger sister had just graduated from high school and he no longer had to shuttle her around to parties and school events, so my dad bought a Fiat. I think it was the happiest he had been since he got his very first car – a secondhand Model A Ford.

I think most people would agree that purchasing a new car is an art. You don’t want to pay the sticker price, but you don’t enjoy the process. You want the floor mats to be thrown in, but they say you have to pay extra for them. The dealer wants his plates on your car, and you hate the advertising. But ultimately, it really is in the price haggling. My dad was so good at it that people talked about this one car purchase for years afterward. He carefully crafted a masterful plan to get that Fiat for the lowest price known to man. And he got it.

Richard Lewis (1923-2015) 1942, taken in South Bend, before he shipped out.

They tell you, when you are doing that haggling over the price, that you should pretend to walk away so the sales help call you back and say, “Alright, the floor mats are on us, sir.” But my dad? He did walk out the door. He got in his station wagon, and drove away into the night, seemingly a lost sale. Except for one tiny detail. He did that every night for a week. He went back to the dealership every night for a week until they would have paid my dad to take the car off the lot and never come back.

My dad was a sweetheart. There is simply no chance he would have badgered the guy or harangued him. He would have been his own dear self, but he just kept showing up, test driving and haggling. In the end, I don’t know what he paid, but he drove away happy. It was a white Fiat: a two-seater with a black convertible roof.

It was a sweet ride, I think. I say, I think, because I never even sat in that car. It was his car, for one thing, and it came into his life at a time when I wasn’t living at home any longer. I can’t say for sure my mother ever sat in it either, now that I think about it. She probably was waiting for his mid-life crisis to subside so they both could go back to reasonable and practical vehicles.

In the end, the little car didn’t last. Not even with my dad’s super mechanic skills. Studebaker was long shuttered and his dad, my grandfather, and his uncles were all retired in the 1970s, so driving a new sedan off the line was just a lovely memory.

My car these days is his 2007 Dodge Caliber. My dad bought it new to run errands around town and to pick up things at the grocery. What is likely my mother’s last handwritten store list is still in the console. I don’t know if he kept it for that reason, when he realized it was her last list, or if he simply forgot it was there, after he’d purchased everything on the list. After my dad died, the car came to me and that plaid picnic blanket from their honeymoon was there in the trunk.

Ironically, I’ve never gone out to buy a new car. But I will know how to get the best price when I do.

Anne Born is a regular contributor to PAN-O-PLY and a good friend. You can find other essays by Anne Born on our website. Read more of Anne Born’s writing at the Backpack Press.

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My Dad a Car Guy by Anne Born