The Hegstad Chronicles: Backfire

Jon-Erik Hegstad

POP !

The sudden backfire wakes us ALL the way up. It only wanted two pumps this time. Slide the choke to off. Catch the idle with a blip of the throttle. Nervously laughing off the loud start my co-pilot and I shared, we buckle the woefully insufficient seat belts as the tick of the lifters slowly dissipates. I softly pat the dash as a compliment to the machine for firing on the first try as I remember what makes vintage cars fun.

The danger.

The thrill of wondering if we’ll make it to our next destination without needing to adjust the dual SU’s or find a garden hose along the way. Arriving at public events with pants half soaked because the hardtop siphons water into the cab with every swipe of the tiny wiper blades. Fortunately, this phenomenon only occurs at speeds above thirteen.

The experience of daily driving a vintage sports car is one of the most time consuming, knuckle busting and patience developing idiotic things you can possibly do.

And it’s brilliant.

Pulling on my brown leather driving gloves I look over at my passenger who’s already displaying signs of doubt in body language and facial expression. I reassure her that the fog on the windshield will disappear relatively quickly once we start moving. Double clutch in neutral, bump it into the non-synchro first gear, relax the clutch and away we go.

“Don’t worry. I fixed the brakes last week.”

That didn’t help.