Company Car

I grew up with a company car in the driveway. My father was a salesman, and as part of the deal with being on the road on he highways and byways of the Denver Metro area, he was allowed to drive a car bought and paid for by the company for which he worked. This created a certain amount of tension in our household, since we tended to view our motor vehicles as transport for ourselves and our supplies up into the hills during the summer. My father's commute included runs up and down the mountain on a daily basis, usually hauling water in five gallon jugs along with him full of drinking water, along with any necessary tools or basic needs that may have been forgotten in our mad dash to be free from society.
The Datsun station wagon was up to this task and more. Its performance mirrored that of the mighty Volkswagen squareback that my mother drove, loaded to the gills with kids and dog and all the groceries they might consume in a week, relentlessly for miles and years beyond anyone's estimation. My father had an image to maintain, however, which is why the Datsun was never the favorite, in spite of its utilitarian abilities. That sense of style was better suited to the Ford Granada. While it was no Cordoba, it was a relatively plush sedan that eventually gave up the ghost when it dropped its transmission on the Denver-Boulder turnpike. Plenty of flash, but little substance.
The fully realized combination of guts and glory came in the form of my father's red VW convertible Bug. Not only did it make countless trips up and down the hairpin turns of Magnolia Road year after year, but it was the machine that my father used to teach my older brother how to drive. It was a classic not just for the black rag top and rear engine stability, but for the running boards on which my brothers and I would frequently hop on for rides up the two ruts that served as the driveway for our cabin. It was there, amidst the towering blue spruce and lofty piles of granite, that it looked most at home. It was from that lofty perch that my father had to figure out a way to get that gem of a car down the twisting, turning roads without an accelerator cable. He rigged up a system where he could pull on a rope that stretched from the driver's side mirror around and under the hood that was propped open to pull on the throttle. This worked great until he hit a bump and the hood slammed shut on the rope with the throttle stuck open. As he accelerated down the hill, he must have wondered if maybe this was the best purchase he could have made. Until an idea came: turn the car off.
That was pretty much the end of the Bug. The others came and went, and when he left his old company to work for a smaller firm, he bought himself a Ford Explorer. A big beast of an Eddie Bauer edition SUV that was designed for climbing mountains and carrying cargo. Ironically, that's what he drove during those years that he lived at the cabin alone. Carrying water up the hill for one isn't nearly the chore it was for five. It was that hulking set of wheels that we had to unload after he died. Nobody wanted that one. Or the Granada. But I would have fought and died for that Bug.
My son has a plan to buy a company car. His company doesn't really exist, yet. But he has an idea for getting together a Kickstarter campaign to buy him and his buddies a BMW M3-E46. I don't know if I would click to send him a dollar for that, but maybe a classic VW Bug convertible.