My Mother, The Car Nut. Here’s Every Set Of Wheels She Owned And Drove.

A sharp and gleefully fast driver was my dearly departed Ma, whose memory I honor this Mother’s day. She not only taught me to be keen, aware and quick behind the wheel from an early age both by example and direct hands-on training, she had an eye for rides both explosive and practical, and her vehicle choices taught me much about different types of cars.

She was awarded her first driver’s license by the state of Indiana at 14 and delivered flowers after school for Ed, my florist grandfather, in the 1938 Buick sedan you see here.

I never met the man – three of my grandparents died long before I was born, and the fourth I only met once. But this Buick loomed large in my imagination as a small boy, obsessed with all things automotive.

After moving to Jackson Heights, Queens, Ma appeared on a quiz show and won herself a Vespa scooter, with which she traveled to work at the Wenner Gren Foundation on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and back five days a week.

“You could park your car on the street right next to Grand Central Station,” she said. “Nobody would bother it.” You could also walk the length of Central Park day or night unmolested.

When our family of five moved to Yorktown Heights, my folks shared this 1960 Hillman Wagon, which they drove until it died and was donated to us, the kids, who took it apart and put it back together several times and finally broke every one of its windows with rocks, after which it was towed away without comment.

The first car she bought with her own money working as a copy editor at Reader’s Digest in Pleasantville, NY, was a 1974 Duster 340. You might as well have driven the members of Led Zeppelin up our driveway. We kids went absolutely bananas over this loud, ferocious, hunky beast.

My Pops, who had flown a B17, didn’t really give a damn about cars – and you can’t blame him after 36 missions over Europe – but Beansie was a hardcore car nut who needed to do something impulsive, to buy something that really made no sense to a middle-aged office worker in a sedate, remote suburb. You drive an orange muscle car to get attention, and she sure got it.

But the 340 ended up having a few mechanical issues and got only 11 miles to the gallon when it was in shape, so she sold it back to our neighbor and went entirely in another direction, buying a 1976 AMC Gremlin.

It’s hard to imagine in 2023, but AMC’s cars at that time caused as much commotion as any hot new ride coming out today. They were simple and cheap and fun to drive – I had my permit by this time so I was able to legally get behind the wheel in the presence of a licensed adult – and there was lots of room in the front. It did what you asked of it, was unobtrusive and pleasant, and it got a more reasonable 17 MPG, highway.

One of her sons – it may have been me – crashed that Gremlin, and ended up working every weekend washing dishes at an Italian restaurant to pay her back for the deductible.

There soon appeared in our driveway a little Toyota Tercel, which was actually, finally, the right car for the right person. My mother was only 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, and the Tercel, too, was compact, to the point and, while no beauty, was not funny-looking as the Gremlin had been.

Soon after, I moved out of the house to New York City and Beansie’s cars stopped being remarkable – her last carriage was a Camry. It was time for winding down; her career, her wheels and her life.

I became an auto journalist and, over many weekends, would visit my mother in the suburbs, squiring her to her weekend tag sales and we’d talk about Freud, Buddhism, family and the state of the world.

Our days dwindled down to a precious few, as they eventually must. I began setting up tripods and capturing our time together, knowing that one day in the future, after she departed this life, these photos would return my mother to me, briefly.