Hey everyone! This one is fun, and I’m going to add my 2.5 cents up here at the top before you get to enjoy Elon Werner’s trip back through time to talk about all the cars he’s owned and driven.
It’s a fun subject, and while my list is substantially longer than his we still have a lot of parallels. Both of us spent many years in the top level of motorsports, but neither of us were really “car guys” before we did that. Just like Elon writes below, when I interviewed to be the General Manager at Heartland Park Topeka, I knew absolutely nothing about racing, other than watching the Indy 500 on TV. Like Elon, I’d been exposed to NHRA Drag Racing mostly because I was a devoted watcher of ABC’s Wide World of Sports and I just enjoyed the wide variety of things they showed. That’s the only reason I even knew names like Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, and Shirley Muldowney.
I learned fast though, and so did Elon.
Rather than duplicate his fantastic blog, I’m just going to list all the cars that have been my daily drivers (with some highlights or low lights as explanations) not counting the family 1971 Impala I could drive right after I got my license. It wasn’t my car. It was my parents’ car. I had to ask (beg for) permission to use it to go on a date.
My history goes like this:
1973 Volkswagen Beetle. 4-speed manual. My parents bought it, brand new at a little over $2,000, for me as a graduation gift, although they did so at the beginning of my senior year in high school because I’m pretty sure my mom was tired of driving me 12.5 miles to school. It was powder blue. I installed a cassette deck in the glove compartment and glued red shag carpet to the floor in front of both front seats. Loved that car.
1976 Triumph TR-7. 4-speed manual. Sexiest car ever. Also worst car ever, in terms of quality. I drooled over the TR-7 for months before I could convince my folks to let me trade in the VW and pay the $150 per month payment myself. It spent more time in the shop than on the road, and I got it brand new. But damn, it was so cool.
1978 Ford Fiesta. 4-speed manual. After two years of battling issue after issue with the TR-7, I just wanted a reliable car. The Fiesta, which was built in Germany and imported to the US by Ford, was that car. It was impervious to snow. My college roomies and I actually tried to get it stuck a few times and couldn’t.
1980 Chrysler Cordoba. Automatic. No, I never met Ricardo Montalban and it did not have fine Corinthian leather seats. I had just taken a job as a Scouting Supervisor for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Fiesta was not going to cut it as a scout’s car, on the road for 250 days a year. Basically a big boat but I got it super-cheap. A guy I played minor league ball against, Barry Jenkins who had been with the Twins, was working as a regional sales manager for Chrysler. He sold me the Cordoba, which had been a company executive car, for $3,600. It had only 8,000 miles on it.
1981 Datsun 200SX. 4-speed manual. The Cordoba drove me crazy. It was such a behemoth and it guzzled gas. So I downsized to a very sporty Datsun (they hadn’t transitioned to Nissan yet) and it was a great car. Way fun to drive. I piled about 60,000 miles a year on it. Scouting will do that.
1984 Toyota Celica. After a couple of years of scouting abuse, I sold the 200SX and bought a Celica. It was the model with the headlights that laid flat along the tilted grill (although face up) when off, but would pop up when you turned them on. Awesome car. I drove the wheels off it my last three years of scouting. Put at least 140,000 miles on it. Never an issue.
1986 Plymouth Voyager. Automatic. Minivan. I’d left baseball and taken a job with Converse Shoes, which came with a company car. The best thing I can say about it was that Converse paid for all the gas, it carried all the shoes I ever needed to have with me at any time, and the company really didn’t care where we drove our cars. They just handed us the keys.
1986 Saab 900 Turbo. 4-speed manual. My dream car. I’d coveted the Saab for years, but could never afford one. When I got the Converse job, I was making pretty good money and had the free company car, so I went and test drove a 900 Turbo. It was love at first rev. I even took delivery of it in London (as in England) with Saab’s European Delivery Plan. That chopped $3,000 off the price, and thanks to Holiday Inn’s Priority Club I had earned a free week at any Holiday Inn and airline tickets to get there. I’d never been to Europe, so I chose London. Drove it around France and Belgium, too, and dropped it off at the docks in Antwerp. Saab shipped it to Houston for free. The single greatest car on this list. Magnificent. I loved it but only drove it part-time. The Voyager was always full of shoes. The Saab was for fun. And so many Swedish quirks to this car. Ignition slot was by the gear shift in the center console, and you had to put the car in reverse after turning it off, or the key wouldn’t come out.
1988 Chrysler LeBaron. Automatic. Yeah quite a transition, right? I’d left Converse and gone to work for my brother Del’s sports marketing company. One of our biggest clients was Chrysler and their brands. Let’s just say there was a “suggestion” that all of us working on any of those projects should drive Chryslers. Bye-bye Saab. It was wonderful to know you. Sad that a year later the agency landed a big contract to do marketing for Audi. I was stuck in a 5-year lease on the LeBaron.
1991 Corvette. 5-speed manual. My company car at Heartland Park, as part of our Chevy sponsorship. It also doubled as the pace car for road races. An absolute rocket. I’m lucky I survived.
1993 Toyota Corolla. 4-speed manual. I’d left Heartland Park and a year later struck out on my own as a PR and Marketing guru, who basically knew nothing. I was trying to pay the rent and not starve. I needed a cheap car that would get me around. The Corolla did fine. Definitely not sexy.
1994 Toyota Camry. I joined the Kansas City Attack indoor soccer team and was provided a company car. It was white, and plastered with Attack decals. But I liked it. Comfortable and reliable. And the decals gave it a “head-turning quotient” of 9.5 on a 1 to 10 scale.
1996 Saab 900. 4-speed manual. I went to work as GM for the Indianapolis Twisters indoor soccer team. Big money for me. Straight back to the Saab dealership I went. Love at second sight.
1995 BMW 325i. 4-speed manual. When I met Barbara and moved to Chapel Hill to live with her, she was driving an older Miata. We sold that, she got the Saab, and I bought a used BMW. Very fun car, but whoever owned it before me wasn’t kind to it. I later sold it to Del Worsham. He enjoyed it too.
2001 Pontiac Trans-Am WS6. Automatic. Del Worsham and I each got one of these to drive in 2001, thanks to our great sponsorship from Pontiac. Another absolute rocket. Like with the Corvette, at Heartland Park, I was lucky to survive in this monster for a year, but damn it was fun to drive. Top speed for me? Around 110 mph. Del got his up to 115 and said “Then the front end started feeling really light, so I lifted.”
2002 Saab 9-5 Turbo. I don’t remember the transmission. After the Pontiac deal, Barbara and I went hunting for another Saab. Her negotiating skills had the dealership team begging for mercy. After six hours, the GM of the dealership said “OK, we’ll go with that price. Just go out back and pick out any car you want. I’m hungry and I need to go home.” She got to drive it more than I did.
2003 VW Passat. Automatic. With Barbara driving the Saab, I needed a good car. The Passat was fine. A really good car.
2005 VW Touareg. Automatic. We traded the Passat in on the Touareg so that at least one of our cars would have room to haul mulch home from Home Depot. Good car, though. Barb had an Audi A6 by then.
2012 Audi Q5. Automatic. When we moved out to Spokane, I upgraded to an Audi, the “big brother” to the VW. Great vehicle. Really great.
2015 Lexus NX 200T F-Sport. Automatic. My current car. Another rocket dressed up like a compact SUV. Absolutely love it. I’ve only put 40,000 miles on it in six years, so we’ll see where we go from here. We are now officially a “two Lexus family” because Barbara owns an ES-350 sedan. We love the brand, the customer service, and the cars.
Wow. I guess I’ve owned or driven a lot of cars. I even left a few out! Hope I didn’t steal any thunder from Elon’s submission below. It’s fun and funny. And yes, we still have a plan to do something together in the near future that will be very different and hopefully very fun.
Oh, and on the book front I just finished another chapter and it was 27 pages long! I think that’s a record. I think it topped out around 16,000 words. We’re getting there!
Remember, hit that “Like” button at the bottom if you enjoyed any of this. See ya! Here’s Elon!!!
Bob Wilber
PS: I think my 2.5 cents ended up being about $25 worth. Don’t judge. I got all caught up in the memories…
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I have worked in motorsports for almost 30 years and a lot of people assume I grew up as a car guy. Most of my contemporaries in the industry have had a life-long passion for either racing or car restoration. I didn’t really know much about drag racing until I started working at the Texas Motorplex in 1993. I had vague memories of watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports and seeing Don Prudhomme, “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney on TV. When I interviewed with track owner Billy Meyer I had no idea he was a former racer and I thought all drag strips looked like the Texas Motorplex. To say I wasn’t a car guy didn’t really reflect my level of ignorance when it came to cars and racing.
I did however have a great history with cars. When I turned 15 I was able to take driver’s education and got a provisional license because I had a part-time job. I took the driving test in my mom’s Pontiac Bonneville with a Texas State Trooper riding shotgun. My hometown of Texarkana, Texas was a decent sized city but everyone still knew everyone and since my parents both worked for the local college their network of friends was pretty broad. As soon as I passed my driver’s test my dad was waiting at the DMV to hand off the keys to my new daily driver, a 1970 maroon convertible Stingray Corvette with a 454 under the hood. It was an automatic and felt like a rocket taking off when you hit the gas. As I was about to get behind the wheel, the State Trooper that gave me my driving test rolled by in his black and white sedan, rolled down his window and said he was sure he would be seeing me again real soon.
About two hours later the same trooper was giving me my first speeding ticket for going 75 mph in a 55 mph zone on the main highway. He didn’t even try to hide his joy as he handed over the ticket. I drove that Corvette my whole high school career. It was a terrible and spectacular car to have as a teenager. I loved driving it around town with the top down, but any minor infraction was reported back to my parents within hours. There was a network of people that took great joy in letting my parents know that I was speeding or maybe doing a short burnout.
The fastest speed I ever reached behind the wheel was just over 125 mph on the flattest and straightest stretch of State Line Avenue. I had the top down and it was a perfectly clear day. When the speedometer needle crept past 125 mph I felt the front end bounce just a little and immediately lifted off the gas pedal. It was an exhilarating feeling and I didn’t experience anything close to that feeling until I spent a day at the Frank Hawley Driving School when I worked at the Texas Motorplex.
My dad sold the Corvette a few years after I graduated from high school and I know it was hard to let that car go. At one time he had the 1970 Stingray and a white 1967 Corvette that was a five speed and would do about 90 mph in second gear. He had the back quarter-panels cutout to run bigger slicks on the rear end. The maroon Corvette was as close as I ever got to driving a real hot rod.
After the Corvette I bought a Nissan Pulsar and I drove that car into the ground. Literally, I was driving to a college party and there was a huge drop off that I didn’t see. I hit it at about 30 mph and when my car touched down it tore the bottom of the oil pan off. I was able to drive it to a parking spot where it sat for two months before I could get it towed to a mechanic in Sherman, Texas. I was able to get it repaired and the mechanic actually bought it from me.
After the Pulsar I got a used Pontiac Grand Prix which I again didn’t take care of very well. I learned a valuable lesson about not ignoring the check engine light. For some reason I kept putting off getting the oil changed for a couple months. That was a terrible idea in case anyone was wondering. Eventually your engine block will crack and your car won’t function properly. You will also have to face down the withering stare of a Pontiac service manager when you told him you can’t remember the last time you changed your oil.
The last car that I bought for a while after the Grand Prix debacle was a used Ford Tempo and that car carried me through college and into the workforce. I drove the Tempo for a couple years as I sold cell phones in Texarkana and looked for a way to get back into the sports PR game. I was hired by the Texas Motorplex and as my first year at the track was wrapping up I was given a raise and most importantly, I was provided a company car. It was actually an Isuzu Rodeo and it was hands down the best company car deal ever. The Buz Post dealership in Arlington was on an Isuzu program where they made more money per car selling lease returns, so I got a new Rodeo every 3,000 miles. I was constantly driving a new car. When my odometer rolled over 3,000 miles I simply drove it back to the dealership and they gave me a brand new Rodeo. It was amazing.
A few years after that deal started they upgraded me to a GMC Yukon. I got a new one every year and again it was so cool to have a big truck, especially as my family started growing with the addition of kids. When I eventually left the Motorplex after nearly ten years I was faced with the cruel reality of having to find my own car. Luckily my in-laws were in the market for new wheels so I was able to buy their old Honda Accord. They gave me a sweet deal and again I drove that car for years.
My current ride is a far cry from the 1970 Corvette. In 2003 when we had two toddlers I bought my wife her dream car, a new Honda Odyssey. It was the perfect mom mobile and she drove that minivan for years. We paid it off in about four years and I have been driving it as my daily driver for about 15 years. We rolled over 300,000 miles on Big Blue as he is known in our neighborhood. He looks like he has 300K miles and he has his own odor from days and days of carpooling swimmers and little leaguers to practices, games and meets. I wouldn’t trade him for anything since he is so dependable.
The only time he let me down was when my daughter was in the sixth grade and I we were headed to Austin to see Taylor Swift in concert. That was a huge daughter / dad event. One of my all-time PR buddies, the great Jay Wells, got me two free primo tickets. We were about an hour out of town when the transmission gave out. I called AAA and my wife. My wife brought me her car and we swapped vehicles. I kept heading south with my daughter and my wife waited for the tow truck. My wife is the best and she understood we could not miss the concert, since Abby had told all her friends she was going to the show to see Taylor Swift. We made there just in time and it was a magical night. We put a used transmission in Big Blue the next week and he has kept on trucking. My daughter is a junior at Mizzou now and I plan on driving this minivan until he can’t go any longer.
I love the fact that we haven’t had a car payment in almost two decades. My relationship with cars started out strong but has now become completely utilitarian. I don’t see cars as status symbols but just as a way to get from point A to point B. I do, however, love getting new rental cars when I am on the road. When I was with John Force Racing it was Fords then Chevys all the time. Now that I am with Kalitta Motorsports I love getting a new Camry or Corolla and have gotten lucky a couple times to get a Tacoma or Tundra truck. I love all the new accessories and technology I see in cars now. It is also cool to think that many of the safety features have come from the cars I see on the track every weekend during the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series.
That’s my car story and I’m sticking to it. -Elon