The subjunctive of good opportunities
11/21/2024
Could have, should have, would have, would have - the subjunctive mood and the classic vehicle have often provided these - let's call them - "moments" in my past.
Recently, while editing our article on the Riley Two-Point-Six, the successor to the Pathfinder, I remembered how, back in the mid-1990s, there was a black car with whitewall tires parked on the grass verge in front of Garage Koch, an Opel dealership in Ebikon, Lucerne. A Riley Pathfinder in its original condition. The price: 7500 francs, or around 7000 marks at the time. That would have bought a car with a 112 hp four-cylinder engine, leather interior and right-hand drive.
At the time, I seriously considered selling my DS 23IE for the car; the Riley looked incredibly chic in its hint of Lancia Aurelia design. However, I shied away from looking for parts - quite a while before the age of the internet - and didn't bother.
I also left a 1957 Volkswagen T1, offered by a distillery in the canton of Schwyz - at around the same time as the Riley - for the asking price of 400 francs (!), the car had too much rust for me. The heating pipe had rusted because moisture had penetrated under the heat insulation. When I think of the ruins from which Bullis are rebuilt today ...
I then bought a 1963 station wagon, an ex-Swiss army radio car with crispy sills, from a country inn for 300 francs and swapped it with a friend for a Belgian Citroën 2CV from 1959 built in Forest, which I then sold on to the then president of the Croatian 2CV club - he was a cab driver in the Zurich region - for 1700 francs.
Speaking of Döschwo; a few years later, the premises of a Citroën 2CV mechanic who was well known in the city of Lucerne - he was a Messi - were to be cleared. In a rare display of generosity, the otherwise extremely stingy gentleman, who despite his huge workshop even worked outside in winter because it was packed to the rafters with goods, offered me a Citroën AK 400, i.e. a box duck.
I was its proud owner for about two minutes, because I realized that at almost 1.90 m in length, it was almost unbearable in the thing. I'm sure there would have been a solution, but the box for the spare wheel stands sideways in the interior and prevents the seat from sliding backwards beyond the B-pillar. Apparently I wasn't so aware of the rarity of the car 25 years ago. That's why I left the car behind.
A Lambretta 125 Li Series II still crosses my mind from time to time. I had once bought the "Lahm-Berta" from a colleague, with the option of also taking over the license plate "LU 3003" - in Switzerland, plates are registered to the person, not just the vehicle, and could therefore easily remain with the old owner when selling a vehicle. I refused to take over the great plate, it was just one too many for me.
The Lambretta had a loose cooling ring on the flywheel magneto - from Ducati, of course - otherwise it was well-patinated and equipped with all the finer details: Extra chrome all round, luggage rack with spare wheel and chrome cover and, most importantly, individual seats. From today's perspective, an absolute dream. But I was used to Vespas, which were lighter and more agile, but perhaps also far less stable, admittedly. And I wanted a dry sump system for my Caterham Seven, which cost money.
So I passed on the "Bertha" - without ever registering it - after a few years in the workshop for about twice the price I paid for it, which was a great deal for me at the time. It reappeared some time ago in the showroom of a relevant classic car specialist in Basel for five times the price.
Yes, and the Lotus Europe Hemi 807 that a scrap dealer from Valais offered me - for very little money. The reason was that I was once looking for a windshield wiper for an International Harvester school bus because I had lost both windshield wiper arms in the pouring rain on the way to Valais. I won't mention the location in detail, but just this much: from Lotus Esprit to Studebaker to Bentley, many a piece of precious scrap is probably still stored today in the professionally managed stockpile on concrete and with an oil separator. Perhaps it helped to be able to speak French pretty much fluently, in any case the junkyard owner called me shortly after my visit to say he had pulled a Lotus Europe out of a garage, and shortly afterwards I had some pictures in my voicemails.
A Lotus Europe Hemi 807 was a special model for Switzerland only, built on the initiative of the then importer Perrin in Geneva, and equipped with a potent Gordini engine based on the Renault 16 engine otherwise installed in this model. The car in question was not only the basis for the type certificate of this car and thus the first ever, it was also the Geneva show car and the car that can be seen on the supplement for the show novelties of the Automobil Revue catalog from - was it 1969? - a magnificent find! However, it was also a miserably bent accident car whose entire front end was probably made of filler rather than GRP. But the most important parts would have been there - but my mind was absent, I passed the thing on to a car dealer and restorer in Delémont, without ever having owned the rather extraordinary Lotus myself - it once had over 100 hp - without the complication of the later Twin Cam. Today I'm not sure whether that was luck or misfortune. The fact is, I've never been able to get that thing out of my head.
And the most recent example is a Jaguar MK II that slipped through my fingers because I was too lazy to pick up the phone. So another colleague of a colleague who called me bought it, this gray 3.4-liter Jaguar Mk 2 for 13,500 francs. The new owner recently returned with it from a vacation trip to the Côte d'Azur without any complaints. If only I had, if only I were, if only I would...
But you can also look at all this from a different perspective: I have probably also saved myself many a hassle and avoided many a disappointment - perhaps even ruin. What's more, I'll have more stories to tell when I'm telling my friends stories of robbery at a regulars' table or in a garage during this rather classic-poor winter time. And anyway, the next once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I shouldn't miss is coming up soon - maybe!
