The Mighty Chevrolet Impala

This past weekend was 'Life At The Lakes' in Cambridge-Narrows, a festival which showcased all that we had to offer (except windsurfing). One of the events was a vintage car show. I saw cars ranging in birth date from 1929 to the present. One that caught my eye was a 1968 Impala.

The Impala caught my eye because my parents had an Impala of similar vintage. Their's may have been a 1967 model. The roof line of my parent's car was different to the one in the picture as it was more of a fast-back style. Gawd, it was a huge car. On the downside I can hardly imagine my mother driving it to the grocery store...and parking it. On the upside the trunk was commodious enough to hold a month's worth of groceries and two naughty kids (you know who you are).

Our Impala died at the watering hole like so many of the African animals after which it was named. I've been watching a lot of African wildlife documentaries lately, and I've learned that the watering hole is a dangerous place for most animals. Our Impala was once roaming the American Serengeti (Maine, I believe) when it became apparent that the radiator was down a few pints. A garage crocodile added cold water to our radiator and it cracked the engine block. Our Impala died soon after that attack.

Amazingly our next car was a tiny 1972 or '73 Mazda RX-2....a Wankel powered piece of engineering. The rotary engine was extremely responsive and fun to drive. Being rear wheel drive it was a riot to drive in the snow because you could slide the back end around corners. It was as close to driving a rally car as we ever got (and lord knows I drove it like a rally car!).

It's amazing to look back at the cars that we used to drive and then look at the cars that we drive today. The cars of the past were unreliable, but fun. The cars of today are full of safety features and incredibly reliable, but there's little sense of adventure. I can see why people like to keep these antique cars alive. Ahhhh...memories.