One night decades ago, my buttoned-down father lost his mind.
A retired British naval officer who wore a tie to work every single day of his life, Bruce Cato pulled into our family driveway behind the wheel of a gold 1969 Rambler Rogue convertible with a white folding top and a then-racy 290-cubic-inch V-8.
The Rogue wasn't the '65 Ford Mustang my dad had coveted years before. No, that car was sacrificed on the altar of a mortgage and a new four-bedroom family home in the suburbs.
But the Rogue was still a pretty cool car for its day and buying it was the sort of crazy thing my father never, ever did. An American Motors Rambler American two-door with more power, a flashier paint job, an upgraded interior and a soft top that would fold nicely into the boot — power-operated — the Rogue was really something in our neighbourhood of aging station wagons and dull, but functional, family sedans.
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It was a luxury car, or at least it was for middle-class types like us. Totally impractical — the back seat was a miniature version of a real back seat, in order to make space to tuck away the roof when down. And it was hugely expensive for a mid-level, white-collar type like my dad.
Oh, yes, he'd definitely gone bonkers that warm spring night. We had no warning at all, either. We learned later that he'd been driving home in his old Ford Falcon work car, it with the steel dashboard, three on the tree and seatbelts — well, if it had seatbelts, we never could find them.
The madness struck without warning. There on a car lot, under bright lights, the gold Rogue pulled him in with its siren's song, with its promise of freedom through open-air driving. He just lost it. As they say in England, he lost the plot.
Dad wheeled that Falcon into the lot, dropped the keys on the sales manager's desk, inked a contract and drove away a younger, happier, freer family man. He never spoke of that wretched Falcon again. The Rogue? His mood improved at the mere mention of it.
I loved that Rogue, too. Within three years, I had a driver's licence and my own car, a beat-up, rusting, 1962 Chevrolet Nova with fading green paint that cost me 250 bucks and many hours of sweat and toil just to keep it running.
When, to my amazement, April Templeman took pity on this awkward teenager and agreed to a date, on the big night, as I was walking out the door, my dad stopped me and said, "Here, let's swap. I want to have a look at what you're doing with that car of yours. You take mine."
He handed me the keys to the Rogue. I was slack-jawed, though not too stunned to jump into the gold Rogue and drive away before he could change his mind.
The freedom thing
Ah, convertibles. They are magical cars and they make for delightful memories. That's one of mine and you probably have several, too.
Clichéd as it is, there is just something amazing about driving with the roof down, wind in your hair, nothing between you and the sky above. It's the freedom thing.
But back in the day, owning a convertible was not what it is today.
The road noise. The leaky roof. The fear of knife-wielding thieves. The tiny back seat. Yech! Even the sexiest ragtop came with a long list of annoyances.
As I said, dad was nuts to buy one. We loved him all the more for it.
Today, well, things are very different. Convertibles with soft roofs are vastly superior to anything back in the sixties and seventies. The inside of the foldable lids, the fabric ones, are all lined and nicely finished. Road noise is muted, roofs never leak and the various power mechanisms are dead reliable.
And then we have this other crop of convertibles, the ones with retractable roofs. They have totally shaken up the convertible game.
It all began less than a decade ago. Back then, there were two mass-production retractables on the market, both built by Mercedes-Benz. Now, some 10 models are out there and more could be on the way. So about a third of all mainstream production convertibles for sale now sport a retractable hardtop.
They are commonplace. Cars like the excellent Volkswagen Eos are not only safe and refined, they are pretty affordable. The Eos stickers at $35,975. There are others like it, too.
