The TR3 experiment

 The TR3 experiment


                                                                    in dreams


     Somehow in 1968 with a miraculous acceptance to UCLA in hand I was able to talk my Dad into shelling out $800 to buy me a beat up sports car with mechanical problems to match the cool look it had from the outside. It was a 1960 TR3 and it is so bitchen looking Jay Leno himself says it is one of his favorite cars out of his ninety automobiles. It should have been a chick magnet but the rag top was damaged and hung down in front of the passenger seat. When you got up to driving speed that made a tunnel of gritty wind rush into the face of any rider. Also, the car is built very close to the ground and the noise inside the cab made listening to conversation or music near impossible. It also had a terrible flaw with the rod that attached the accelerator to the carburator. The vibration of the old engine sitting on worn out mounts made the rod rattle then disconnect and therefore stop gasoline from reaching the engine and shutting off movement. This could happen anywhere and on the freeway it was pretty serious. Still, I drove it in the cold months and had dates with the beautiful and beyhond my charm capacity Mickey Fournier. Mary Kay was sweet and patienct even with the poor girl sitting in a polar blast all thr way out to Anaheim for a concert. One good thing about the low riding car was that it could easily glide under the parking lot gates at campus but then you took a chance that the traffic cops might cruise by your spot and see an absence of hard to get stickers. The thing was  NOISY and you could hear it coming six blocks away which excited the kids at the North Playground where I worked who called it "the Roadrunner" So this quick story is about another poorly planned, drunken trip to the Oar House with just myself and Billy Hogan who got stinking drunk which was the normal objective at the OH. I was out of gas and kept aside two bucks to gas up when we left. Being full of beer I asked Bill to pump the gas when I headed for the can. When I returned there was a pungent smell of gasoline in the air and I looked at the back of my TR3 where the fuel tank was and saw the gas nozzle just resting on the back bumper, pumping gas out onto the statioin asphalt. The drunk-ass Billy had pumped about 6 gallons near the gas cap and onto the surrounding area. Soon, an attendent came out screaming and he was followed by a wailing fire engine who had to spray lots and lots of water onto the surface to avoid a huge explosion since most drivers at that time of night were puffing on smokes and were also drunk. As a sign of the times one of the firemen gave me a buck, we put one dollar's worth into the actual gas tank and drove home completely plastered but not arrested for causing a public nuisance. When I got the fever to travel to Europe again I sold the TR3 with BC's insistence and got $200 which covered my entire one month in the old country.



                                                      closer to reality


Comments

  1. KentJune 30, 2025 at 6:01 PM

    Glen I had a 1962 TR3 painted British racing green. I loved that car more than the girlfriend I never had.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glen CreasonJuly 3, 2025 at 11:50 AM

      We might be able to get into one now but not get out

      Delete

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