Page A2 The Joan De Arc Crusader / Saturday, July 4, 2015

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EDITORIAL PAGE

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

 

The Buekers' legendary “little red car”

Opel Kadett defined an era on Joan De Arc Avenue

 

 

 

Editor’s Note: The Opel Kadett was a small German family car produced between 1965 and 1973 and sold in the US through selected Buick dealers. In 1968, when Carl Bueker could no longer avoid purchasing a new car for his wife, the Buekers' red Opel Kadett made its debut on Joan De Arc Avenue. The Buekers look back on their legendary car and family member.

 

     I really forget the idea behind buying the Opel Kadett; it was eentsy-teensy inside and was to be the family car. It was suitable for a midget and three midget kids and not a one of us was qualified. Charlie and John were still young, but within a year or two they had outgrown the car and never would fit comfortably in it again.

     It was also a miserable choice for our Arizona climate: bright red with a black interior and no air. NO AIR. Carl’s story was that the car couldn’t support an air conditioner because the motor was too small. He suggested the “260 air conditioner,” which entailed driving with 2 windows rolled down at 60 miles per. I was not amused.

     I had never driven a car with a standard transmission before and I had to practice in the neighborhood for a month before I would drive it in traffic. We did have the use of Carl’s company car on weekends, so I guess we did get by with that car – for 7 years.

     The Opel was so small that you didn’t get into it; you just put it on like a coat. However, it was actually a lot of fun to drive because you really felt like you had control of it. Automatic transmission cars in contrast drive themselves. I had a close call or two on the freeway driving to ASU, but I loved driving that car.

     I had a love-hate relationship with the Opel Kadett for 7 years. We finally wore the thing completely out. When the engine quit, I quit, and had it towed away as junk. But I never forgot it and never will.

 -- Barbara Bueker Stewart

 

 

     My love affair with the little red Opel Kadett began in 1968, the year I learned to drive. I had taken Driver’s Ed that spring, which included on the road training. The trainer car was a large domestic automatic, nothing special. We were required to take long drives to exotic locations like Apache Junction and Avondale. The teacher was my general math teacher, Mr. Laumeyer, who let us play the radio as loud as we wanted, and on OUR stations. Cool.

     Daddy was my designated teacher from home. Mother was far too nervous to take me out on the road. Actually with good reason. I cut people off, blew through stop signs, and actually scared the crap out of Daddy. Amazing! 

     Buying the Opel was a real event for the family. It was a ridiculous car for our family. Tiny, with a black vinyl interior and NO AC. We were not tiny, and we lived in the desert, for God’s sake. I loved it anyway. I got shotgun since I was the oldest, and barely noticed that the taller of us had to bend over double to fit into the back seat. On really hot days, I wanted to cry at stop lights and stop signs, and a layer of burned flesh always came off when I got out of my seat.

     I am grateful that I learned to drive on that car. It had a standard transmission, and not only did that make it cool and sports car-like, but it made driving cars with automatic trannies boring and effortless. And it was RED. That is my color choice for any car to this day, despite the warnings that cops stop more red cars than anything else. In my case they were usually stopping me for something else that had nothing to do with the color, anyway.

     I won’t go into any of the trouble I got into, or avoided, driving the Opel. Let’s just say I relished the freedom it afforded, and drove it anytime I could come up with a valid excuse. (“Need anything at the store?? Ya sure???”)

     Time went by, and I was soon married, and driving a 4 speed of my very own. But those days with Mother’s cherished Opel I will never forget.

Sue Bueker Nolan

 

 

    I guess my most vivid memory of our dear diminutive Opel Kadett, besides having to constantly squeeze into the back seat, is the day I attempted to learn to drive it.  My boyfriend bravely volunteered to teach me how to work a manual transmission, so he drove us to the Sahuaro School parking lot and we switched sides. 

     I got the pattern for the movement of the gear shift without too much grinding, but I absolutely could not get a feel for the clutch. I popped and jerked around the lot for about a half hour before Doug finally rolled his eyes and gave up. Later that summer, I managed to blow a tire on his parents’ Cadillac during another driving lesson (not my fault, but Ray Burkett wasn’t buying it). I’m pretty sure that’s when he gave up altogether. 

     But the Opel was never to be for me. Mother and Daddy went out and found the simplest, most white-bread boring easy-to-drive car they could for me: a 1964 beige Rambler American, automatic transmission and very little else (the radio didn’t even work). I still managed to pull out in front of a truck and crunch it before my 18th birthday.

     Sooner or later I did learn to drive a stick, and got pretty good at it. In my Toyota Celica (which must be my favorite car of all time), I could hold a baby bottle with one hand, turn a corner, and downshift with the other. Maybe that’s where my daughter gets her crazy, multi-tasking driving style, it’s in the genes.

Barbie Bueker Formichella

 

 

     I never actually got to drive the Opel, yet my fond memories of that car are innumerable.

     I well remember the day Father brought the thing home. Major, major family event. We all stood out in the front yard and waited and waited, filling with anticipation, until Carl finally pulled up in this strange, small, two-door red car. Never saw anything like it before. We sensed from the beginning this was going to be a special ride. It was particularly interesting trying to get in and out of the damn thing.

     One of the coolest features (actually one of the few features) of the Opel was the illuminated rocker switch on the dashboard that activated the vehicle’s emergency lights. When pressed down, the switch glowed an eerie red and began flashing in unison with the car’s lights. Crucially, this switch worked at all times, regardless of whether the car was running or the keys were in the ignition. In design, it sorta resembled switches we had observed on the control panels of the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. It was just oh so Space-Agey! And so for us kids on the street, the Opel became an indispensable prop in our Lost in Space and Star Trek play: we could sit inside the car and imagine we were careening through the galaxy with a blaring red alert in progress. On one occasion, I forgot to switch the thing off and the emergency lights flashed inside the garage all night long. I hope I didn’t run the battery down too bad. 

-- John Bueker

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A comprehensive history of our Opel Kadett

 

     It was the kind of car that auto dealers would have on the sales lot just so they could advertise the lowest price in town.  New Cars Starting at Only Some Ridiculously Low Figure!  Deprived of any options, upgrades, or add-ons, these vehicles existed solely to meet the minimum legal requirement of a motor vehicle while luring easy targets into the dealership. Nobody in their right mind would actually buy such a car. Well…almost nobody.

     It must have been late in the 1968 model year, and Tony Coury had a problem. The sucker car had done an admirable job shilling for his Mesa Pontiac dealership, but the new year models were due to arrive soon from the factory and at that point it would become a real liability. The 1968 Opel Kadett LS coupe was sleek, red, and sexy on the outside, perfect copy for the weekend newspaper ads, but housed a virtual torture chamber within its black vinyl interior. The obvious lack of air conditioning or a radio would be the first thing that a prospective buyer might notice, trying the car on for size in the hot Arizona sun. The awkward manual transmission might be the next thing to raise a red flag, not to mention the gymnastics required to squeeze between one of the two doors and the scarcely folding front bucket seats used to gain entry to the tiny rear passenger area. Literally the cheapest car that GM offered in 1968, and designed to appeal to exactly nobody, it was of course precisely what Carl Bueker was looking for.

     As it turned out, Carl worked for GMC Truck and Coach and had a working relationship with Tony Coury and his dealership. It is unknown what deal may have been struck between the two of them on that eventful day, but there can be little doubt that there was some measure of dubious quid pro quo involved as both parties negotiated the transfer of this diabolic conveyance from Bud’s back lot to its new home on Joan De Arc Avenue. The Bueker family needed a car, and the appeal of a brand new vehicle for next to nothing was simply too good for Carl Bueker to pass up. Mr. Coury was more than happy to be rid of it, and any goodwill engendered by practically giving it away to a business partner was the icing on the cake. And so the story of the little red car in the Bueker driveway begins.

     It would be difficult to conceive of a less practical car for the growing Bueker family. As it was for its main German rival, the Volkswagen Bug, the Opel Kadett was built to transport small groups of sub-miniature citizens only occasionally for short distances. This describes neither the Buekers nor the Opel usage over its many years of operation, as the family was notably huge and drove everywhere at all times. In fact, the entire Bueker-Opel alliance stands as supreme testimony to the adaptability of the human species in the most extreme and adverse of environments, and would have surely been written up by Charles Darwin if only he had lived another hundred years.

     I learned how to drive the stick shift one day when the old Rambler American was temporarily out of service and I needed to get to Glendale Community College for classes. I only stalled it a few times on the way there, and had it all figured out by the time I returned that evening. All of its obvious shortcomings aside, the old Opel was an eminently drivable vehicle.

     One notable experience in the Opel revolved around a trip to the Turf Paradise horse racing facility, where I and my compatriots would often visit to supplement our school studies in applied probabilities and statistics. I believe that my brother John was with me, and after enjoying an afternoon of the Sport of Kings, we were attempting to leave the track along with hundreds of other cars. While creeping through the parking lot it occurred to me that the vacant field across 19th Avenue from the track would be a much quicker escape for the trusty Opel and, testing my theory, we happily sped past dozens upon dozens of vehicles stupidly lined up on the paved roadway. You can only imagine my surprise when the dirt field disappeared from below the front wheels, replaced suddenly by an ancient concrete-lined irrigation ditch that halted our forward progress suddenly and violently. The sudden jolt caused the battery in the engine compartment to jump from its corroded home to land atop the carburetor linkage, pinning the throttle to its full output.  By the time I shut the engine off, we pulled the car out of the ditch, righted the battery and got back on the road, the traffic had all but disappeared, saving me from the vicious taunts of the other racegoers I so richly deserved.  I wasn’t so lucky when my father came home that evening, believe me.

     The Opel required constant maintenance, even more so than most cars of that era. The exhaust system was particularly fragile, and despite being an Arizona car it rusted away almost entirely, lending the Opel that distinctive throaty sound you could hear miles away. It was only through the effective use of fiberglass muffler tape, procured at the local Checker parts store, that the car remained even marginally road legal. I estimate the muffler and pipes were 90% tape by the time of the car’s demise.  The rubber muffler hangers were replaced at one point with Hoover vacuum cleaner belts.

     Red paint and the Arizona sun don’t mix well, and so with every washing, the car’s finish got duller and the rinse water got redder and redder.  One year, for Mother’s Day (or was it a birthday?) we decided to give the car a new look and the old beast got a thorough polishing and a separate waxing treatment. It must have been effective, because I distinctly remember the neighborhood Avon lady stopping by and congratulating us on our “new car.” This was probably the last hurrah for the old Opel Kadett.

     The Opel story ended just as it had started for me, on a trip to the community college. The engine suddenly seized just outside of the parking entrance of the school and was destined to never turn over again under its own power. Somehow it was towed back to our house and it sat in the garage for months, disassembled in some measure by my father who was too ill to manage a repair. The odometer cable was one of the things that broke early on, so nobody could ever hope to know exactly how many miles were on the thing, but the car lasted well beyond anyone’s expectation and served the family admirably. I think the scrap dealer offered us $50 and towed her away.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ JDA

 

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