The Resting Rock

Our oldest daughter named her newly leased car the day she brought it home. “Millie” is a 2023 two-door sub-compact, still wet behind the mud flaps. The engine starts on the first try and the windshield wipers don’t go on or off unexpectedly – too new to have the quirks and frustrations lovingly understood only by its owner, but down the road any roadtrip stories with this car will feature the name Millie.

Why do people name their cars? How old does a car have to be before it has a unique nickname?  Does the car have to earn its name by some memorable event, a combination of coming-to-age memories, or just because there’s a name that just fits its personality? Maybe an owner names a car as a sign of respect or honor.

The answer to those questions could be as varied as the tread pattern in tires. In the paragraphs below are a few examples of cars and the memories I easily recall because of their nicknames.

The Edmobile

My grandfather owned a 1967 Buick LeSabre 2-door, which my brother Brian and sister Karen acquired after he passed away in 1978. 

In our grandfather’s honor, they christened the car “The Edmobile.”  Its navy-ship-steel-grade body was painted a dull green. Back then you could sit on the hood or climb on its roof without denting it. I witnessed the Edmobile survive a fender-bender when another car rammed into it. The other car suffered the fender-bender, while the Edmobile shrugged it off without a hint of any impact.  

Its doors were as long as cattle gates. Inside, the upholstery on the seats was a weird polyester, and the seatbacks were some sort of plastic. A piece of the spring system poked through a rip in the back, which I could see as I sat in the back seat, which seemed as wide as a California King mattress.

The state-of-the-art cruise control function was a pointer thingy that you could set at a certain speed. If the speedometer needle hit the pointer, a buzzer would sound to let the driver know that he or she was going too fast. The car and its 25-gallon gas tank carried Karen and her friends back and forth to Niagara University while they earned their nursing degrees.

The Edmobile lasted until 1981, when Karen traded it in for a white Ford Escort.

The Grannyada

The year before my sister bought her Escort, a 1980 Ford Granada rolled off the assembly line. Eight years later the car found a new home when our dad bought it from his friend at Jackie Stevens Ford, which stood at the intersection of Kenmore Avenue and Main Street, where a pharmacy now stands. 

As my dad pondered buying the car, his friend told him, “Cliff, I know I sound like a used car salesman, but this car was truly driven by a little old lady who used it only to go to the store and back.” Indeed, little old lady or not, whoever owned it had put only 11,000 miles on the car in the eight years of ownership – and it still had the original tires. 

This golden two-door became known as the Grannyada or the Grenade. And it had some battle scars. During a trip to Allegany State Park one weekend, my brother Kevin, a couple friends and I encountered a road that was closed each season from November 1 to March 31. Since it was April 1, we thought it would be totally fine to drive on it, so Kevin headed up the newly opened road. The Grannyada shook and dipped over and into the pits and muddy ruts. At one point as we finally realized we should turn around, the car bottomed out and got stuck. Kevin put the car in reverse. As he powered backward to free the car, it lifted up as if it were on a ramp, only to crash back down to the muddy puddle-filled road. The catalytic converter, still stuck to the exhaust pipe, was sticking out from under the front bumper. 

We wrenched the pipe back from under the front bumper and drove to the nearest gas station to have the pipe cut off.

Kevin and I drove the thing back from Allegany with the windows open, the engine roaring in our ears as we headed up Route 219. People along the road must have thought a plane was coming for a landing. Our mom was gardening in the front yard when we pulled the Grenade into the driveway. “I heard that coming a mile away,” she said. I can’t remember if we told her exactly how the catalytic converter ended up in the back seat without the muffler. 

The Bitchin’ Stang

My friend Tim named his trusty 1979 Ford Mustang “the bitchin’ ‘Stang.” It was green with a black leBra covering the front part of the hood. Inside was a beige vinyl interior, fake wood accents, and bottle caps on the radio dials. To start the car, he had to adjust a choke knob with his left hand while turning the engine key.

The car was durable – it made the trip from his home in Mishawaka, Indiana to Cleveland, Ohio for the school breaks. It took five of us back and forth to the 1990 OAC Division 3 Football Championship when John Carroll University squared off against University of Dayton on a cold, sunny day in November. I was in the backseat built for two with two other people for the three-hour ride to Dayton. It was so uncomfortable I gladly offered to be the designated driver on the way back to campus just so I could have my own seat.

Other cars in the context of youthful history are known only by their make or model: The Ford. The Fuego. The Wagon. And all of us can easily recall a story that centers around those direct names. But there’s something about a car’s nickname that adds to the mystique of the story.