CLASSIC CAR DESIGN

Though he was in the Navy, and worked as a dock worker, Grandpa McCobb somehow siphoned off the funds to buy top-of-the-line Hasselblad cameras, and acquired beautifully-designed coupes and sports cars of the time.

This made him, by default, a financially-irresponsible husband and father of 5 children being raised on a shoestring budget in the modest D Street Housing Projects in South Boston (where my father’s family lived in the 1940s-1960s).

Yet, his oldest brother was a well-known midcentury modern furniture designer and textile artist named Paul McCobb, so it seems probable that my grandfather’s taste mirrored his older brother’s, even if he ended up on a different life path that ended in his early death at the age of 42.

I’ve sometimes wondered if I am the reincarnation of my grandfather.

If you believe in such things, it would explain my early love of film, jazz music, and my appreciation for cars built during the time period my grandfather made his way through life as a married man, father, and adult. Or, if you don’t believe in such things, my fascination with old cars could simply be based on my own attraction to colorful and detailed design.

To me, older cars sometimes reach the level of “high art” - though I can’t speak to their capabilities as modern transportation; the oldest car I’ve ever driven was a 1986 SAAB 900, which I owned for a few years. It was a beautiful car that I would have held on to if my 20-something salary could support the regular trips to my mechanic, Carmen, an older Italian guy who kept many classic vehicles in great working order.

I salute all the mechanics and car enthusiasts who still keep these cars cared for, rehabilitated, and enjoyed. I dream of hitting the highway in many of them, and offer these slices of photographic enticement for what could be if you, too, got behind the wheel.