AEROBUS POSTSCRIPT Selling the Aerobus Thomas DuPont, the publisher of DuPont Registry offered to buy my Aerobus for $12,000 at the 2002 Concourse d'Elegance car show at Pebble Beach. I waited nearly a year and made several attempts to contact him with no response. After more than a reasonable wait I finally got serious about selling Bud to someone else. I knew that I would be retiring from the Air Force soon and I intended to remain in Monterey. I figured there weren't many neighborhoods that would tolerate a car like Bud along with the five other vehicles I owned. I put several ads in weekly newsprint-format automobile-marketplace publications. I offered Bud at $9,000 which was $3,000 less than I had been asking for a year without giving it much exposure. One ad generated absolutely no responses and the other produced four serious calls. The person who seems the most serious was a guy named Darren who owned a winery a couple of hours south of Monterey. He said he wanted Bud for winery tours and he seemed to know cars pretty well as he looked Bud over. He noticed a pretty good oil leak under Bud that I didn't know was there and he had trouble rolling a couple of windows up and down. It had been nearly a year since I had done much to Bud and I had only driven it about six times in that period. After a vigorous test drive with Bud performing well, Darren posed the inevitable. "We'll I think this vehicle is going to fit well into what I have planned on the winery but I've got to negotiate the price." I wanted to tell him that I had already dropped the price by $3,000 but I knew that was a pointless complaint since my ad read $9,000. "I will negotiate the price after the upcoming Concourse d'Elegance" I offered. "Tom Dupont said he was going to buy it for $12,000 last year but hasn't followed through." I threw the twelve-grand into the conversation after all. "I want to give this year's Concourse a chance. If I don't get a buyer that week then I'll negotiate with you." "How much would it take to for me to buy it before the Concourse?" "I don't think I want to go any less until after that week, it's only a month away." It didn't take Darren long to respond, "Okay, how about eight thousand right now?" I didn't want to take less but after nearly a year of half-hearted efforts to sell it I supposed a bird in the hand counted for something. Darren broke my uncomfortably long silence by saying, "Well you think about it and let me know." I decided I'd probably let Bud go and countered, "If I accept eight I want to keep the CHECKER license plates. You didn't want them did you?" "No, I have no use for them." "Okay, I can probably get five hundred or more for them. I'll bet there are a lot of people who would pay for them. Give me a day to think about your offer and I'll call you back. I want to get my family's concurrence on the sale too since they feel like they've contributed to this whole car project all these years. I'll call you tomorrow but there's little doubt I'll accept your offer." All the way home I wondered why I didn't conclude the sale on the spot. My wife, Vilma, wasn't happy about me selling Bud but it wasn't about the price. She just has trouble parting with stuff, even stuff she doesn't like. Sometimes I wonder if I fit into that category. "How much are you going to give me?" she asked. "Nothing" was all I said and I felt like I meant it. Sure, she gave up some time with me while I worked on Bud over the years but I felt I had already paid a price for that time by tolerating her complaining about the project. I called Darren back the next day and accepted his offer. "Okay but I'm going to Washington for a winery meeting and I won't be back for almost two weeks. If you get offered a better price during that time go ahead and sell it. I'll call you when I get back." I fixed the oil leak the next Saturday. It just turned out to be a faulty seal on the oil filter. I took all eight doors apart and lubricated all the window mechanisms inside until they all worked well. After three weeks Darren did call back and said he was still interested so we set a date for the transfer the following Sunday. He called me again on Saturday saying he was planning to come down but his wife asked him how he intended to pay me. "I'm going to give him a check." "Do you think he's going to take your personal check?" she asked him. "I hadn't thought about that. Now it's too late to get a cashier's check." "Call him and ask him." "Well, I had wondered how you were going to pay me" I said. "I feel like I know you well enough to believe that your personal check is good but all I know is what you've told me." "We could wait until next weekend" Darren offered "if you're not in a rush to transfer it, I'm not either." "No, that's fine" I said "just bring a cashier's check next week." "Great, I'll call you and set up a meeting place for Saturday." Now I was anxious to sell Bud. At least I thought I was but I was still having periods of strong doubt. Four weeks had elapsed and I had not received any more calls of interest due mostly to my ads having expired. I was frustrated by another week's wait. Who knows what could go wrong, surely Darren would change his mind. The next Saturday came and Darren had not called. I scheduled a family trip all day Saturday in Santa Cruz, across Monterey Bay. Halfway there my cell phone rang and it was Darren. "Hey, my wife and I are coming to Monterey today. We're going to spend the night with some friends. Can we get together tomorrow? My wife wants to see the car and approve the purchase." "Sure no problem, call me in the morning and we'll get together." I replied, wondering what kind of doubts his wife would have after seeing Bud. Women tended to like Bud a lot but perhaps not $8,000 worth. I worried until the next day. Darren finally called me about noon and we arranged to meet near Cannery Row. I had cruised Cannery Row several times that morning just to watch the tourists point and hear them say to one another, "Hey look at that car!" for the last few times. Two people pulled me over in traffic that morning noting the For Sale signs on Bud. I told them both, before they had a chance to discuss money, that I was probably selling it that day. They both said they would call me later to see if I had. I drove around town for a while until I absent-mindedly took off from a traffic light while it was still red, much to the concerns and blowing horns of those I left behind. I must have been quite sight in my overly conspicuous car, painted like an American flag, looking for all the world like I was trying to beat everyone from the starting light. I scared myself and considered the early stages of Alzheimer's while I drove home and fixed the brake lights, which I had been meaning to do for several months but kept forgetting. Hmmm Alzheimer's? I got out of the car and greeted Darren and his wife Angela and their two friends. She circled the car much as Vilma would have done, had I given her more of a vote seven years before when she first saw Bud. I heard Darren explaining the few blemishes and many good aspects of Bud in an effort to convince Angela he was doing something sane. Darren actually had a plan to do with Bud what people had been telling me to do the whole time I had it; use it to make money. Angela apparently agreed to the purchase and tossed Darren a zippered pouch. "Okay how do we do this?" he asked. "Well I can take you on the Army post where I live and we'll load up the extra parts in the Aerobus, sign the title over and you can drive off post unescorted. That would be easier than trying to sign everyone on the post." Darren agreed that made sense so Angela and their two friends drove off. On the way to my house I told Darren about the book I was nearly done with. "I didn't want this to sound like a sales pitch before you decided to buy the car but would you permit me to use your names in the book and perhaps talk about your winery and what you do with the car?" "Sure no problem. I intend to sell advertising space for other wineries on the doors." "Sounds like a winery NASCAR." "That's exactly what I call it when I tell people about the idea!" Darren exclaimed. "I'm going to paint it back to the original white and probably re-chrome all the stainless steel and other trim elements like the headlight bezels." I thought burgundy might be more fitting for a winery vehicle. Burgundy would have been a good complement for Bud's gray interior too. It would have imparted a dignified look I thought. I didn't say anything to Darren. Guys have to be their own creator on their own vehicles. We loaded a spare transmission and other parts into the back of Bud and then did all the documentation to transfer the title. I scraped all the military affiliation stickers off with hardly a melancholy thought, unlike Vilma who had been bemoaning the sale for several days already. I took off the CHECKER license plates, wondering if I really would ever want to sell them. Darren surprised me by giving me cash from the zippered pouch. "The bank was having some electronics problem producing cashier's checks so I told Angela to get cash." Darren explained. I counted it out feeling like a drug dealer in my garage. I figured there was a pretty good chance the cash wouldn't bounce though and that was a bonus. Darren gave me his business card and I noticed that his vineyard had taken his Anglican surname and added an O to the end of it creating a decidedly Italian quality, "Mitchello Vineyards". I liked it. Like a fine Italian stringed instrument. "Can I call you from time to time for advice on the car?" "Sure, I hope you will. I've become kind of the world authority on Aerobuses because of the web site." "Great, I'll probably need some help as I work through the minor details of perfecting it." "I'll include as much of the story in my book as you produce before it gets published." "I'll send you some photos" was the last thing Darren said before he got in and started it. I didn't watch him drive off with seven years of my effort in his grasp. I never even got around to telling him Bud's name. I figured there would be a new name, something dignified, befitting its eventual stature as a truly restored car, something like "Cab", short for Cabernet Sauvignon I suppose but with a nod to Bud's pedigree, the Checker Cab Company. Certainly something more flattering than Bud's acronym. I wondered if Jaime was still alive in Sacramento. He would like to know what became of his "fun car" for taking his large family out for Sunday rides, sometimes over the Sierras Nevada mountains to Reno and Lake Tahoe. The "little old ladies" in the Monterey Civic Club will have to find another patriotic theme vehicle for next year's Fourth of July parade. They'll be disappointed by that. Thirty-three years on the roads and only 53,514 miles, as I was obligated to note and write on the title. Bud still has a lot of life left and probably enough of a future for at least another book should anyone ever bother. A Checker owner is never alone. Until he sells his Checker. |
