Invisible

Don't own a classic British car if you wish to be invisible. If you are trying to keep a low profile, avoid indictment or extradition (even for GOOD reasons), or simply abhor social interaction with the teeming masses, buy a GMC Envoy. General Motors engineers spent nine years and almost half a billion dollars developing a motor vehicle that virtually assures its owner absolute anonymity. Midnight Blue Metallic seems to work the best. BritBox heard that this stealth technology is under review by the armed forces as well.

It may be hard to believe, but BritBox is self-effacing and reticent by nature—in fact, avoidance of human contact in most forms and instances is preferred. It's true! Oh, sure, these Internets have raised BritBox's profile and created a lot of attention, along with the associated "dialog" and "communication" and "listening to what other people are actually saying to BritBox" and whatnot. All of that notoriety and responsibility is forgotten when taking the Sporty Red Car for a quick little sprint down the rolling, potholed, two-lane blacktop of rural midwestern roads.

You have to be on your guard. For every finger that points and is accompanied by the exclamation "Stuart Little!", there is also a wistful "is that a TR4 or a TR250?". The second, more informed comment usually comes from graying gentlemen in their fifties and sixties who go on to tell about the TR6 purchased when they got home from 'Nam, or the TR4A IRS that their older brother broke against a maple tree in 1971, or the Spitfire that was sleeping under canvas tarps in the barn, waiting to be restored "someday".

A matronly older woman once approached BritBox's Favorite TR250 in the parking lot of a skateboard park (don't ask). She identified the car correctly, and reminisced about a TR4 in which she and her now-departed husband motored around in their younger days. Her eyes gleamed with memories of the dashing car and how handsome in it she and her husband looked, before the car was replaced by a larger vehicle to accommodate their growing family. This seems to happen a lot: little British cars passing through people's lives like oil through a gearbox seal.

BritBox stopped for gas while commuting home on a summer-like October day last week. One of those Dodge diesel pickup trucks the size of a combine harvester pulled up to the pump right behind the Sporty Red Car, and the truck's owner made some polite remarks and then asked, "Is it hard to get parts for that thing?". The reply, of course, was that 88.3% of the parts essential to a Triumph's continued motoring existence can be obtained in as little as forty-eight hours, thanks to the modern miracles of credit/debit cards and expedited shipping. The other 11.7% is only available through divine intervention, windfalls like lottery wins, or eBay—but that's not the point.

People used to integrate little British cars into their daily lives. Most of the cars were not toys with which to tinker, or eye candy, or a cooling salve for mid-life crisis. They were statements of personality; an embrace of culture and industry from a foreign land. Every British car that crossed the ocean bore with it the cachet of green hills, white cliffs, blue skies, and empire. They were driven year-round, parked outside, dug out of snow drifts, and reluctantly replaced only when propagation of the species demanded a Ford Fairlane station wagon. BritBox even bought a TR6 parts car once that rolled on mounted snow tires.

Today, classic British cars are survivors of a long gone era, one that answered a need to make something extraordinary out of the mundane. A time, like now, when the motoring enthusiast was visible against the backdrop of indifferent, utilitarian vehicles—because the LBC driver was the one who was smiling.