The Renault Dauphine

[trof]

In the mid 60s one of my college roomies bought a '56 Renault Dauphine.
I still don't know why. Price, I guess. They were cheap, in every sense of the word.

The paint had worn through/off in places and it was even uglier than it deserved to be. Earl Scheib wanted about $200 to paint it, which I think was more than he paid for it. Didn't really matter, cause he didn't have two hundred bucks anyway.

What he did do was go to K-Mart and get a couple of dozen rolls of "walnut grained" Contac paper. That's the vinyl coated sticky-back stuff you line shelves with (I guess). He and I and our other roomie cut classes Friday and, armed with X-Acto knives, scissors, the Contac paper, and a case of beer, started in. We completely de-chromed it and removed all trim. Then for around 3 hours we cut and drank and pasted and drank and stuck and trimmed and drank. When we finished, it looked like a big walnut.
We named it "Wally".
Pretty original.

The next week end we drove it to New Orleans. Too bad it wasn't Mardis Gras, but we attracted a lot of attention anyway, tooling around the Quarter. On the way home (at about 3 a.m. Monday morning) it just quit, somewhere outside of Meridian, Mississippi. We slept in it (sort of) until daylight and then hiked to a farmhouse (no such things as cellphones then) called a friend back at school to come get us. My buddy just left it where it died. Kept worrying about a call from the MS state troopers or somebody. Nothing happened...ever. No calls, no nothing.
I wonder if it's still there, covered by kudzu. Hell, now that I think about it, that's probably why nobody tracked him down. It was covered up by kudzu in a couple of days.
;-)

[izzie]

1. I love you for doing that. People who march to a different....

drummer are my type of people.:loveya: :loveya: :loveya:

[trof]

2. Wonder why my picture won't stay up?

Maybe I need some Contac paper?
Third time's the charm.

[trof]

3. Oh lord

I think we had our own percussion section back then. That was 40+ years ago and I've calmed down a little since. A little.
Thanks, though.
:hi: