Felix

The car was a 1957 Karman-Ghia that I called Felix for obvious reasons. The picture was probably taken in 1976.

Felix was dressed up with the insignias for the Navy's VF-31 night-fighter squadron and given to the previous owner by his squadron as a gag when he was released from prison in Vietnam. Felix the Cat would have been on the tail of his plane. The car had the "Aboard & Ashore" weights stenciled on the sides behind the front wheels and had the banner, "We get ours at night" placed across the back just behind the back window. Appropriately, the engine whined like a jet. It needed a transmission and was not the kind of car he wanted to drive anyway so he sold it to me for $100 and I put in a synchromesh transmission.

I loved that car. It only had 36 hp but it handled well and had no problem exceeding the speed limit. On the way home one year, I hit what I guess would be 100 mph on the long downhill stretch just before you get to Cherokee on Highway 3. The speedometer only went up to 90 but the needle was way past that and pointing straight down.

The car was probably green when it was new, then painted yellow, and then orange with plenty of opportunity for the colors to fade between coats. It looked orange from street level but it was difficult to tell which color it actually was from the sky. I know this only because an Iowa highway patrolman told me so. I was driving along when I saw some guy with a cowboy hat standing in the road waving me down. I wondered what kind of trouble he was in, but it was me who was in trouble. I was caught speeding from a plane and the pilot could not tell exactly what color of car the patrolman on the ground should be stopping.

The car always drew a lot of attention. I made the front page of the Chapel Hill Newspaper in October of 1975 while I was starting graduate school there. I had no idea my picture had been taken until I saw the paper. I hung on to that paper until it turned tan and the ink fell off the crease. I took this picture of the paper before I tossed it. 

I gave the car to a friend a couple of years later when I had my Baja together. Felix had a six-volt electrical system that was always problematic, so he gave it back to me when he became tired of cleaning fuses. By then we were using the Veldawagen (1959 Beetle), so I pulled the engine and stored it in a barn in Arkansas. That barn is gone now too, but I still have the ignition key hanging on a peg in my garage.

 I really did love that car.