You never forget your first car

As a TV ad used to say, Brazilians are passionate about cars, and I'm no exception: I've been following Formula One since Jim Clark's era; when I was in Germany for the first time, I traveled for long hours to watch my first Grand Prix race in person, in the old Nürburgring track (where I only could see the cars passing on the long straight line for a few seconds on each lap); and I didn't miss any of the first Brazilian GPs, before the Globo network managed to move the GP to Rio - when it returned to São Paulo, ticket prices were already prohibitive...
I always went to the São Paulo Auto Show with my father, from the very first ones, still in a pavillion at Ibirapuera Park, which later was demolished. I even saw president João Goulart very closely once, examining a gold-painted Aero-Willys - the first president I've ever seen in person...

And my first car was not the VW beetle that was the standard of the time- it was a Triumph Spitfire! The story goes like this: I had been working for two years and was 21, but I didn't have a driver's license yet. One day I decided to take a walk on a street that was famous for its used car dealers. Suddenly, there it was: convertible, red, beautiful! I got in, I asked for the price, I didn't even test the car, I didn't bargain, I said: - I'll take it! The salesman probably thought I was crazy... I made the deal immediately, I don't even remember how I paid, but I left the store driving the car. A detail: besides not having a driver's license, I'd never driven, except for a few minutes behind my father's VW bus on a remote beach... I managed to get home, but not before having the engine quit on me several times. I thought it was my fault for not knowing how to drive, but it wasn't. The car had a carburetor problem - first visit to the shop, problem solved with an adjustment.
The car had a history: it had been imported by a Matarazzo, and later belonged to a Sodré (both are traditional families of São Paulo)... It had a pending import documentation, every year it had to be stamped by the Federal Police, that would inform that the process was still going on - and so it went for all the years until I sold the car...
It was a '65 Mk II model, but its front was that of a '67 Mk III - one day, some time later, at the shop, one person that was there recognized the car and told me that a previous owner had destroyed its front. The shop was owned by a very serious "Japanese", Hélio, who would see me frequently... On a trip to the U.S., I bought the maintenance manual for the car, and tried to do as much as I could at home (I became a specialist in disassembling the carburetors, which were very simple and similar to those used in motorcycles, and in cleaning and adjusting the distributor points and adjusting the engine timing by ear). I also bought the back light lenses: very stylish, they were kept in place by a single screw on top and by a small tab on the bottom; even a small blow would break them around the screw head.
But, shop expenses aside, the little car was beautiful! Convertible, besides the canvas top it had a solid steel top, and also a tonneau, that protective covering placed at door height: it had a zipper on the middle, you could open just the driver's side... And the knock-off wire wheels! Instead of a wrench, a mallet and a piece of wood were needed to loosen the nut, and on the right side the nuts were reverse-threaded so that they wouldn't become loose. From time to time it was necessary to tighten and adjust the spokes, and there was only one person in São Paulo who had the skill for this...
Not to mention the hood, that opened fully forward leaving the engine and the front suspension exposed! The Triumph was thrilling: not for its performance, since its 1.2 liter engine wasn't so powerful, despite the car's little weight, but for the scares it would give me from time to time. On the first months, while I was still driving without a driver's license, I went for a ride on one of today's busiest freeways in São Paulo, but that at the time was still unfinished; I ran over a water puddle, the car aquaplaned and ended up stopped sideways on a pile of mud. A door dented and another visit to the shop...
Another time, already married and with my wife pregnant of our first son, driving to Guararema on the Dutra highway, suddenly the car kept going straight when I turned the steering wheel. I only had time to tell her to hold on tight, take my foot of the gas pedal and, fortunately, remember not to step hard on the brakes, so the car wouldn't change course - and, of course, to pray... We stopped in a ditch that, luckily, existed on the shoulder... The reason: the steering column had an articulation with a rubber disc held with screws, and the all screws somehow became loose...
One day, a neighboor rang and asked me if I would like to rent the car for a TV ad. Very simple, he explained: all I had to do was to take the car at night to the location and spend some hours there while they filmed the ad, and I would be paid for it. I accepted, and on the evening I drove to the location: a huge mansion that belonged to Horácio Lafer, a former Finance Minister, and later was bought by the editor of then famous magazine Manchete. I arrived on time and waited, waited, waited... There were many other exotic cars and their also exotic owners there: Corvette, Thunderbird, etc. The film team ran in all directions, positioned lights, the lighting man measured the light with his photometer, the team moved the lights... The owner of the Corvette was a little tipsy, and every time the man with the photometer came close, he would say: here comes the compass man again... Well, to make a long story short, when we left the sun was rising, and I was told: tomorrow at the same time at Embu. What? Wasn't it supposed to be only tonight? No, of course not, you have to be tomorrow at Embu or you won't be paid... Next evening, same story: lights, "compass", tipsy Corvette owner, etc. They started filming just before sunrise, and suddenly the lights of the square went off. What now? They find that the night watch had turned off the lights, somebody rushes to beg him to turn them on again... Finally, the filming ended. I don't know how I managed to go to work after two days without sleeping. I got my payment a few days later. When the ad ran on TV, I tried to locate my car: poor thing, it only appeared for a couple of seconds with all other cars, and then just its front on another scene... By the way, the ad was for the launching of the St. Moritz cigarette, and its director (I thoght he looked familiar and asked) was Luiz Sérgio Person, a great Brazilian director who died a few years later in an accident. He was the father of MTV Brazil VJ Marina and TV presenter Domingas Person...
After my son was born and I bought a brand new Corcel by joining the Ford National Consortium (ah, the '70s), the Triumph lost its space. My little town house didn't have a garage, not even a covered parking space for the car. With much pain in my heart, I sold it, through a car dealer who was a friend of my father, to a collector in Paraná (at least, that's what the dealer told me). Later I learned that the engine locked on the way and the car made the rest of the trip on a tow truck. I guess it didn't like the new owner...
I couldn't find any good photo of the Triumph, just this partial one:

Until today I wish I hadn't sold it. But if one of these days I'm passing by that street again and see a Puma or a Karmann-Ghia in good condition, who knows...