Father’s Day Wheels: The perfect classic car for the dad in your life
Dads love classic cars. In fact, the recent decoding of the human genome shows that car lust occupies the same part of the male chromosome as the love for beer, pizza and The Three Stooges. But classic cars aren’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. Different dads like different cars. Some of our not-so-scientific research indicates the following classic cars are good fits for the following types of dads:
- Sports Junkie Dad: Dads for whom March Madness really is a type of temporary insanity and for whom the Super Bowl is about more than the commercials would appreciate the 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge, a jock of a car if ever there was one. It’s the Jerome Bettis of muscle cars — a big guy with decent moves.
- All-American Dad: Everyone knows this dad — flannel and Carhartt make up the bulk of his wardrobe. Hunting, fishing and barbecuing are some favorite pastimes. The classic car choice is totally predictable on one hand, not predictable only from the standpoint that it’s not actually a car. It’s a vintage Ford F-series pickup truck, preferably the first generation built from 1948-52.
- GQ Dad: This dad might be the direct polar opposite of dad No. 2 in most ways. He’s a clotheshorse, a foodie, reads Architectural Digest and knows the places to see and be seen. Perhaps the most stylish coupe of the 1970s, the BMW 3.0CS built from 1971-75, is a perfect fit for GQ Dad.
- Techie Dad: These dads proudly roll with the nerd herd, and there’s one classic that is surefire hit for guys who in the early 1980s were lusting after their first Apple MacIntosh. The Audi Quattro Coupe, better known as the Ur Quattro, was a technological tour de force — the first practical GT car to feature all wheel-drive. It’s this or the wildly more expensive (or exotic) Porsche 959 or Citröen DS.
- History Buff Dad: For dads who can’t get enough of “Band of Brothers” or Ken Burns’ “The Civil War,” why not drive the car that The Greatest Generation learned to grind gears and burn out clutches on — the Ford Model A of 1927-31.
