Driving With Distinction

Something unique. Something to call their own. Maybe that’s what these Dallasites were looking for when they chose to bypass today’s brightly colored, unspirited automo- biles in favor of yesterday’s cars with character. After all, how can a new Mercedes compare with the car that Ken Novorr drives? (See photo below). Leave mass-production to Detroit and Japan. Our eight friends travel their own road.

And frankly, in a world of creeping conformity and whitewashed expression, its nice to know that at least one pinstriped lawyer in town drives a turquoise Galaxie 500.

You have to be on the freeway just to take it into second gear,” says Ken Novorr of his ’58 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. The owner’s manual comes with a boldfaced warning about the car’s speed and power. “Originally,” Novorr says, “it could go 150 miles per hour.” But originally, as a teen-ager in Kansas City, Novorr wasn’t of an age to find that out for himself. He did, however, read about the car in auto magazines and knew what sounded good.

“When it first came out,” he says, “it was considered the most advanced and best-designed sports car ever.” The silver tubular-steel body is “super light” (that’s what “SL” stands for), while the six-cylinder steel engine, which holds 15 quarts of oil, is heavy and mean. “You have to drive it hard,” Novorr says, “and you have to hang on tight with both hands.”

Novorr drives a white Avanti to work (he also owns a Cutlass and a Lincoln Continental Mark II), but his sleek SL with the blue leather interior is his favorite. He says his wife likes it, too: “She enjoys flirting when she drives it.”

Steve Taylor’s red-and-white 1960 Metropolitan has caused many a near-accident. It’s easy to see why. Squarish and a mere 11-and-a-half feet long, the Metro looks like a bumper car or something that 19 circus clowns should pile out of. Taylor bought it from a man in North Dallas who buys and sells old cars. He says that he wanted something different. And indeed, the Metro is different. Taylor says he’s seen only a few of the U.S.-made Nash cars around town, and he’s yet to find another convertible. Taylor, who is 5-feet-11, has always liked small cars (his first was an MG Midget).

He also likes the attention the Metro brings him: “People stop me at least two or three times a day. Sometimes they ask me, ’Does that car float?’ or ’Isn’t that the car that Lois Lane drives?’” No, it doesn’t, and yes, it is.

When Ken and Sandra Blass-ingame go to a home Cowboys game (and they never miss one), they roll out Ken’s ’59 Ford Galaxie 500 Skyliner, a car as large as its name. If it’s a sunny day, Ken flips a switch on the dash, which makes the trunk open backwards, and then the hydraulic-powered convertible top slides up, back and down into the trunk as the trunk top shuts snugly on top of it. Pretty neat.

That’s what Ken’s two nephews think, and they’ll always accept an offer to drive the car. Sandra thinks that the Galaxie’s a piece of junk. But these hard-top convertibles are rare; they were made only from 1957 through 1959 and weren’t produced in a large quantity.

Blassingame, who’s been a criminal- and family lawyer for 20 years, has collected cars for 10 of those. He also owns three 1960 T-birds, but the Skyliner is his crown jewel. He likes to take it to the carwash and listen to the older guys bet the younger guys that it’s a convertible. According to Blassingame, “The younger guys who say it isn’t, always lose.”

In the center of Tully Weiss’ living room sits a harpsichord-period. The harpsichord is hand-crafted, was made to order and took two years to build. Weiss knows how to play it because he used to be a rock musician-keyboards, of course. Then he became a real estate agent, then a hair stylist. Now he creates interior lighting designs for homes and businesses that use-among other things -fiber optics, lasers and computers. He’s also a cab driver. Well, he drives a cab.

He bought his 1980 Checker Marathon several years ago because he heard that Checker was going to stop producing them. As for the joys of owning a taxi: “No one tries to hit you at an intersection.” As for the extravagance of the car: “Buying it is about the only thing I’ve ever done in my life that’s practical.”

The Mihalopouloses’ red ’55 Cadillac Eldorado with its cream interior is a family affair. That’s Papa Gus in the middle; he co-owns the luxury car of the Fifties with his older son, Frank, on the right. John, left, who’s a student, does all the mechanical work. Everyone gets to drive it.

The Mihalopouloses found the car in California, but it’s originally from Dallas. Not only does it sport power windows and power seats, but it’s also got an air horn, vacuum-suction windshield wipers and an electric-eye sensor that dims and brightens the headlights. Sometimes Frank drives it to Studebaker’s. Sometimes John takes it around the neighborhood. Sometimes Gus just gets inside and smiles. “You know,” he says, “Presley’s gold car was a ’55 Eldorado.”

When she was 2 years old, Jet-ta Goolsby first spied a Thun-derbird, and her destiny was set. The car belonged to her neighbors. Jetta liked it so much that she asked her parents if their family could have one, too. No way. Years later, while studying to become a registered nurse, Goolsby again saw a T-bird. This time, she swore: “If I ever get out of school, I’m going to get one.” Well, she did, and she did. Now Jetta drives her ’55 black beauty with a gray canvas top (“It used to be black, but it faded”) to Doctors Hospital, where she works, and to other safe places. Dangerous excursions, like the grocery store, call for her 73 Volkswagen.

Goolsby, a native Dallasite, saysthat her co-workers at the hospitaldidn’t believe she would really buy theT-bird. “After I did,” she says-rathermeekly for a woman of realized destiny-“it looked a lot better sittingthere in the parking lot than all ofthose doctors’ Porsches and Mercedeses.”