With me in it, the scales at Memphis indicate 3,970 pounds and a surprising 48/51 percent front-to-back weight bias. Yup, it really is as big as an ark but you feel like you can see forever out of its wide-screen windshield. Compared to the pinched-A pillar cars of today, the Biscuit’s windshield is virtually panoramic. I can’t touch the passenger side door from my seat because it’s too far away. I used to snap the ash from my Lucky Strike out the wing window of all my early cars. If I still smoked I could do it in the Biscayne.
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Well after dusk the Biscayne slithered into a motel driveway in Morrow and I shut the motor off. I had a bowl of chili, ate grilled chicken and drank double Absolutes with a bunch of olives on a stalk. I didn’t care whether the Biscayne started or not. That wouldn’t happen for several hours.
Thirty degrees cold! The motor cranked right up! Two hours down the Interstate in Tifton, I stopped to take fuel. Shut the motor off. Filled up. Motor started. Pulled into parking stall. Shut car off. Five minutes later I was feeling foolish and tired. Changed out the battery for one Todd bestowed as a parting gift. It was dead flat. Soon, young guns descended. They dug the car. They dug the story. They had jumper cables. Car started, like it didn’t need the extra help. I got the Black Boulder Fear. I didn’t cut the power again until I was in my driveway.
I’m investigating the possible causes, but none of that muted the performance of the car or diluted the thrill of driving it—radio delete, too, boys. The thing sounds sweet. That thing flat sucks up asphalt. A great highway feel and it’s tight, solid, and I’ve recently had eyes opened by some of the chassis tweaks. The 12.1 AGR steering box helps here, too, but the leading edge of the rear wheel fender lips wants to scalp the Goodyears to the bone. Aside from the usual rhetoric, driving the big car almost brings back a ‘60s ambience. Maybe it’s just the musk inside it, that sweet drift of something old, maybe a little damp, which pulls you right back like there was a hook around your neck.
The booty’s boocoo big, but that freakin’ nose is a riot. It sticks out a mile. Man, you look down that landing strip of a hood, not over it. Biscuit’s got a certain gravity. Biscuit’s from a time when cars were actually cars. Its rigidity comes from a perimeter frame, not some damn uni-body, something that only light-duty trucks boast these days. I’m gonna need a right hand side view mirror before long, yeah, and a cam to cancel the directional signals. Torque is supreme. Even the Biscayne’s girth is no match. No need to change up to fifth. Just apply a steady throttle.
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