A Car Guy’s View of Nantucket

When we first began coming here over 25 years ago, Nantucket was classic old money that didn’t show off or flaunt. This tradition has been stretched to the breaking point by the influx of new money manifesting itself in hog-like houses and boats, but still largely holds true in the automotive realm. Vehicle-wise, Nantucket is well-suited to the very large and the very small. Large 4wd vehicles are useful for family hauling and beach driving (reaching fishing spots), but downtown Nantucket has densely packed houses and narrow, windy, cobblestone-paved streets. In fact, one of the rental agencies on island offers Minis -- a great vehicle in which to navigate the in-town maze. In contrast, many of the outlying areas of the island have dirt or sand roads with potholes large enough to swallow one of those rented Minis. So this is not a great place to drive a Ferrari or Aston Martin, regardless of whether you can afford one and want to show it off. If the well-to-do own these vehicles, they probably leave them at their other summer place in the Hamptons.

For a long time, you could tell the old money on the island because they drove Jeep Wagoneers with zero rust and a twenty year accumulation of over sand permits on the bumper. These vehicles lived garaged on the island year-round. If they started to rust, they were simply taken to an island body shop and repaired. Nowadays, these vehicles are old enough that they are essentially enthusiast 4wd vehicles – that is, you have to consciously choose to love and continue owning it instead of simply buying a Tahoe. There are also some astonishingly well-preserved old Willis, Broncos, and Land Rovers.

The “cool summer car in the garage” phenomenon extends to non-4wd vehicles as well. There used to be a sizeable population of old Beetles (particularly convertibles) on the island, but I’m seeing fewer of these. There is a red Morgan with a pair of hat boxes that is a summer fixture in town. For many years there was a silver BMW 3.0CS near town but I haven’t seen it in quite a while. Yesterday I saw a beautiful Morris Minor convertible. Once in a while an enormous Kermit green Ford station wagon with faux woody panels makes an appearance.

With the demographics of the island mixed between old money, new money, working-class island residents (yes these still exist) and tourists, you see nearly every imaginable four wheel drive vehicle. But it is interesting to me, as a BMW guy, that I see very few X vehicles (or Porsche Cayennes, for that matter). From my point of view, this makes perfect sense – if you don’t want it to get sandy and smelling of bluefish, don’t take it on the beach.

I used to say that our annual Nantucket vacation was a present to my family, but now that my two older boys are gone, it’s clear that it’s always been a present to myself. A chance to really unwind. Enjoy the still-spectacular still-unspoiled beaches. And fish.

We started coming to Nantucket over 25 years ago, invited down by our friends Ed and Dana whose family had two small houses near Cliff Beach. It was my friend Ed and his dad who introduced me both to fishing (surfcasting) as well as to the practice of using 4wd vehicles to drive over sand to reach the best fishing spots. Back then, beach permits cost next to nothing, you received a gentle warning from a police officer if you didn’t have one, and there were far fewer restrictions regarding which beaches had vehicle access.

I suppose that, if all you had to do was drive from a smooth paved road to a smooth unpaved road to smooth hard-packed sand heading out to the beach, any all wheel drive system would do, including those on sedans and minivans, but if sand is soft and rutted, or if the trail heads over dunes, you really need the combination of high ground clearance, a stout transmission and transfer case, and all-terrain tires that accompanies a sport utility vehicle. I don’t think I would want to drive an E30 BMW 325iX out to Great Point (a six mile-long spit of sand that stretches into the North Atlantic and is home to the best, most consistent bluefishing on the island).

For the first few years, we came down with a rented Ford Explorer (our contribution to the vacation melee). Then, one year, Ed bought a used Jeep Cherokee, drove it down for vacation, then sold it after he returned home. Hmmn, I thought.

That same year, when we were out at Great Point, I had an epiphany. I saw a big, boxy Chevy Suburban. When it stopped, it disgorged nine people and endless amounts of stuff. Beyond the sheer capacity, I admired the truck’s ground clearance. It had a lift kit. Not monster-truck-jacked-up-with 33”-mudders or anything extreme, mind you, just slightly lifted and with slightly oversized tires, giving the truck oodles of ground clearance and a nice beefy stance. I said out loud to no one in particular “that looks like the perfect vehicle.” As the words left my mouth, I realized that the ground on which my automotive world was built had just shifted perceptibly. Oh my god, I thought – I have lust... FOR A TRUCK! Will I ever be able to show my face in BMW circles again? Even if I don’t say anything, does it show? Will people be able to tell? Have I begun walking with more of a swagger?

I should point out that, for many years, Suburbans occupied a unique market segment. They were the only vehicle built on a pickup truck frame, using a fully-enclosed body, that was so long that, when the third seat was deployed, they had as much cargo space as most other SUVs have with their third seat folded down. And, in the mid-80s, SUVs had only begun their ascendancy (which, really, started with the Ford Explorer) as soccer mom vehicles and minivan replacements. There were Jeep Wagoneers and pickup trucks, but there really weren’t other four-door seven-seat (or eight or nine) 4wd vehicles aside from the Suburban.

Now, to the non-automotively-inclined, the idea of going to the trouble to buy an old truck, use it to go on vacation, then sell it, is unfathomable, but it made perfect sense to me. While I could rent an Explorer from the local Ford dealer, I couldn’t rent a Suburban, so if I wanted one I had to buy one. And I certainly wasn’t about to buy a new truck that I didn’t really want; as useful as a big 4wd vehicle is, neither Maire Anne nor I wanted to be driving one year-round. I didn’t want it to occupy the physical space, the financial resource, or the psychic bandwidth except while on vacation. No, this would only work with chunks of money in the two to three thousand dollar range. In my mind, the calculation was simple – renting an Explorer for two weeks cost about $750. All I had to do was buy, use, and sell a Suburban and not lose more than $750 and I’d be ahead of the game.

The next year, when we started renting our own place, we continued the tradition begun by our friends Ed and Dana and invited other family and friends to stay with us. I came down with my first Suburban, a vehicle very similar to the one I’d lusted after – an ‘85, bench seat in the front, third seat in the back (totaling seating for nine), with a slightly raised suspension, that I’d purchased for three grand. The way Suburbans were optioned, most had the “Silverado” package which replaced the front bench seat with buckets, so you lost the seating for nine. Mine was a truck without the Silverado package; it not only had the seating for nine, it also had no carpeting – perfect for a vehicle into which I hoped to throw dead bluefish. Despite the fact that its a/c compressor seized up on the way to vacation, I loved that first ‘Burb. True to the plan, I sold it in the fall for about what I paid for it. I never found another one so perfectly optioned. I began thinking that perhaps I shouldn’t have sold it. But it established the template: Buy it, fix it if necessary, use it, sell it.

One of the fundamental reasons for this strategy was that these older truck-like pre-’92 Suburbans rust like old BMWs, particularly around the back door. And the longer you keep them, the worse the rust gets, so buy-use-sell made perfect sense. If you parked the truck and only used it a month out of the year, eleven months later the rust would be noticeably worse, and you didn’t even get the use out of the vehicle for this period. Plus, most ‘Burbs were equipped with a rear gate like a pickup truck, the hinge attachments to which would rust so badly that it was not unheard of to have the gate fall off. The 'Burbs with the more rust-tolerant “barn doors” were difficult to find.

Over time, it became harder and harder to find these trucks in a condition that made them worth buying and using. One year I was traveling a lot for work and had little time to find a vacation vehicle. With four days remaining before vacation, I saw an ‘87 Suburban advertised five miles from my house. I called and asked two questions: Does the four wheel drive work, and does it have functional air conditioning. Yes and yes, and I bought it on the spot, but the rear gate turned out to be so rusty that every opening was a tempting of the fates. Eventually we took to loading and unloading it through the roll-down glass, which put a bit of a crimp in the “I love it because it swallows endless amounts of stuff” attribute.

This was also the only truck that croaked on me while on vacation. While bouncing across a sand road, it simply and suddenly died. I couldn’t get it running, and had to have it towed to a dealer. On Nantucket. I expected screw-the-tourist horror at the bill, but was stunned to find they’d only charged me $178 to diagnose and repair a wiring harness that had had the insulation rubbed off and grounded itself against the intake manifold. I literally hugged the service rep. When we got back, I was glad to shepherd this ‘Burb to its next owner.

The next year, I found a rust-free high-mileage ‘93 Suburban (the first year of the more trim, less truck-like shape) for $2500. Rather than sell it after vacation, this one turned into the keeper ‘Burb; I had it for seven years. One year it ate its transfer case while on island, but I was able to limp it home, though the occasional crunching sounds it made were the stuff of legend. When I got it home and dropped the transfer case and pulled off the cover, I found not only pieces of teeth, not only whole teeth, but big chunks of gears. It was amazing it still drove at all.

Other than the transfer case episode, the keeper ‘Burb proved very reliable, was quite faithful, and was part of the furniture for many years. My kids christened it “Sandy” since every year it picked up another twenty pounds of Nantucket sand (I only used it on vacation, so vacuuming it seemed pointless).

Sandy’s dark secret was that it had previously been a farm vehicle, and there was some organic mammalian demon smell I never could exorcize. Although I used this vehicle as a vacation truck for seven years, I still had no desire to drive it the other eleven months of the year, so it would sit parked and uninsured in my driveway. I’d try open it up and start it regularly, but over the winter it would sit closed-up and the smell would flourish. My kids noticed with glee that there was material growing in the rug that seemed to be a missing link between mold and grass. In the summer I’d soak every porous surface with Febreze, which would knock the smell back to tolerable levels. The last year I owned it, I ripped the rug completely out and scrubbed every metal floor surface with bleach, but the smell still permeated the seats and headliner.

Along with the ‘Burbs came a retinue of cargo and rack configurations. Initially all the arts and crafts and model rocket boxes were put inside the car, but as time went on and the kids got older, the kids and Maire Anne and I began enjoying boogie boarding, and the boards and beach chairs began occupying a fair amount of space. I bought one of those cheapie Sears X-Cargo (yes, the punch line to the bad French joke about snails) strap-on rooftop carriers to hold the boards and chairs.

Then, one year I took up wind surfing. To fit both the carrier and the windsurfer on the roof, I mounted two 2x4s crosswise and put the cargo carrier off-center. As we began to enjoy cycling, I first tried squeezing bikes inside, then strapping bikes to the roof, then trying one of those bike racks that hooked around the rear hatch and stood off the rear window glass. Finally I bought a serious rack that mounted in the trailer hitch and hosted five bikes. When the two older boys took up surfing, driving the ‘Burb down the road with the X-Cargo carrier, a surfboard, a windsurfer, a Coleman grill, and tiki torches strapped to the roof and five bikes cantilevered from the trailer hitch was quite a spectacle. Waiting in line for the Nantucket ferry, we elicited no small amount of stares. We joked that clearly we had more stuff than anyone else, and therefore must be having more fun (we were).

In the larger sense, the purchase of what turned out to be five pre-’92 (truck-like) and one ‘93 (SUV-like) Suburbans occurred against the backdrop of the ascendancy of the SUV-as-soccer-mom vehicle. Nearly every SUV sprouted jump seats or a bench seat so they could claim seating for seven and entry into the minivan replacement club. In most of these, though, the third seat was practically right up against the rear hatch, so those extra seats came at the cost of cargo space. And even with the seats folded up, they were not exactly out of the way – to fully maximize cargo space you needed to remove them completely. Over time, innovative fold-down seating where the seats vanish into the floor became the norm (SUVs can easily get away with this because their high ground clearance eliminates the expectation of a low floor; it’s much more challenging in a minivan or station wagon).

Now, the inexorable trend in the automotive world is that vehicles get bigger since each model-year brings more legroom. So much so that there is a dynamic called “segment drift.” You know what this is when you look at the Honda Civic. Once a sub-compact, the Civic is now essentially a mid-sized car. Honda had to introduce a new model (the Fit) to be what the Civic used to be. And after only one generation, the redesigned Fit has more legroom than the old one and has lost its tidy trim proportions. With the combination of increased passenger seating and segment drift, SUVs grew to gargantuan proportions. In 2000 Ford pulled out the ultimate weapon – the Excursion, 7200lb 19’ vehicle – nearly a foot longer than the already enormous Suburban. It was the high water mark, and apparently more than the market wanted. It sold poorly. Ford discontinued it after just five years.

My older two boys are gone from both the house and family vacation so I no longer needed room for five passengers and all the stuff for the drive down. However, once down here, we meet up with my brother-in-law and his family, so I still do need the seating for seven. So last year I sold the keeper ‘Burb and bought the ’93 Toyota Land Cruiser. There’s a lot to like about the TLC – it’s a true off-road vehicle and is built like a freaking tank – but, like most things that are not a Suburban, there’s only enough room behind the third seat for perhaps a bag of groceries. I’ve ameliorated this shortage of storage space by installing a large Daktari-style roof rack and a “back porch” tray that mounts in the trailer hitch onto which I can ratchet-strap the coolers and the portable grill.

Though the Land Cruiser is a more nimble vehicle than the Suburban, I still don’t drive it year-round. Yes, the drive-through-anything vehicle stays parked during the winter. This has less to do with “not wanting to drive a truck” and more to do with simple fuel economy. The TLC may be trimmer, but it is still a six thousand pound vehicle with all-time all wheel drive and a 4.5 liter in-line six with a primitive digital engine management system, and what that bought you in 1993 was… eleven miles per gallon. As I wrote in a recent Roundel article, I have no moral or ethical issue with driving a vehicle that gets eleven miles per gallon, but it should have prancing horses on its hood and leave shrieking acrid plumes of tire smoke in its wake.

But if the original goal was simply not to lose more than $750 per vehicle per vacation (at which I succeeded in spades), the unintended consequence was that part of me became a truck guy. I’ll still sometimes see some old-school ‘Burb or Land Cruiser or Land Rover with rods strapped to the roof and think “nice truck.” Cars are objects d’art, but they are also, simply, tools. The finely-tuned all wheel drive offerings by BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Porsche hold no appeal for me whatsoever. As I said earlier, if you don’t want it to get sandy and smelling of bluefish, don’t take it on the beach.

Both the Suburbans and the TLC worked great for me for as family stuff haulers and over-sand fishing vehicles. And the fishing vehicle thing is clearly a dynamic with many men, not just me. I screwed eye bolts into my rooftop 2x4s to hold fishing rods in place with bungies, but the trick setup is to use the dedicated rod holders (like ski clamps) that hold rods right to the Thule racks. Whatever the vehicle and setup, I have to smile when I see guys with rods strapped to the roof pull onto the beach, take them down, and start fishing. Whether, like me, they do this only once a year while on vacation, or whether it’s a year-round thing, it’s very satisfying to aspire to, then own, then use a vehicle in this fashion.

Although the number of Nantucket beaches you can drive onto has been regulated down to a small number, and the cost of the over-sand permit has gone through the roof (a hundred bucks for the town beaches and $140 for Great Point), as Hemingway said about duck hunting, some things are worth whatever you have to pay for them.