Nine Car Lives

By Varol McKars

Varol McKars (a.k.a. Varol Karslioglu) is a car buff, an auto writer and a model car collector. He graduated from the Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Varol chose a career in finance and worked as auditor, financial analyst and financial controller in Turkey, Germany and Canada. Varols emotional connection with the automobile started in his early childhood. His father was one of the first dolmush drivers in Turkey. (A dolmush is a form of public taxi. The first vehicles used as dolmush in Turkey were American cars from the 1940s.)

His short story; The American Dolmush, inspired by his fathers 1955 De Soto, won the first prize in the short story contest of Ankara Library, a Turkish-Canadian Cultural Association in Toronto, in 2010.While pursuing his career, Varol always maintained his connection to the world of automobiles. He has been writing about cars and the auto industry since the 1990s. He visited major automobile museums in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and the United Kingdom to follow the trails and uncover the secrets of the history of the automobile. Varol is the Weekly Columnist and North American Reporter of Otohaber (www.otohaber.com.tr), Turkeys oldest weekly car magazine. He volunteered as the editor of Telve, (http://telve.turkishcanada.org) a community magazine in Canada and also writes in for some websites and blogs.

Varol has been collecting model cars from all over the world since 1972. To share his inspiration for model cars Varol founded Diecast Model Car Collection, a blog website dedicated to the fans of model and also real cars (http://DiecastModelCarCollection.com).

Varol lives in Mississauga, Ontario with his family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465380371

Varol McKars

Varol McKars (a.k.a. Varol Karslioglu) is a car buff, an auto writer and a model car collector. He graduated from the Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Varol chose a career in finance and worked as auditor, financial analyst and financial controller in Turkey, Germany and Canada. Varol’s emotional connection with the automobile started in his early childhood. His father was one of the first dolmush drivers in Turkey. (A dolmush is a form of public taxi. The first vehicles used as dolmush in Turkey were American cars from the 1940’s.) His short story; “The American Dolmush”, inspired by his father’s 1955 De Soto, won the first prize in the short story contest of Ankara Library, a Turkish-Canadian Cultural Association in Toronto, in 2010.While pursuing his career, Varol always maintained his connection to the world of automobiles. He has been writing about cars and the auto industry since the 1990’s. He visited major automobile museums in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and the United Kingdom to follow the trails and uncover the secrets of the history of the automobile. Varol is the Weekly Columnist and North American Reporter of Otohaber (www.otohaber.com.tr), Turkey’s oldest weekly car magazine. He volunteered as the editor of Telve, (http://telve.turkishcanada.org) a community magazine in Canada and also writes in for some websites and blogs. Varol has been collecting model cars from all over the world since 1972. To share his inspiration for model cars Varol founded Diecast Model Car Collection, a blog website dedicated to the fans of model and also real cars (http://DiecastModelCarCollection.com). Varol lives in Mississauga, Ontario with his family.

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Copyright © 2011 by Varol McKars.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011918511

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-8036-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-8035-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-8037-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

105288

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my loving wife Mel who encouraged me to write and publish my stories and to my dear friend Bruce Hilliard who worked so hard and dealt with the finer details to perfectly edit my book.

NINE CAR LIVES

The automobile is one of the most important technological products human beings created and developed. The automobile shaped the world for about the last 125 years and our relationship with this extraordinary machine will, without any doubt, continue to expand deep into the 21st Century.

Not an insignificant number of us see our cars as more than a mere machine. Some of us even give our cars names like we do our pets. Despite all technological advancements and an increasing number of driving assistance systems standing between man and car, we believe cars have a soul and we have an emotional connection with these things on the four wheels.

Nine Car Lives, also inspired by the author’s real life experiences and interaction with cars, consists of nine short car stories. With these stories stretching from the past to present and into the future Varol McKars invites for a different kind of reading experience you probably have not had before. Discover in the pages of this book how your ordinary driving can turn to something unexpected if not unbelievabe on the road.

The American Dolmush, the first story of this book, won the best short story award in the Literary Contest organized by the Ankara Library of Toronto in 2010.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The American Dolmush

A Document In A Mercedes

Nightmare In Rosso Bianco

Test Drive In The Desert

A Visit To Schauinsland

All Seeing Eyes Of The Lexus

Rendez Vous With The Former Wheels

The Carjacking

Coffee Break

THE AMERICAN DOLMUSH

Face Off: Des Moines, Iowa

The weather was so hot in Des Moines that eggs could easily be fried on the rooftops or the asphalt.

Bora stood on the driveway of the beautiful detached house, in front of its three-car garage near Gray Lake Park. He could not believe his eyes when he saw the car in the second bay with the middle garage door open. It was a 1955 De Soto Diplomat that he knew well from another place and from another continent about a quarter century ago. This was the dolmush or the collective taxi that shuttled for several years between the Northern and Southern parts of the Golden Horn in Istanbul.

He was shocked and amazed, afraid to inch forward and touch the 5,000 pound glass and metal object. Afraid that he would vanish if he touched it. Somehow, he virtually swallowed the last drops of his courage like vitamin pills and took a few steps toward the car. He touched the driver’s door handle. Grasping it, Bora stood for several seconds frozen in time. What if he went further and opened the door? Like a river overflowing its banks, would all of the memories captured in this 55-year old car explode and sweep him away from today to a distant past?

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The 1955 De Soto Diplomat

While he remained physically attached to the car, Bora inspected every detail visible to him. Twenty-four years after his farewell to the De Soto, Bora had progressed toward middle age. The De Soto, on the contrary, had had a reverse aging which reminded him of the story of Benjamin Button. The car looked younger than ever now. The hood ornament, chrome bumpers and chrome side trims were shining and as bright as he had ever seen before. They were all like pieces of a precious jewel. The car was painted in two colors: The roof was a darker green than the body. However, he could not see any traces of the checkered yellow and black stripes which once surrounded the window frames. It was apparent that the stripes had been removed during the comprehensive restoration which had taken place about twenty years ago. Likewise, the taximeter which had been mounted on the right fender, as he remembered when his father had owned the car, had disappeared.

Take your seat behind the steering wheel. Enjoy this moment.

Bora awoke from his deep and vivid memories to the voice of Edwin Brooklands, the owner of the car. Edwin was also very impressed by this extraordinary encounter between man and machine.

With Edwin’s voice, Bora travelled back to 10 months ago in his mind. By then, he had become a member of a US De Soto Fan Club through the internet.

Bora had arrived in Canada 23 years ago, in order to start a new life in another country. Perhaps it was simply the natural outcome of an immigrant’s way of thinking and rationalizing, but after a few years in his new country, Bora had developed a passion to look back to his former life. He had an emotional connection to cars and this De Soto had a special place in his life and in his memories. A couple of years ago, while attending a classic car show in Barry, Ontario, a beautifully refinished De Soto had jolted those memories and its importance to his childhood memories.

This classic car show triggered a desire to know more about classic cars and De Soto cars in particular.

Now, three years later and touching his family’s actual De Soto, he remembered the day when he took his driving exam behind the wheel of this car 30 years ago. Then he turned back and looked at Edwin, who he had contacted a couple of weeks ago and who he had met thanks to his membership in the De Soto Fan Club. The two men had met for the first time in person only minutes ago.

Edwin approached Bora, extending the key to him:

Start the engine. Revive your memories. Start the engine of your dad’s dolmush.

Bora gently opened the unlocked door and sat behind the steering wheel. More correctly, he took his place on the driver’s side of the front bench. As he grasped the big thin steering wheel he visualized his and his father’s fingerprints on it. He remembered his father spreading a large, fabric kerchief over his lap to prevent contact between the steering wheel and his shirt and pants.

He leaned to the right of the steering column to check for the mini shift pictogram which he had drawn and taped many years ago. Not surprisingly, this label had also been removed during the major restoration that the car had undergone.

Bora’s father used to hang a leather coin bag on the headlight switch button above the park brake lever to the left of the steering column. The abrasion marks from the coin bag on the lower edge of the dashboard were also no longer visible.

In a previous age before credit cards, tokens or magnetic tickets, the dolmush drivers in Istanbul needed to keep enough coins to give change to their passengers. And