I Let My Teenager Buy A 50-Year-Old Car On eBay. Maybe I’m Nuts

(Harrison with the Zombie Hunter. All photos: Coco Myers)

Maybe I’m nuts.

How did I end up with a hulking, camouflage-painted, off-road vehicle — the words “Zombie Hunter” emblazoned on its side — sitting in my driveway, a glaring example of bad parental judgment?

The Zombie Hunter, actually a 50-year-old proto-SUV, has no airbags, just one seatbelt, and basically no safety features of any kind.

My boyfriend thought I was out of my mind to let Harrison buy that thing. “I’m going to make sure my son’s first car is safe,” he said, irritating me because the deed was done.

Nevertheless, I am ok with the fact that my 18-year-old is behind the wheel.

(The non-functional, still cool Model T replica Harrison built.)

Harrison, my middle son, was born with the car gene—inherited from his late father.  As a young boy, he watched Formula One races and pored over Auto Week with his dad. By the time he was ten, he knew every car make and model. But he also had something no one else in the family did: a tinkerer’s curiosity, a natural ability to make things with his hands. For him, gawking at cars wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to take them apart, transform them, make them new again.

And so I found myself shopping with Harrison at Home Depot last winter, the cart piled high with plywood and sheets of aluminum—components for a school project to make a full-size replica of a Ford Model T.

(Teen with power tools.)

It was a thrill to watch him create a chassis from scratch, complete with bike tires and headlamps, and then nerve-racking to find him one evening in the driveway, wearing goggles, bent over an electric saw. When had he learned to use that? Was it safe? I pushed away the worry.  I was impressed by his skills and stamina.  For weeks, he worked with a jerry-rigged light late, outside in the dark and cold.

But the Model T was just a shell. Harrison wanted to get under the hood. That summer he got part-time work at a mechanic’s shop specializing in classic cars. He’d hurry  home from his camp counselor job, change into garage garb, and return in the evening, covered in oil.  I liked this new grease-monkey side of him—he seemed so capable.  When my husband died, I’d suddenly become responsible for every house and car decision, each maintenance or repair issue—a steep learning curve for me.  Now I saw Harrison not just as my son, but as an ally, a guy who could fix things and advise me.

(The 1973 MG.)

Yet in many ways, Harrison was a kid, with a kid’s enthusiasm. Last December, he announced that he and his friend, Zach were buying a 1973 MG from Craig’s List (“Only $2000. $1000 each!”), which they planned to restore.

They set about dismantling it in Zach’s garage. When Harrison gleefully told me one day that they’d used a crane to lift the engine out to clean it (forty years of oil had hardened into rubber, he explained), I asked “How do you guys even know what you’re doing?”  He shrugged. “The Internet.”  I pictured them with their laptops out in the garage, insides of the car scattered about them, like surgeons practicing on a cadaver.

It truly was a gut job. They stripped the entire car: floor board, trunk, body seats, windshield, and windows. UPS packages began arriving daily: new radiator, oil cooler, valve covers. When I asked if he really wanted to spend his savings this way, he said, “We’re going to make money when we sell the car this summer.”  What parent wants to squash that kind of entrepreneurial desire?

Then, when he turned 17 (i.e. fully licensed), Harrison stepped up his search for a used car to keep.  Getting him to think like an adult—about safety and costs—was impossible.  Harrison loved cars too much to be sensible.  At first set his sights on cars beyond our budget.  Come on, I’d say. We can’t afford that. Keep looking.

Maybe this is where I could have gotten more involved and set some standards. But Harrison is savvy about automobiles and I trusted his usually good taste. So I was surprised when he flipped open his computer one day to show me pictures of his dream car on eBay.  That? No way. For $6,000? I’d never seen or heard of this vehicle: A 1963 International Scout, a precursor to SUVs.  I’m not going to help you buy this.  It’s ugly and probably not safe.  Harrison kept at me for weeks.  I’m going to paint it and make it safe, he persisted.

I don’t know why I said yes—and agreed to pay for half. Partly, he wore me down. Partly, I wanted to let him have a blast his last summer before leaving for college. Maybe I was simply giving him latitude to follow a passion. I know my late husband, who loved vintage cars, would have balked at a sight-unseen purchase.  But something about this boy and his dreams was irresistible.  I was watching my 18-year-old think big.

And big it was. The day the Scout was delivered, I was shocked by its over-sized, cartoonish presence. When I opened the flimsy passenger door, my heart sank. This was it? A tinny box on wheels? One seat belt and no air bags? No gas gauge. The parking break didn’t work. The windows didn’t roll up.  But Harrison was in heaven. He got the license plates that day, bundled up, and went for a drive. The second time he took the car out, the clutch broke and he had to call to call the shop where he’d worked for a tow.  They fixed a few other things and somehow the car passed inspection.

It’s Harrison’s senior spring now and he’s gearing up for the renovation, planning to turn our tiny garage into a workshop. The scope is ambitious: remove the car’s roof and add a soft top, replace the seats, add seats belts, restore the dash, fix all gauges, build bench seats in the back, and paint it—he’s debating cream or dark green.

Harrison, like most teenagers, wasn’t thinking much about the costs of repairs or the dangers of driving a creaky antique. But he understood that I was giving him reign and appreciated it.  One cold afternoon, the Scout stalled a mile from the house and Harrison called to ask if I could I bring him jumper cables. When I got there, he smiled sheepishly, leaned into my window, and said “Love ya, Ma.”

I smiled back.

Perhaps he won’t get to everything on his punch list, but I’ve learned that he’s not afraid of a challenge.  And while the Scout may not have been a sane choice on my part, I’ve come to believe it was a smart one.

Harrison seems to agree.

“Mom, I know I’m lucky that you let me get a car that may not be an IHS top safety pick of 2015, he told me. “Or any other year for that matter.”