“Shrieking with hilarity and wheelspin, they left—Fast. B.O. sprinted puffing to his cruiser, leapt in and hit the starter, siren and red light all at once. With a wild squeal of rubber, the cruiser shot off after the Allard. That’s when I noticed the chain coiled up under the police car. One end was wrapped securely around a fire plug. The other end seemed to be attached to something underneath the cruiser. There was, oh, maybe 100 feet of it. We watched fascinated as the cruiser picked up speed and the coil grew smaller…and smaller…”  —Dick O’Kane

The O’Kane ouevre

Reader Mark Jones writes of my tribute to Don Vorderman and Automobile Quarterly:

You mention a story by Dick O’Kane and an Allard J2X named “Grendel.” In my youth I enjoyed O’Kane’s stories of the Thunder Beetle, Peter the Fisherman’s Engineering Thesis, the Goat circling the disabled VW van. I can still just see the Land Rover inching the squealing Alfa into traffic. My question is: who was Dick O’Kane, and what became of him?

(Glory, Mark, I can only imagine what O’Kane must have written about the Goat, the Rover and the Alfa…)

I wish I had half the talent of John Richard “Dick” O’Kane (1936-2019), a unique wit and a gentle man, with a whimsical attitude toward cars. I remember his best-seller, How to Repair Your Foreign Car: A Guide for the Beginner, Your Wife, and the Mechanically Inept. Dick was neither the famous Navy admiral nor the Long Island labor leader by the same name. But like them, he was in a class by himself.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Dick was raised there and in Providence, Rhode Island. By the 1960s he was winning awards for TV and print copywriting. His repair book was gleaned from his travels in Europe and North Africa. Driving their VW camper, Dick and his wife Jennifer (Jeffi) observed those lands with wry wit. His later books were The Making of an Aircraft Mechanic (1970), Repairing the Inscrutable Toyota (1974), Most Miles Per Gallon (1975), and Simple Auto Repair (1976).

Settling down

His Arkansas memorial tells us of Dick’s later life:

Tired of traveling, Dick and Jeffi settled in northwest Arkansas in 1973, creating O’Kane Studios. It produces extraordinarily beautiful custom stained glass installations for homes and businesses. A visual artist, Dick always sought new possibilities. He invented unique optical lens mosaics combined with stained glass, watch crystals, bevels, jewels—anything glass—creating three-dimensionality and movement in his works, a startling beautiful innovation. He also invented soldering techniques which have since been adopted by stained glass artists today.

Dick was brilliantly funny, a natural storyteller. Quotes from his first book include… “If you own or drive a foreign car you need this book. In fact you need two copies—one to read by the fireside, the other to amuse you by the roadside.” One chapter was headed: “Why, When Britannia Rules the Waves, Will Her Cars Not Go Through a Puddle?”

[I owned just such a car, “Hilda, the Friendly Hillman.” Reliable as Big Ben, but if you splashed through a puddle deeper than half an inch, the little Minx convertible stopped dead. You had to pop the bonnet and dry off the inside of the distributor cap.]

O’Kane and the English

Like many of us, Dick was besotted by English cars. Not always by their running—when they were running. (“I’d rather be driving my Jaguar, but it’s in the shop.”) No—it is their very old world essence, the leather and walnut, the way the rain beads on the bonnet, that causes us to get bees in our bonnets, and buy and drive and fix the things.

Dick wrote two stories for Automobile Quarterly. One was that bizarre tale of Grendel, the Allard from Hell (Summer, 1970). The other was “Bright Wheels Leaping” (Summer, 1969), about his love affair with a Mark IV Jaguar. Why Mark IV, and not its real name, “1948 Jaguar 3.5 Liter Drophead Coupe”? “Mark IV is easier to say,” Dick explained. But why this car out of all cars?

It was classically pretty—huge Lucas P.100 headlamps, sweeping fenders. I didn’t care much for the sedan. I often was struck with the feeling that the designer got to the back of the car and ran out of patience. Ahh, but that drophead. I think it was the landau bars that made the car truly pretty. They were working ones, too, part of a delightfully baroque top system. The top wasn’t exactly hard to put up and down. Involved would be a better word.

Behind the wheel was pure Edwardian Glitz. Everywhere was walnut, leather and wool. The dashboard was Power, Glory and Excess in all things. There were dials and knobs and switches and cranks. You could do everything from increasing idle speed 25 rpm to winding the windshield out to the horizontal if this pleased you. A man getting behind the wheel of a Mark IV for the first time is lost.

Frustrated lovers

We all know those feelings if we’ve owned English classics. Dick knew the penalties, too. One was “The Adventure of Operating.” Dick explained:

I say “operating,” because that’s what you do to a Mark IV. And operating encompasses more than mere driving…. Oddly, that Mark IV was the only Jag I’ve ever had that laughed into the teeth of a New England winter. It fired up with the first turn of the starter.

The top was reasonably weather-tight, and cold was no problem if you could get the heater to work. This was an involved system of ducts, flaps, knobs, switches, lights and faucets, all rather optimistically labeled AIR CONDITIONING. When you turned it on you would be rewarded with a big green light that said ON, and a little fixture designed for the function would drop antifreeze on your right shoe. The way you fix it is to rip the whole system out and replace it with a ’38 Buick heater.

Ah, the memories…

The Mark IV owners manual was a special experience. Dick called it “Monument to the Quaint Assumption…. It assumed you had all sorts of peculiar doodads lying around.”

The section on brake adjustment begins: “Obtain a steel disc having a circumference of 6.749 inches and being .388 inches in thickness, with a .435-inch square opening offset one-half inch from the centre of the disc…”

Of course, as Dick writes, the day always comes when car and driver must part:

One afternoon the Mark IV owner slips into a nimble, quick little roadster to rediscover the joy of driving a machine that doesn’t argue with him. Sadly, he’ll realize that his Mark IV just isn’t what he has in mind. He’ll sell it—an unhappy day. Right to the end that lovely old car will still be trying its hopeless best.

It will appeal immediately to someone else. I had no trouble getting rid of mine. I swapped with a dealer for a nice Jag roadster and a serviceable Austin sedan, even deal, no cash. Then the dealer turned around and convinced some poor, classic-mad wretch that the Mark IV had been specially built for King Farouk and was worth $4200. [Those were the days.]

* * *

“Dick O’Kane was a man of wisdom, and great kindness,” his memorial reads. “He was an iconoclast, living life as he saw fit, not as others would have him live. He is survived by his wife, Jennifer, his sons Charles and Benjamin, five grandchildren, his beautiful stained glass works, and many wonderful stories.” Rest in peace, Dick. Thanks for the memories.

Further reading: the artists

Dean’s Garage, “Stan Mott’s Autobiography,” 2022.

D.D. Degg, “Stan Mott RIP,” 2022.

Dale Weaver Totten’s Facebook page (maintained by his daughter Tabitha)

”Don Vorderman: The Best Editor I Ever Had” (including more on Grendel, the Allard from Hell)

“Automobile Quarterly: The Memories,” 2021.

* * *

“Writers rarely talk about writing among each other. It’s a very personal thing, and it’s almost always hard to do well, none of which is too conducive to cheery cocktail chitchat. Most of us would rather visit a dentist than face up to the task of beginning the next piece, though it’s not quite so awful once the commitment is made and the thing is under way.” —Don Vorderman, 1977

My dear friend Don wrote that about the English motoring writer Dennis May, but he was also describing himself. He didn’t write spontaneously, but when he did, his words sang. Vorderman’s years of prominence—Editor, Automobile Quarterly, 1968-74; Auto Editor, Town & Country, 1980s—were brief and under-appreciated. His work was as far from the falls-easily-to-hand school of motor writing as one could imagine. His depth of knowledge made great cars come alive. We saw ourselves crouched low over their steering wheels, like Don’s hero, Simon Templar, “the seat pressing forcefully into his back under the urge of the Hirondel’s terrific power….”

Vorderman and Charteris

Yes, the “Hirondel”! Only Don, who as a boy read “Saint” novels with a flashlight under his blankets, could have conjured up Simon Templar’s great silver beast from the books of Leslie Charteris. Wisely, Charteris never described the Hirondel in detail. He left it to our imaginations. Each of us visualized in our mind’s eyes the ultimate sports car.

In 1973, Don asked five of the world’s leading auto artists to portray the Hirondel as they saw it, assigning each a few lines by Leslie Charteris for inspiration. In The Last Hero, The Saint drives to rescue his lady friend Patricia Holm, held prisoner outside London by the Ungodly.

“Snarling silver fiend…”

Dale Weaver Totten got right into the spirit of the thing:

“If this had been a superstitious age, those who saw it would have crossed themselves and sworn that it was no car at all they saw that night, but a snarling silver fiend that roared through London on the wings of an unearthly wind…”

“Ridiculous, creeping glowworms…”

The final image focused on a coastal road outside London. Here the great Walter Gotschke produced a masterpiece of contrived motion. Knowing Walter’s style, Don gave him exactly the right Charteris passage:

Again and again in the dark, the Hirondel swooped up behind ridiculous, creeping glowworms, sniffed at their red tails, snorted derisively, swept past with a deep-throated blare. No car in England could have held the lead of the Hirondel that night.

About Don

Derwood Lorrimer Michael Vorderman was born in Texas, though everybody thought he was South African. I rather think he pictured himself as Simon Templar come to life. He was a sharp dresser, a friend recalls: “Don spent all his money on whisky, Burberry overcoats, silk pocket squares and cravats. Such a dandy.”

He once visited us in rural New Hampshire driving a yellow Ferrari, wearing tweeds and wowing locals. His checkered past included romances with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gina Lollobrigida and, reportedly, Connie Francis. At forty Vorderman still made ladies swoon, and AQ’s brilliant managing editor Beverly Rae Kimes married him. Alas Don rapidly burned bridges, including that one.

With Vorderman at Automobile Quarterly

Fortune brought me to AQ during a golden age for the hardbound “Magazine of Motoring”: the reign of Don Vorderman and Beverly Rae Kimes. You couldn’t buy that education in a university. Don taught me things I never forgot. On word-count: “A bore is someone who tells everything.” On accepting edits: “The surest sign of an amateur is sensitivity about his prose.”  About bylines: “One per issue. No over-indulging. If you write a second article, use a pen name.” (Don’s was “Michael Lorrimer.” He hated “Derwood.” Wouldn’t you?)

He taught me manners. To the throwaway greeting, “How are you?” Don would reply, “I’m fine, thank-you. I hope you are”—and wait for an answer. He didn’t tolerate fools: “Putzes are everywhere, like diarrhea.” He was impatient with the sharks and blowhards of our world. Yet he introduced me, a rank amateur, to the elite of automobilia, from Phil Hill to Dutch Darrin to René Dreyfus.

And what a photographer he was—with an 8×10-inch view camera, a relic nowadays. Ken Drasser, then our art director, writes: “I remember his transparencies. The pictures were stunning. We christened him ‘Ol’ Magic Fingers.’ He was so talented.”

Editors exist to make writers better, and Don was the best editor one could have. He fired me once (I deserved it), but reconsidered when he liked my next piece, on Triumph. In it I’d written that the Luftwaffe “did its number” on Coventry. He blue-lined that and substituted “wrought terrible destruction”—sensitive and precise. We shared miseries over a certain publisher, and I declared I’d wear a red tie the day he died. “Don’t say that,” Don scolded. “Life is too short to carry grudges.” It was just like him. The day came, and I refrained.

The Allard named “Grendel”

Above all stood his fantastic imagination. Who else would precede a road test of the fearsome Allard J2X with a fantasy by Dick O’Kane about a fictitious Allard named “Grendel,” owned by twin mountains of flesh, the Boslovsky Brothers?

Don hired the zany genius Stan Mott to illustrate Stanley: “Boslavsky Major.” (Stanley’s brother Nick was “Boslavsky Minor.” Nick was shorter—only six-foot-seven.)

Mott duly portrayed Boslavsky Major, stoned out of his mind, wearing nothing but hair and beads, his pinwheel eyes fixed on Grendel. (“I hoped he was having a good trip.” wrote Dick. “Stanley on a bad trip was like a malevolent seven-foot owl….)

“Dazedly Stan approached the Allard…. His pinwheel eyes began to fill with tears. Then he was wrapping his arms around her hideous pink nose and sobbing, ‘Mother.'”

Don, of course, caught and used O’Kane’s references to Beowulf. His J2X road test began: “And now alone I shall settle affairs with Grendel, the monster, the demon.”

Farewell, Don

Though we never saw each other after exchanging a few visits in the 1980s, we had a warm email friendship. When I sent him my articles in The Automobile, he always had an interesting smidgen to add. Of “Churchill’s Motorcars” (August 2016) he wrote: “What a delicious idea! You mentioned the death of Churchill’s daughter Marigold. It brought to mind Bentley Boy Tim Birkin, passing from the same condition while not a mile away, Fleming had already developed the early versions of penicillin.” Of Dutch Darrin (May 2017): “Your touch is just right—authoritative but friendly. I still think that 1938 Phantom II town car he built for Countess di Frasso is one of the prettiest cars I have ever seen.”

And then the emails stopped. I wrote him, but my letter was returned. Too bad, because I had written how much he meant to me.

This remembrance began with Don’s piece about Dennis May, and I’ve often quoted his final paragraph:

There’s nothing to be said when a friend dies, even among people whose trade is words. There’s just an empty hole where there was once someone you loved. And all the talk in the world won’t change that. Everyone who knew him well misses him. And that’s one crowd I’m proud to be a member of.

Vordermania: Don on Cars

Alfa Romeo: “Sure, they’re building nice cars today, but before the Second World War they were magnificent. Every blessed one of them.”

Allard J2X: “The first thing you notice is the acceleration. This is also the second and the third thing….”

Bugatti: “They were bitter rivals, but you have to admit that for every year when Bugatti was building a good car, Alfa was building a great one.”

Cadillac Eldorado: “It’s a highly visible declaration of what the owner wants you to think of him. But it’s a free country, and everybody has the right to make a fool of himself.”

Hudson: “I tried to keep up appearances for my MG’s sake, but soon my friend’s Hornet and I started to meet secretly. She could do everything my TC could, only ten times better.”

Jaguar: “In 1961 the new E-type was the most exciting car in the world. Sir William Lyons was one in a thousand.”

Lincoln Continental: “You know why you want one: because it’s big and expensive and everybody knows it. Also, the instruments are down by your knees where you won’t have to look at them.”

Lotus Elite: “Colin Chapman’s come a long way from the backyard welding torch.”

Mercer Raceabout: “Why not be philosophical about it, and consider it an honor to be passed by such a car?”

Messerschmitt: “Is das nicht einen Kabinenroller? Ja das icht ein Kabinenroller!”

Packard: “The 1947 Custom Super Clipper is my idea of the perfect Packard. Wonderfully smooth big-ass straight eight and that graceful, swoopy shape. Doesn’t matter what color—they’re all gorgeous.”

Pontiac Grand Am: “Get one quick, before they change it.”

Rolls-Royce: “They haven’t been making RRs since the Silver Wraith…. They must sense the distress of we impatient, disappointed lovers. But even an unrequited lover has his limits.”

Studebaker, 1953 Starliner: “You are not old enough to have experienced the impact it had on everybody who was into cars. How gorgeous! How un-American!”

Dick O’Kane: A Memory

The Grendel-Allard story was written by the late Dick O’Kane, another hero of my youth, whose joyful, whimsical pieces about cars decorated the pages of Road & Track and Automobile Quarterly. A short note about Dick is posted here.

Further reading: the artists

Dean’s Garage, “Stan Mott’s Autobiography,” 2022.

D.D. Degg, “Stan Mott RIP,” 2022.

Dale Weaver Totten’s Facebook page (maintained by his daughter Tabitha)

“Automobile Quarterly: The Memories,” 2021.