Another Carlson car – 1972 Chevrolet Vega

When my wife joined me in LA after her completing her Masters, it was a really big adjustment.  For and East Coast girl, LA in the 70’s was almost impossible to grasp.  She knew how to drive but had never owned a car.  High school in Philadelphia never required driving and city life in Providence, Cambridge and New Haven while she attended college, got her first job and attended graduate school were no different.  Now, living in our penthouse (LOL) in West LA with a great view of  The Santa Monica Freeway and downtown LA in the distant smog, she decided that she needed a car.

We shopped small cars, looked at Toyota’s and Datsun’s and were turned off by the light weight and tinny feel of those early imports.  Finally she selected a snappy looking 1972 Chevy Vega hatchback in silver.  The picture here is not her car but very similar.

Just buying a car was only the beginning of her adjustment to LA, first she had to get up the courage to use the freeways.  LA freeways in the 70’s were very threatening to anybody who didn’t grow up with them.  I had very seldom seen a freeway with more than 3 lanes before but in LA 3 lanes is a bare minimum.  Now, LA is not so unusual but it was common in LA to laugh at visitors who would stop on the on-ramps because they were too intimidated to merge into the speeding traffic.

It took my wife two or three months of driving surface streets before she began using the freeway to get to her job downtown but once she finally took the plunge, she relished the freedom of LA freeways.  In those days, before the oppression of Governor Moonbeam (Jerry Brown) who stopped building freeways, LA freeways were one of the wonders of the world.  You could get anywhere, anytime, fast.  This is no longer possible due to population growth and the demonization of the automobile and LA is becoming more and more unlivable.

My wife loved the Vega and the freedom that car ownership and the LA freeway system gave her.  It served her well with none of the problems which many people attributed to it.  We kept it even after she moved up to a real LA car in 1976 and it became my commuter car after we moved to our first house at the beach.  What did my car-loving wife trade up to in 1976.  I’m afraid you will just have to stay tuned.