Classic Cars

This Ford belongs to a house three blocks from ours; I've passed it every morning for a month on my walk to buy the newspapers. Later in the day it's often missing, suggesting the owner has it on the roads.

Every January, seemingly hundreds of classic cars appear around Punta del Este. Corvettes from the 1960s, Mercedes coupes from the 1950s, tiny Fiats and Peugeots, original Jeeps from WII, Morgans, MGBs, old Porsches, really old examples like this Ford, and on and on. I do not know who owns them, but I have a theory. My wife tells me that in the 1930s, before marrying, her father owned one of the handful of Bugattis in Argentina, and that he took it to Punta del Este for the season. He eventally sold the Bugatti (yikes!!). My theory is that many men like her father did not sell their favorite automotive toy, but passed it down in the family, and these cars that show up on the streets every year are these old family treasures, now kept in garages in Punta del Este and brought out each year for a few weeks of pure joy.

I know of at least two classic car dealerships in the area. One, only four blocks from our house, keeps rotating the cars sitting out front. Whether they are buying and selling these cars all the time, or whether these are cars they are maintaining for the owners in the off-season, I don't know. Whatever the full story, one of the little pleasures of Punta del Este is happening upon one of these classics along the side of the road or, more often, tooling along.