AP   Tell us about yourself and when you became interested in cars?

As a kid in the 1950's, I don't remember having been very interested in cars, except for my Dinky Toys race cars. But I often went to visit my cousins who lived near a NATO base, and here, hidden in the woods like Snow White and the dwarfs' cabin, was an American village. Kids riding their Whizzers, their fathers cars parked in the driveways… It made a big impression on me.

Then my folks had a friend who only drove American cars. Whenever he bought a new one, he would come to our place and take us kids for a ride, sometimes in our pajamas if it was late. That's how I got that bad case of V8-mania. Later, I remember reading 'On the road' and daydreaming of doing the same, crossing the USA in an old Chevrolet (I hadn't paid attention to the fact that, in the novel, they ride in a Hudson and not so old. I didn't know what a Hudson was).

AP   What was your first car?

A given 1963 Citroën 2CV. At that time, the early 1970's, it was the first car of most young French guys. It was blue with one white front door, after the original front door had jumped open while I was going down a very narrow road between two stone walls (should I say fences?) (these cars had suicide doors). I drove on and the door remained on the road. Later, someone also gave me one of those dull Renault 4, who eventually, while parked in the street, got destroyed by a drunk driver on New Year's eve. Good riddance. After that I walked or took the train, bus or subway.

AP   What is your daily driver?

A 2006 Mini Cooper.

AP   What classic or special cars do you currently have?

None. I sold them all 8 or 9 years ago. So I can only tell you about those I had. It started in 1984 with a 1954 Ford Customline, which I sold to buy a blue 1954 Mercury Monterey hardtop. Later I added a 1959 Edsel Ranger hardtop coupe, and a 1949 Oldsmobile 88 convertible. The first two cars were daily drivers to me, I had no modern car until 1997. When we were living in Paris, where you don't need a car except for fleeing the city, I didn't put too many miles into them. In 1991 we left for Normandy and we bought a 1968 Austin Mini Countryman woodie for my wife, but I still used the Mercury a lot. I was crazy about that Merc.

'54 Mercury

The beloved Edsel

Ray's Oldsmobile

Mrs Ray's Mini

AP   What made you choose to buy them?

I am an illustrator and I got tired of drawing those cars from photographs. I had to see them move, to feel what it was like inside … Trough a friend of in the same line of work, who had a '49 Ford and a beautiful '49 Olds 98 sedanet, I got in touch with some collectors. My first buy, the '54 Ford, was clean, but not a looker. I had not enough to buy anything fancier, and I just couldn't wait. A week after I had bought it, I packed the whole family inside –including a one month old baby, all the luggage, plus a bike, at ease in the trunk and off we went for summer vacation. On the road, family way. Since then I've been a Ford man. I don't think I would ever have bought a Chevy.

Things are strange. To me, cars are a thing of the past. They're responsible for much of the wrong we did to this planet and its inhabitants. I think they won't last, at least as we know them. And yet I have loved them, and still do, when they were the biggest, most unreasonable and deadliest beasts. American cars were pop art on wheels.

AP   Have you ever just missed buying a particular car, and lived to regret it?

A friend of mine was selling at the same time the 1954 Monterey and a 1958 Turnpike Cruiser, with the breezeway roll-down rear window. I had to make a choice, because I also loved those late fifties land yachts. But I made up for that later with the Edsel.

That guy himself never had the same problem. He wasn't rich, but he bought ALL the cars he liked. He just drove them for a few weeks or months, then sold them at a profit. He never missed buying a car.

AP   What would be your dream car?

I never could make up my mind between a 1954 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Coupe and a 1952 or 53 Hudson Hornet Club Coupe.

Besides that, things being what they are now, a horse. I've always regretted not to be an accomplished horseman since a three hour ride (and a sore butt who lasted a week) in the Canyon de Chelly. But of course, although economical, horse riding is of little interest outside the Canyon de Chelly or places like that.

AP   Which car do you regret having parted company with?

All of them, except the Renault 4. But mostly my Edsel. The dashboard was fantastic. I loved the feeling you had sitting in that car. A time machine, as Kevin Costner says in 'A Perfect World'.

The Edsel and the Olds needed some work, the two other being mostly unrestored but in very good condition. You could buy them, turn the key and just drive off. The Mercury was all original except for the paint on the roof. 55 000 miles, original upholstery, carpet and twin exhaust.

The Olds was a model 76 in fact, but one of the first owners had fitted a 303 V8 inside. Since then it had spent a winter without antifreeze. Result: a cracked block. I found another correct 303 block and rebuilt the engine entirely, found a hood ornament and all the 88 missing parts and emblems (they were not fitted yet at the time the picture was taken). I brought the car back from the garage to my place, 60 miles on the freeway. The backlight wouldn't zip, the speedo didn't work, neither did the wipers, and it rained like hell, but I had Rain-X on the windshield. When we got home, I asked the friend who followed me in a modern car (that same Mercury selling guy) at what speed we had made it. "Oh, 75-80 mph he said". I'd have said 60. This Rocket 88 was no legend. I still had to have the power top rebuilt but got short on money.

The Edsel was a driver, but some work had to be done on the power brakes and power steering. I only drove it a few times between the garage and an underground parking lot where I rented some spaces, once without brakes at all but the emergency brake (fortunately operated by a pedal on these cars). Then I moved to the country and left it in that parking lot, waiting for some parts to arrive. I built a luxurious four car garage, each car having its own set of doors, but soon I got into this money shortage and stopped paying the Edsel's parking space in Paris. It stayed there for five years, I couldn't take it off, the bill was too high. Eventually I found a buyer and managed to pay only six months of rent. A hobo slept had slept in the car but there wasn't too much damage. The buyer brought a battery and the car just started and went up the ramp on its own power. That was a relief. I was feeling so bad for the car, like an abandoned child. I don't even have a picture of it.

AP   What is your favorite drive in your classic or special car?

What was, in my case. Driving to the super-supermarket. Parking among tiny French four bangers, in a car who, goddammit, was designed in the midst of the consumerism era. American cars of that period and supermarkets just go together. So driving to the supermarket was like going to church, performing a religious ceremony.

AP   How much work on your car(s) do you carry out yourself?

Some minor repair. I even had a pit dug in the garage, but I was never too good. But the mechanic who did all our cars, my friend and I, often allowed me to help him. It lowered the bills and I learned a lot.

AP   What do you carry with you when you go out in your car(s)?

I, nothing special, but my wife has developed a tendency to accumulate survival stuff, like a survival blanket, a swiss army knife, a cell phone and a torch lamp. I think this is going to get worse in the next years. We like to imagine that we could get caught in a flood, an earthquake, a tribal war or a buffalo stampede, that kind of things.

AP   Do you get involved in the club scene, and why?

I did a little and I went to a few gatherings but as I said I would rather use my cars for ordinary stuff like visiting friends, driving my children to school…

AP   Do you take an interest in motor sport, and if so where is your favorite venue(s)/club meeting(s)?

I watch Nascar on TV sometimes when I can't sleep, and I still like it but I prefer the legend, the dirt tracks and the true stock cars. When I had my cars, I went every year to the "Coupes de l'Age d'Or" on the Monthlery circuit. Great show, except that the guys driving expensive Ferraris had a right foot like a feather, they were too scared to wreck their pride and joy. When there was a Corvette or Cobra it would beat the hell of the Ferraris. The really exciting drivers in the old car races are the British. When these guys race, man, they do race.

AP   What is your worst memory involving a car?

That Ford had a problem. If the temperature got too high, she could stall and there was no way to restart it until the engine cooled off. Vapor lock or something. I eventually solved it by finding the right spark plugs, Champion H10, in a old shop.

In the meantime I got stuck several times in some very uncomfortable places. The worst was down in a tunnel in the boulevard that circles Paris. It's four lanes, two in each direction separated by columns, and the car stopped right there in the dark with my wife and the baby (three months old then) inside. Of course no warning lights on these cars. I had to step out, open the hood, both as a signal of the inconvenience we were experiencing at the moment and to bring a little fresh air to the carb. Naturally, there was a heavy traffic, but not heavy enough to make the Parisians slow under 50 mph. After five minutes of torture, the Ford agreed to start and get us out of the damn tunnel as if nothing had happened.

AP   What is your funniest memory involving a car?

The same, wouldn't you say?

AP   What is your most enjoyable moment involving a car?

How do you want me to choose only one? If I am allowed to have three, I'll say:

Crossing Ireland with my wife and kids in a battered rented Opel in 1987 (most rental cars still seemed battered in Ireland in 1987. That's one of the many reasons why I love Ireland). Crossing Ireland westward, Connemara bound. It felt like crossing a continent (the fact that Ireland is a continent in itself is one of my other reasons). And all the time thinking "If only I could do that in my Mercury".

Or, in that Mercury, driving in a long straight at dusk on a dark forest road, with all windows down - 'it's a hardtop after all. Fresh air rushing in, and the rumble of the tires on the asphalt.

And last, the long, long climb to Beartooth Pass, Montana, in a '97 T-Bird. It's like the moon up there. Awesome.

AP   Best road food?

Being French, I take food too seriously, as you may guess, to eat in my car if that is what you mean. I also don't like to find sauce or crumbs on the seats afterwards. Yet, when you spend an hour in a supermarket as I did and it gets past lunchtime, your begin to starve and buy something to eat NOW. Once we found wraps. Quite exotic in these areas. Wraps! Best road food, even with sauce on the seats.

AP   How would you define a ‘classic’?

I give the same definition as this fellow Karn Utz. See his interview in this board.

AP   What in your opinion, is the worst car regarded as a ‘classic’ and why?

I have always preferred popular cars. I don't care much for Ferraris, Bugattis and so on, all those cars collectors pay millions for. I'll say that and shut my mouth.

AP   What in your view will be a future classic?

I've have no idea. A car with character anyway. These new Minis like I am driving, why not ?

AP   What question would you like to ask, and to whom?

Am I being too long ?

AP   What car publications / car websites do you regularly read / visit?

I subscribed to Special Interest Autos for some years. Great magazine. I kept them all. I was reading Nitro, a French publication. Now I stumble upon a hundred websites while trying to solve these AutoPuzzles. It's a big world.