St. Petersburg, Florida, 1965, I was 12. Old Mr. Covington lived a few blocks over and I rode my bike everywhere. Mr. Covington had one of the weirdest looking cars in the world, pointy, small, unlike anything I've ever seen. It was light years ahead of the behemoth 1958 Mercury Voyager 9 passenger wagon my parents drove! Futuristic, Jetson-ish. Sometimes he would roll it out to the driveway to sweep the garage, sometimes it was gray, sometimes it had white and pink spots, sometimes it was black. His friend came over once in a while; he had the same car in white, a shiny white roadster with a red interior. And his ran. I could see them climbing all over this car, or sometimes they just stood there with cocktails and stared at it.
With the John Glenn experience, Sputnick, Cape Canaveral was hopping and all the kids had ray guns. My Dad was a glassblower at the GE Research & Development site, some of our neighbors worked at Honeywell, a big employer nearby. I thought these guys were the next generation Henry Ford getting in at the ground floor of a cottage industry making spacecraft super cars in a tiny one car garage, I was proud to be a witness.
A few weeks after Mr. Covington passed away I saw his three sons pushing the car up and down the street trying to get it running. They were exhausted and the car just sat and smiled with that face. When it turned over and made noise it didn't sound like a Beetle, possibly a Corvair.
I always wondered what happened to the cars and kept an ear to the ground for the Covington Motor Car Company. Until yesterday. I received January's Classic Motorsports and on page 65 is a picture of a Popular Mechanics' magazine cover with Mr. Covington's car on the cover! Huh.
Mystery solved, thank you and good night.
And good night Mr. Covington wherever you are .....
