On Facebook, Valley Motors (my Mercedes dealer) asks, Who remembers Herbie the Love Bug? Do you have a favorite television or movie car?

Well…I did once upon a time, sure.   Mine were, in some sort of order, Supercar…

Well…that one wasn’t really a car as such…   James Bond’s Aston-Martin DB5 in Goldfinger…

Amos Burke’s Rolls Royce Silver Cloud…

(it was what I watched the show for),   The Monkee Mobile…

…a highly modified Pontiac GTO…legendary car customizer Dean Jeffries did it and I thought it was the coolest riff on a production line car I’d ever seen.   I still think that GTO is the coolest looker of all the custom cars California custom shops churned out back in the 60s.

…and finally The Green Hornet’s Black Beauty…

…a 1966 Imperial Crown sedan, also customized by Dean Jeffries.

That was kidhood.   I never really saw anything in the movies or TV that caught my imagination after the sixties.   I liked the look of the Batmobile in the 1960s TV series, which was built by the legendary George Barris from a Lincoln concept car, but hated the TV show so much I couldn’t separate it from the god awful camp of that show.

Back in those days most of my favorite celebrity cars were actually quarter mile funny cars like The Little Red Wagon…

…and the Hemi Under Glass…

…not exactly something you’d drive to the grocery store in, which is not to say that wouldn’t be fun.   I had an eye for exotic cars too, like the Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis.     But when it came down to serious dreaming, somehow in the latter part of my teenage days, when a driver’s license in my wallet was on the cusp of becoming a reality, the dream machine…the one I would actually own someday…maybe…I hope…was always a Mercedes diesel sedan.   So I guess that really says it all about me and cars.

And last December I finally did get my teenage dream car after all…

It’s not an Aston-Martin DB5 with an ejector seat and tire flattening wheel knockoffs, but there’s a difference between having a dream and having a fantasy. Which isn’t to say the ability to flatten someone’s tires wouldn’t come in handy every now and then.