Road Fever (2 page)

Exit Minnie Pearl. Enter John Rock, the general manager of GMC truck, a forceful and solid-looking man who appeared to be well named. Rock said that he wasn’t going to waste a lot of time, but that the audience, which included a healthy sampling of the automotive press, should know that he was pretty excited about the new truck GMC was introducing. The Sierra pickup had been designed from the wheels up at a cost of $2.8 billion. It was the first redesign on the old workhorse in fifteen years. It was a tough truck. It was easy going on the road. It was hot.

The trucks, we were given to understand, would sell like hotcakes. The typical buyer, Rock thought, might be defined as an “upscale cowpunk.” The way Rock pronounced the words, he seemed to think upscale cowpunks were some pretty fine fellows completely aside from the fact that he expected them to make him and everyone in the room fabulously rich.

“Our typical buyer,” Rock said, “he’s an easy guy. He comes to a meal like this one, he’s going to have about four forks and a couple of knives left over.” Everyone laughed because we all had a bunch of gadgets left over, inexplicable little scalpels and picks scattered about, marking us all as easy guys, likable upscale cowpunks.

The easiest thing about the easy guy, John Rock said, is that he only wants the best. That would be how one ad for the new truck might read: “I’m an easy guy, I only want the best.” Rock thought GMC dealers would be in fine fettle vis à vis the easy upscale cowpunk buyer in that they had a product that was, in his opinion, clearly the best pickup on the market.

Another thing about the easy guy, Rock said, is that he would like this show, and he’d love the next act: “Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous Mr. Roy Clark.”

Later, at a booth near the entrance to the dining room, several attractive young women handed out free clothes that the dealers might want to wear at tomorrow’s test drive. Members of the automotive press in attendance snapped up the easy-guy gear: leather driving gloves, Levi’s jackets lined in something like sheepskin, and 4x Beaver Stetsons. There were parties that night in various private suites—lots of Tanqueray, goblets of Wild Turkey, laughter, and the sound of tinkling ice cubes behind closed doors.

A few of the dealers, their spouses, and the automotive press in particular looked a bit musty the next morning at six. There were lots of hung-over clones in denim jackets and cowboy hats; it was the dawn of the dead upscale cowpunks. We were bused to a large convention center on the outskirts of Las Vegas. GMC had booked the center’s parking lot for a demonstration of its rear-wheel antilock brakes. The parking lot, aimless acres of concrete, had been cordoned off from the general public and was sprayed with a mixture of oil and water. A mechanic disabled the antilock brakes in one of the trucks, and a stunt driver pushed it into the water and oil at top speed. The truck made a sweeping turn and the driver hit the brakes at the apogee of his arc, the point where centrifugal force wanted to send the vehicle spinning out of control. There was a bucking motion, the tires lost their grip in the oily water, and the truck spun off at an odd vector, doing doughnuts and tossing up oily rooster tails in the early-morning desert sun. The falling sheets of water had that vague multicolored rainbow effect characteristic of petroleum products and water.

The antilock brakes were enabled, the stunt driver powered the truck into the same arc at what appeared to be the same speed, and,
at the same point, he hit the brakes and the truck stopped, bam, like that. It wasn’t very exciting or colorful, though GMC executives explained that losing the back end of a pickup on a slippery road was the sort of excitement they felt easy guys could do without.

“We found,” a GMC executive told me, “that half the time a guy is going to be driving around without a substantial load in the bed of the truck. It’s pretty easy to swap ends that way and these antilocks take care of the problem.” He nodded in such a way that I felt obliged to nod back my approval. “These brakes,” the man said, “are going to save some lives.” We nodded at each other. “Lots of lives.” Antilock brakes were right up there with Mother Teresa in this guy’s book.

Later, we all drove to a resort on the slopes of nearby Mount Charleston, where the dealers and the automotive press were given a chance to drive these new trucks over some pretty rough terrain. Shining new Sierra pickups were lined up in the parking lot. I chose a half-ton gasoline-engine vehicle and sent it pounding over one of the rougher off-road courses. The truck had plenty of guts—it was actually fast—and I beat the crap out of it; had it thumping over high-desert moguls in B-movie-chase-scene mode.

“Uh, Tim …”

My partner and friend, Garry Sowerby, a professional endurance driver, was getting uncomfortable.

“Tim, tell me what you’re doing.”

“Trying to get all four tires off the ground,” I explained. “Give this thing a workout.”

We were rocketing down a gravelly wash at perhaps fifty miles an hour. There was a small hillock at the bottom. It sloped upward at a gentle angle and appeared to drop off sharply on the far side. Garry was talking reasonably about keeping everybody happy on our upcoming odyssey. The vehicle was actually “somebody,” indeed, “she” was the third member of the expedition, and the way we treated “her” would influence “her” attitude toward us. The truck could be our best friend or our worst enemy. The truck deserved respect.

“They want us to beat these trucks up,” I argued. “It’s our duty. Like with a rental car.”

We hit the hillock hard and I discovered that the slope was not entirely gentle. Quite suddenly the desert ahead dropped below the hood of the truck so that we were looking at the peaks of various mountains and blue sky beyond. There was a momentary sense of weightlessness, then gravity shanghaied the engine and we found ourselves
staring down at the desert floor. All this happened very fast. Mountains and sky, then sand and gravel, followed by an instantaneous and walloping jolt. The steering wheel twisted in my hands and we went into a gravel-spitting skid, which I corrected and then lost to the other side. We were careening over the desert floor at various forty-five-degree angles to our actual direction of travel. There were no obvious obstacles in sight and, purely out of curiosity, I hit the brakes full on. Unexpectedly, the truck straightened up and stopped right.

“Antilock brakes,” I commented.

“We are definitely going to have to have a talk,” Garry said mildly.

I
T WAS A PRETTY GOOD TRUCK
, tough on the rough cross-country course and unexpectedly smooth on the road. In the resort dining room, John Rock again spoke to the dealers. He said that GMC would do a lot to promote this truck: it would be a pace car at certain important automobile races, there would be “Easy Guy” television ads emphasizing that the truck was in fact “not just a truck anymore.” I wondered what that meant. Was it a boat? An armadillo?

John Rock assured the dealers of GMC’s support. There were television promotions and print ads scheduled—something new for every month. “In September,” he said, “Garry Sowerby will drive a virtually stock Sierra truck from Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. That’s as far north as you can drive, on the longest road in the world.” The trip would be a test of the new Sierra’s speed and endurance. “Garry,” Rock said, “will set a world speed record for this drive.”

Rock explained that Garry had set a recognized world record for driving a GMC Suburban from the tip of Africa to the most northerly point in Europe. During that trip, Sowerby had been fired on by bandits in northern Kenya. There were some holes in the Suburban but Garry had escaped intact. Sowerby also held the current speed record for driving around the world. It took him seventy-seven days, and Rock neglected to say that he did it in a Volvo sedan.

“Stand up, Garry.”

There was much applause for Sowerby and his accomplishments. “Garry’s codriver is Tim Cahill,” Rock said. “Tim’s gonna keep Garry out of trouble on this one.” There was a smattering of applause and some curious looks. Rock had meant the comment as a joke—no one was going to keep Garry Sowerby out of trouble—but I got the feeling that people suspected I was a dangerous fellow, a bodyguard type, handy with a gun
and knife. I touched an index finger to the brim of my new Stetson,
Gunsmoke
style, and surveyed the room with fierce secret-service eyes.

B
ACK AT THE
B
ALLY
, several thousand truck dealers milled about in a hangar-sized room off the dining hall. Various models of the Sierra were on display. Truck dealers, I noticed, actually kicked tires just like ordinary people. Garry and I were on display, available, I guess, for publicity photos. We stood next to a one-ton Sierra painted black and white, with a green map of the Americas, north and south, that covered the entire hood of the vehicle. There was a thick red line pretty much bisecting the map that was supposed to represent our route on the upcoming Pan-American record run. Our names were painted on both doors. The press and various dealers stopped by and took pictures because that’s what they were supposed to do.

Some of the dealers asked a number of informed questions.

“What about Nicaragua?”

“It’s a problem.”

“What do you do about the Darien Gap?”

The gap is an eighty-mile stretch of roadless area extending from northern Colombia into Panama.

“The rules,” Garry told people, “say that we have to drive to the end of the road in Colombia and Panama. We can have the truck shipped, but no airfreighting it.”

“Who makes the rules?”

“The editors of the
Guinness Book of World Records
.”

“Why them?”

“They represent the only credible institution that could certify a new record.”

“What’s the old record?”

“Months.”

“Can you beat it?”

“Yeah. But there’s a guy about to give it a try pretty soon. Some European prince. He’s taking six Land-Rovers.”

“Kick his ass.”

One of the dealers asked me what engine we were using.

“Six-point-two-liter diesel,” I said. The guy popped the hood. “What’s this?”

“What?”

“Gasoline engine in here.”

I stared at a big gleaming hunk of metal for several seconds exactly as if I knew something about automobile engines. Then I bailed out.

“Garry, tell this guy about the engine.”

“It’s a prototype,” Garry said. So. It wasn’t our truck at all. It was a prototype. Just a Sierra with a special paint job and a gasoline engine inside.

“Prototype’s a gasoline engine,” I explained.

The dealer smiled tolerantly.

“Garry,” I said, “is the mechanic on this team.”

After that I avoided dealers who kept asking pesky technical questions—“size tires you guys using?”—and hung out by the bar with the press and a very credible Marilyn Monroe impersonator.

We discussed Marilyn Monroe and various other subjects that fired the reporters’ imaginations: who was canned at what four-wheel magazine, who was getting divorced, which auto company put on the most lavish launches and provided the most drinks. They didn’t talk much about the new Sierra, easy guys, or the fact that these trucks were not just trucks anymore. A GMC executive I was chatting with couldn’t stand it anymore. The company had put up a fortune and here these guys were, standing around like ordinary people, men and women who had not just driven the new GMC Sierra.

“What’s the matter with these guys?” the man asked me.

I understood, suddenly, that this was a very nervous time and that these executives were rather like actors waiting for opening-night reviews. They were, most of them, big hardy men, and there was an odor of ego and anxiety in the air. It wasn’t just business or money as I saw it. These guys genuinely identified with the new GMC Sierra, which wasn’t just a truck anymore. When I told one executive that I wasn’t particularly in love with the dashboard layout, a look of hurt bewilderment crossed his face, and this was followed by a quick flush of anger. I might have said, “Gee, you sure got some butt-ugly kids.”

“Most of the reporters I talked to really like the truck,” I said. “You just don’t go around gushing about anything if you’ve been in the business for a while. It’s bad form. Makes you look like a patsy. Your colleagues think you’re a jerk.”

“I thought you were a driver.”

“On this trip.”

“You talk like a journalist.”

“That too.”

I
WAS IN MY ROOM
at the Bally, watching closed-circuit TV psycho-dramas that showed GMC dealers how to sell trucks to easy guys. Garry called just as an actor portraying a GMC dealer said, “Dodge makes a
fine product, all right, but maybe you’d like to see a few of the features we think make this vehicle an outstanding …”

Garry said, “They’re nervous about you. They wonder if you’ll say bad things about the truck.”

I knew I wasn’t going to like this conversation. “We have an agreement,” I said.

“I know.”

The arrangement was simple enough. I would not endorse or participate in advertising the truck. I would accept no money from any sponsor, and Garry would pay my expenses. Because the rules called for a codriver, he’d figured those expenses into his original proposal to GMC. If the truck fell apart on the record run, I was free to write about it.

“They’re thinking about the two-point-eight billion they put into the project.”

“Look, Garry, if they want a book that’s an advertisement for the truck, maybe they should send some ad guy with you.”

“I’m just telling you what they told me. As far as I’m concerned you’re my codriver. But it’s their money.”

“Because there’s no way I’m making them any promises.”

“I’ll talk to them, try to calm them down.”

“Tell ’em it’s smart business. Advertising costs money and no one believes it. The truth is free.”

“We might have a problem is all I’m saying. I’ll tell you what they think tomorrow.”

A
T NINE THE NEXT MORNING
, the final day of the launch, GMC put on a two-and-a-half-hour show about the 2.8-billion-dollar vehicle. Four women in tight golden pants danced erotically around a couple of gleaming trucks. Three video screens above the stage kept flashing the word “HOT” at us in feverish stroboscopic bursts. Several executives spoke, one after another, and then there was a grand finale with explosions and sparky fireworks—“it’s hot hot hot”—and the women in gold draped themselves lasciviously over protruding bumpers and sang about how it wasn’t just a truck anymore so that any nincompoop could tell what it was—every easy guy has one—and green laser beams swept over our heads, preternaturally bright in the lingering smoke from the fireworks, and Garry leaned over and said, “They want you to tell the truth.”