Steering with Your Knees, a Review

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Miscellaneous Ramblers

A few long weeks ago I received a package which looked like a fancy T shirt promotion— so I put the package aside and almost forgot about it until the one who must be obeyed found it lying about. Then the scene was like Mom catching Jr. with a Playboy magazine (oh, we are all old and dated or what?).

What was all the fuss about? Well you be the judge. When I then opened the frilly, be-ribboned plastic gift box I realized that it was Toly, pure Toly. And then I found his book beneath the sticker and T-shirt. So let that be a warning to those millions who will be buying Toly’s latest book… be sure to look beyond the T-shirt. And ya, that cute little ribbon is for you, too.

And of course never read a book by its cover especially if it’s Toly’s. Gee, maybe there was more auto porn in the pages of Steering with My knees but there were hardly any photos at all. And the only mention of women were praises and thanks for the memories routines, again, typical Toly who might lead you into misogyny (a word everyone knows now) but in fact is a wonderful, intelligent warm, friendly type whose one downside might be that he often considered boring by some segments of society.

In our 2009 review of Toly’s first book, One Off, we wrote: “His humor is original, unexpected and poignant but like all humor isolated by time, culture, geography, gender, interests and language itself. Otherwise merely amusing or puzzling anecdotes will provide huge belly laughs if you were born a white-middle-class male in the midsection of the U.S between 1930 and 1950 and loved cars and women. If not, all bets are off.”

All bets are still off. His writing style is still the same, but while One Off was more or less an autobiography, Steering is a compilation of anecdotes, late night musings, and philosophical intent, triggered by Alain De Cadenet. Toly explains, “…it was reassuring to read a column by Alain de Cadenet making the point that the oldsters should make an effort to pass on the philosophies and contexts of motor sports in the days of yore to today’s youth. That’s the main reason I keep jotting and scribbling and notating.”

And, so he did and lo and behold, out comes a 164 page softback book with no index, no chapters, no organization, and of course no table of contents. It is chock full of anecdotes, most funny, others sad, but all taken from the very real pages of his existence (he was born in 1936), and things that were somehow left out of his previous autobiography (which you are expected to have read). For example, he shows us his parent’s mansion in Beverly Hills and tells us that when Vincent Price bought it to hold his art collection, he found a secret room. How fittingly anecdotal; that’s Toly.

Toly is also a born again Christian, and he freely admits to it (“I’m one of them”) and sprinkled liberally (pardon the jest) throughout the text are quotes from the good book, which probably won’t do anyone any harm and may even do Toly some good. It’s his book, after all.

One of his favorite subjects is how things have changed, and not necessarily for the good. He contemplates the lack of choice buyers have today. Oh, a lot of cars, but says Toly, “Go ahead and adjust those forty year ago prices for inflation. So for the price of a nice new Honda or maybe up to a mid-level Audi, you could have such a choice of real sports cars. Just the Abarth range alone – Wow! One liter through all those cute displacement class breaks, 1300cc, 1600cc, 2000cc, you got your open sports-racing cars that could still be street legal though stark…You could buy these things of you had Oldsmobile or Buick money. But you poor folks today have nothing remotely similar…”

And surprisingly, despite owning and driving a list of cars that would make anyone envious, his favorite Alfa seems to be the often neglected 1959 2000 Spider. “The 300SL was wonderful. The Carrera Speedster was a little bomb…but somehow I reeeally liked my ’59 Alfa 2000 Spider. It’s like those foods you like or dislike but can’t really say why. Somehow the Alfa combines looking very distinguished with providing a genteel level of performance. I like teensy cars like the Fiat Abarth double-bubble – I enjoy the minimalist approach of that car and the Morgan 4/4. But the Alfa 2000 has bigness, and just the right amount of it…it is just the right size for me. And again, there is no better looking car in the world when you look at it on your knees.”

“…my twenties were slipping away and what had I accomplished, especially when compared to my father? 2 ½ college degrees. Racing victories here and there. That was IT. Therefore my lousy feelings were all my very own fault. Therefore not only I was blessed in every way, I was too stupid to know what to do with these blessings!”

Then he went to the 1965 Turin Motor show and saw the new Lamborghini Miura chassis. “What a beautiful layout. I can’t remember if there were seats in the chassis or not, but there was the nice man at my elbow, listening attentively as Bryan and I raved about the machine. After we’d finished talking, the first words he said were ‘Would you like to make the contract?’ I’d never been asked outright by a car salesman just to sign up like that….I dunno what came over me – and I answered ‘Well, yes.’ How much was it going to be? The Lira amount converted to $12,700, but I only needed to give them a $1000 check. I can still feel my hands as I held down the order form and signed it, and then made out the check. Maybe I’d better call home and warn the folks. I’ll do that in the morning.”

Nothing like wholeheartedly accepting one’s own reality. “After signing the contract I wondered if I’d get a case of the nerves. Instead I had the best night’s sleep I’d had in months. And the next day when I called home to let ‘em know about my financial indulgence, the response was ‘We’re sure it will be a very nice car.’ You too should be so lucky.”

What is not in the book is very much about his accident. Somewhere between his last book and this one (in 2014), Toly had stopped along I-40 in a snowstorm, blocked by a truck. He got out to find out about what was going on, and wham, another truck came along and the next thing he remembers was the hospital minus a leg. “I could go on at length about my miraculous rescue but I’ll just say that in a moment of consciousness I told the hospital staff if they found any big bone piece to send it to me. So Karen was surprised to get a hazmat package containing enuf shinbone to make a nice shift knob–which I haven’t done yet.” (While the title of the book might sound like a reflection of his accident, it was actually one suggested for his earlier autobiography).

But it wasn’t there.

When I asked him about this, he said he figured that all of his friends and anyone who would buy the book would know all about the accident anyway. While I find this strange, it is as it is.

It is perhaps too early by a generation or two to determine if Toly’s insights or miscellaneous ramblings will be found valuable, inspirational, or historic. One day, someone will unearth his Lancia Flaminia and in it find a copy of Steering with Your Knees. Who knows if the book or the car be more valuable?