This weekend was a busy one, as I did the twice yearly update to a fairly large web site.

I finished up on Sunday afternoon at about 6:00 PM and for some reason decided to take the 1985 out. My wife Ivelis looked at me with a degree of surprise when I announced my plan. This doesn’t follow my usual pattern for Sunday evenings—usually I work on one of my time-inhaling books.

I pulled the car out of the garage and loaded the usual emergency stuff in the back; a quart of oil, three different multi-tools, and the snazzy combo lithium-ion jump starter. As usual, Lauren’s light blue metallic paint looked it’s best in the setting sun—I remember seeing that first C4 at a similar time of day in the summer of 1983.

I headed west along one of the local main drags. With the weather in the low 50s, the car felt alive as I took the easy left onto the the 330-year-old Conestoga Road which winds back and forth as it first heads under the century old Philadelphia and Western tracks and then past the 150-year-old Agnes Irwin School. The beauty of William Penn’s “Greene Country Townes” was easily seen—for a coupe, Lauren is just so open, with those thin A pillars and the clear top above.

It was starting to get darker, so I reached up and pulled the headlights on. They rotated in sync and with reasonably alacrity. The headlight motors are original and still working at almost 78,000 miles—how long will it be until I do the bronze gear replacement for the original nylon ones?

I took another left onto Route 320 (another 330-year-old road) and opened Lauren up a little bit in the sweeping turns heading south, enjoying the effortless delivery of premium gasoline from the new fuel pump. The asphalt on 320 is in fairly good shape and I was reminded of how well the 1985 with the Z51 performance handling package handles on good roads—at speed so wonderfully light on its feet.

As I waited at the light before taking the left onto Bryn Mawr Avenue, Lauren rumbled and twitched—the new fuel pump hasn’t made that go away, though the car is notably quieter at idle. Speeds slowed down notably as I got within a mile of home and things become both less woody and more built up.

I caught a few sets of folks looking at Lauren at the intersection of Bryn Mawr Avenue and Haverford Road—early C4s, especially original ones with at least acceptable paint, are now rare where I live. The reactions are also different by age; older folks obviously have specific memories from when these cars were new or relatively new, while children completely obsess on the rotating headlights; a feature that disappeared when the C5 and the Lotus Esprit exited their 2004 model years.

Two blocks later, we’re back home. I pulled into bay #1 gently, aligning my position in the car with the Lauren-specific tape marker on the wall. Shut the car down, get out, walk back to the house …

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Thank you, Brad. Guru hears so much about Lauren-related carnage that I figure you deserve some of the good stuff ...

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carburetor: French for "don't touch it!"