No giant red bow on these clunkers

Those commercials always crack me up — you know, the ones they roll out this time of year promoting the ultimate holiday gift: a brand new luxury car parked in a snow-covered drive, all tied up in a giant red bow.

Suffice it to say, I'm not their target audience. Not even close.

Really, who does that kind of thing?

Okay, besides Oprah, Wall Street executives and the fortunate 10 percent or so who hold the bulk of wealth in this country and don't happen to run in my circles.

Actually, a long time ago, back in the late '70s, I was the recipient of a gift-mobile of another sort.

It was my first car: a 1967 champagne-colored Pontiac Catalina.

Don't let the "champagne" fool you. This was no highbrow ride. No bow came with this well-worn, very used car that, history has it, had been finagled for about 150 bucks by an auto mechanic who really knew his way around a fixer-upper.

After driving the car for a time, the auto mechanic passed it on to his oldest son, who later gave it to his younger brother, who ended up gifting it to me — his then-girlfriend, now wife.

The car wasn't what sealed the deal, but it definitely was a plus for the blue-collar guy who worked in the auto body business and was already well on his way to capturing my heart.

By the time it got to me, the Catalina had some issues. The ignition had popped out so I had to use a screwdriver to start her up. The car's headliner and the back of the front seat had been chewed apart by the younger brother's dog, a Doberman/St. Bernard mix named Astro who, when left on his own accord, took to chomping on things like beanbag chairs and car interiors. There was also a slow leak somewhere in the cooling system, which meant I always had to carry gallons of water in the trunk to pour into the radiator after the car had been sitting for a while so it wouldn't overheat.

It was a clunker, no doubt, but it was my car; a ticket, at the time, to newfound freedom.

No more having to ask Mom and Dad for the keys to the family car. Suddenly it was "See you later" and out the door whenever I wanted.

The Catalina turned out to be the first in a lengthy line of fixer-uppers. There was the fickle-starting '69 Chevy Impala with the rotted-out "Flintstones" floor (I used my trusty screwdriver to jump the starter solenoid under the hood); the gas-guzzling teal '67 Cadillac convertible with the leaky roof; the '73 Pontiac Grand Am that was permanently two-toned ugly orange and green after my blue-collar man replaced the smashed-up nose with a forest green one that he never got around to painting; the 1967 Buick LeSabre, a tank of a car with no air-conditioning that we bought for $900 shortly after we moved to Florida.

And finally, there is my current mode of transportation: a 2001 white Sebring convertible that was badly wrecked and on its way to the junkyard before the blue-collar man got ahold of that one.

Not one of those cars would be categorized as a luxury automobile — at least not by the time I got around to driving them.

But each one of those fixer-uppers did a pretty good job of getting me from here to there.

All in all, it's been a pretty good ride.

Michele Miller can be reached at miller@sptimes.com or at (727) 869-6251.