When a Man Loves a car

My wife, Marivi, and I regret selling our first car, and old peogeot diesel wagon that we bought on our honeymoon in Europe We shipped it home, but then sold it because it had trouble getting up the hills in L.A. I realize now how much sentimental value tha car had. Perhaps it's why I tend to get attached to cars today and hold on to them for a long time.

My 1989 Toyota Land Cruiser, one of the first car I bought when I move to L.A., still has only 50,000 miles on it. In The Lost City, the film i made about Cuba on the brink of revolution in 1959 (now on DVD), my character drove a red Alfa Romeo. I had always imagined him in that car. When I was growing up in Havana, there where variety of state-of-the-art cars just like it.

Driving the car was very nostalgic because I'm a product of that story. it's amazing the power of cars to transport you back to certai time in your life. I still remember the old DeSoto-with hole in the floor of the back seat-that my father bought when we first came to this country to build a new life. I don't chase the lates models. Just because a car is ten years old doesn't mean there isn't aestectic to it, doesn't mean it isn't great vehilcle, like the old Peugeot that started my family's journey together. Andi Garcia/Cynthia Dermody RD