Driving Me Crazy

My older son recently received his driver’s license and took over my Ford pickup truck. Like many teenagers, he stands in firm opposition to everything his parents believe, so he stripped the bumper of my liberal stickers and replaced them with right-wing propaganda. It was a brilliant move on his part. I now won’t be caught dead in my own truck, so it has been ceded to him.

With car prices at historic lows—they are now giving away small Fords in packages of Cracker Jack—I went in search of another vehicle. Car-buying has become a complex matter. New or used? Purchase or lease? Foreign or domestic? Hybrid, gas, or diesel? Off the lot or special order? When I was a kid, there were two car dealers in our town: Dugan Chevrolet and Pence Oldsmobile. Families bought from one or the other, never both. Those were the days of brand loyalty, which simplified car-buying. Ours was a Chevy family. In 1974, I went with my father to Dugan Chevrolet, where Dad asked Rex Dugan what could be had for $5,000.

“That one right there,” Rex said, pointing to a brown Malibu.

“I’ll take it,” Dad said.

Two hours later, we motored away in our new car, went home, loaded up the family and dog, and drove to the Dairy Bar in Lizton. We had four new cars in my childhood and christened each one with a trip to the Dairy Bar.

By comparison, I’m a floozy of a car-buyer. Ford, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen—I have slept with them all. I buy strictly by color. I once flirted with a car Consumer Reports described as the worst car ever made. It was a snazzy red, and I couldn’t help myself.

When I told my wife I wanted another car, she asked what kind I was thinking of buying.

“A green one,” I said.

My friend Jim has a green car, a Chevy Cavalier. He has driven it 160,000 trouble-free miles, so I know for a fact that green cars are well-made.

My worst car, a Volkswagen Beetle, was yellow. It was in the shop several times a month. When it came time to buy a new car, I returned to the Volkswagen dealer to buy another Beetle. The salesman asked me what color I wanted.

“Anything but yellow,” I told him.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I have a relative who buys a new car every other year. He polls his friends, does exhaustive research on every model, pores over Consumer Reports as if it were sacred writ, and gets a lemon every time. This proves that car-buying, like love, should not be approached rationally. Impulse and gut instinct, not reason, should govern our car-buying.

The day I bought my Ford pickup, I had had no intention of getting a vehicle. But I had driven past a dealer, seen dozens of American flags flapping in the breeze, felt a pang of patriotism, turned in, and within a few minutes was writing out a check for $18,000. Were car-buying an exercise in prudence and logic, dealers wouldn’t decorate their lots with balloons and flags.

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