THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502220047
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVIS ADDIS
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines
KERRY SAYS:
I've been driving 25 years and I still can't figure out men and cars. Sometimes I can't figure out the difference between the two.
Most women are satisfied with a car that starts when they turn the key. If it gets them to their destination without stalling, so much the better.
We do not want to drive something better looking than we are, or cleaner than our kitchens.
Not so with men.
Cars are part of their identity. They are what they drive - or so they think. Men care about horsepower, turbochargers and style. They define their lives by what they are driving. I've seen tough guys get all dewy-eyed remembering that Corvette convertible they drove in 1969.
They also know a universal truth: No man looks cool behind the wheel of a station wagon.
This love of the automobile infects all of them. A Rhodes Scholar is just as likely to wax poetic about a 427 hemi as the motorheads who hang out at the Texaco.
The United States is being governed, at this very moment, by a man in love with a Mustang. I for one, find that scary.
The moment of ugly automotive truth came to my home four years ago. Until that time my husband had owned a succession of temperamental sports cars. By the time our second child was born we were nominally a two-car family. I was lumbering around the highways in an Isuzu Trooper with two baby seats strapped into the back. He was gliding along in a champagne-colored Mazda RX-7. It was a two-seater, so low-slung that to sit in it you had to stick your legs out perpendicular to your body.
It was impossible to put a baby seat in this car. And a pregnant woman could not get in with a crane (maybe that was part of the attraction). In summer he wore hideously expensive sunglasses when he cruised around in his sports car - sun roof open, jazz on the stereo.
I begged him to sell it. Promised him that when the children were out of college he could buy a Porsche.
Finally, he half-heartedly advertised the car, asking about $3,000 more than it was worth.
After several months, in a bold test of our marriage, I placed my own classified ad. I offered the car to the first fist that showed up with $5,000 in it.
The car was gone the next day.
Although he never says so, the sedan that replaced the sports car is a hated symbol of my husband's enslavement to wife and children. He ridicules the car, only reluctantly changes its oil and defiantly ignores the service light for months at a time.
And when he spies a champagne-colored RX-7 with dents in the same places as his, he still gets a faraway look in his eyes.
What is he thinking about, Dave? Is he counting the days till college graduation and wondering if Porsche will still be in business?
DAVE SAYS:
Uh-oh, Kerry, I think you've crossed the double-yellow line on this one.
First you browbeat your husband into selling his beloved RX-7. Then you sneer if he gets a little misty-eyed when one of them whips by in traffic, while he's noodling down the road in the dull old suburb-o-box that you forced him to buy.
Why is it that some women, once married, set out to bleach away all the color that made their guy attractive to begin with? You have to admit, Kerry, that the cool car, the cool shades and the cool jazz on the stereo were part of the package that fired your spark plugs. Promising him he can have a Porsche when the kids are out of college - He'll be, what, pushing 60 by then? - is small consolation.
Let's face it, kid, you punished him. A family can travel as a family in only one car at a time, so they don't need two family sedans. You made him dump the RX-7 as a get-even ploy because men don't have to go through the pain of childbirth. This is a pretty common phenomenon, but you pushed it to a pretty exotic extreme. I got away cheap: I only had to change diapers.
And you couldn't resist that little shot at Bill Clinton and his profession of love for his '67 Mustang. Frankly, I think it was one of the more lucid public statements he's ever made. If he chose Cabinet secretaries with the same care, we wouldn't be haunted by the likes of Donna Shalala.
A car is indeed a personal statement. A woman won't spend $10 on a pair of earrings without being certain that they say exactly what she wants them to say. Shouldn't a $25,000 car be chosen with equal concern for what it tells the world about its driver?
I've owned half a dozen sports cars, most of them British. I only gave them up because of increasingly creaky joints (mine, not the cars') and the insanity of spending my weekends looking for short-circuits under the dashboard of a vehicle that was sent to this country for the sole purpose of extracting vengeance for our victory at the Battle of Yorktown.
But there was something deeply satisfying about charging around town in a bright red, right-hand-drive Morgan with black leather seats and an exhaust pipe that rumbled with pure testosterone. Believe me, a guy is easier to live with if he drives home feeling a little bit like Mario Andretti instead of an awful lot like Ozzie Nelson.
Taking it deeper, Kerry, I'm disappointed that you buy into such a tired cliche, that women prefer boxy little sedans and men only want to drive 400-horsepower phallic symbols.
An Ice Age ago when I was married - and what an Ice Age that was - I came home one night to find my wife under the back end of her Porsche 912, grease up to her elbows, adjusting the valves. She could also jump-start it, hot-wire it, and curse at it with a Germanic edge that would send shivers up the spine of Hermann Goering.
My fiance - and what a coincidence this is - drives an RX-7, just like the one you sold out from under your husband. She looks good in it. Heck, she'd look good in a dump truck. She's in the market for a new car, and I wouldn't think of pushing her into some dull but dependable econo-box. Let her turn a few heads. It's good for her self-esteem.
When she walks in the door feeling good about herself, a fair amount of it seems to rub off. And when that happens, I no longer miss the rumble from my old Morgan's tailpipe. MEMO: Kerry Dougherty can be reached at 446-2302. Dave Addis can be reached at
446-2588, and via e-mail at addis(at)infi.net.
by CNB