Sorry Mr. Gore

June 8, 2009 | Author: Paul Sullivan | Filed under: News

Any blog that takes manhood as its subject matter must address the singular topic of American masculinity at some point. That, of course, is the automobile. My wife and I bought a new one this weekend. Its purpose was mostly utilitarian – a safe vehicle to carry a baby along with a couple of dogs and all the stuff that goes with them – but we wanted a bit of style. Yet in this age of second-guessing, buying that kind of vehicle was anything but straightforward.

The most obvious choice is, of course, the mini-van. It has utilitarian written all over it. It’s safe, easy to get things in and out of, and utterly practical. The problem, though, is it’s pathetic. It’s an admission that life is beating you with a stick. I’ve only met one person who could drive a minivan and maintain his dignity. But he took the seats out – and also happened to pull the gun out of Sirhan Sirhan’s hand. I believed him when he said it was good vehicle in which to haul things to Nantucket. As for the great mass of mini-vanners, my heart would break for them, if they were not either cutting me off or driving so slowly as to make me want to rush out and buy a Hummer to roll over them.

That leaves the SUV, the pariah of well-meaning liberal folk, of which I sometimes consider myself a member. They’re gas guzzlers, of course, and road hogs, and probably unnecessary. But read a few crash test reports and next thing you know you worry less about carbon footprints and more about roll ratios and side-impact airbags. (Plus, if all goes according to plan, President Obama’s carbon trading proposals will allow me to absolve myself, right?) I have a baby to protect: a Civic isn’t going to cut it!

And so, after a month of testing, my wife and I took advantage of a crummy Saturday afternoon and went once again to the car dealerships. We’d spent over a month and tested everything, from American to German to Japanese, we could possibly want. Still, we hadn’t found one we loved. We tried to buy a Cadillac or a Lincoln but the models we wanted were either not ludicrously priced for a bankrupt company or not in stock. We thought we wanted a Lexus but turns out the one we could afford wasn’t so comfortable. She loved the Mercedes, which I thought was a tank. I loved the Audi Q7, but she thought it was too big. Our fallback was a Volvo, because we already had one, but it didn’t feel like getting a new car.

Long story short, on Saturday we walked into the dealership of the one car my wife said she would never buy, Range Rover. Her objection could be summed up as the things are just too much of everything. (I once felt similarly about the Porsche Cayenne – does anyone need to go that fast kids, groceries and plants in the back – but then my best friend’s mom got one and I saw it was a pretty spiffy mobile.) We test drove the LR3, which is old school Land Rover, and it was okay. We were about to leave, undecided still. But as we were walking out the door, we saw a Range Rover Sport for a deal. We hesitated but having already wasted our afternoon figured we might as well drive it.

The rest was a blur. The thing was perfect – a Jaguar engine! leather seats! a cooler for baby formula in the console! Two hours later we owned it. The moral of the story? Sorry, Mr. Gore….

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