Confession #34: Car guys need their own table

1972 BMW 3.0 CSi

More often these days, I find myself at a table with several people, some of whom I know better than others. Those people don’t know what a car guy I am, how eager I am to contribute more than my two cents on current automotive trends. There’s always one other car guy at the table, though. Sometimes, he’ll be looking for a new car and you’ll be running down a list of every new model around $30,000. Or he’ll be the guy with a restored 1972 BMW 3.0CS and you’ll have to be careful not to be visibly drooling or express so much love of old BMWs and disdain for the new ones that you insult the inevitable person at the table with a new 3-series.

I try to keep my mouth shut for as long as possible. Flashing your Car Guy knowledge right off the bat is a bad move, since it polarizes the conversation and you’ll spend the rest of the evening either shunned from less polarizing conversation (like politics or religion) or talking in a corner with the one other petrol head. This must be what getting old feels like. 

Confession #30: It's hard to know when to say goodbye

It must be the withdrawals.

I was flipping through this month's Automobile Magazine, stopping at Ezra Dyer's column as usual. He spoke of a friend with a car making a horrible noise and trying to persuade that friend to ditch it for a new car. It's a decision that hangs over everyone with a car: At what time do the repairs outweigh the cost of a car payment? When do you have to throw in the towel and say goodbye?

Maybe Dyer's column struck a slightly stronger chord with me because his friend had a Saab 9-5 wagon. As I've mentioned all-too-often on this blog, I drive a Saab 900SE. I've been driving it for four years, for most of the 45,000 miles I've put on it. It's also my first car, one I got the day after my 17th birthday. There are some good memories.

Confession #26: Get in and go for a drive

California State Highway 1 near Bixby Creek Bridge,
Big Sur, Calif. (Google Earth image) 

Easily one of my favorite things about driving is finding a good road without a lot of traffic, on a clear day with nothing else on your mind.

Trust me, it’s intoxicating.

Even though I lean towards the environmentalist perspective that we should all drive more economically and buy smaller, more appropriately sized cars, I don’t tell people it’s partially because we should be saving fuel for drives that aren’t to anywhere or really for anything other than the undiluted thrill of driving.

Finding a good road for this is a never-ending quest. Like a tough addiction, you can be happy with a favorite stretch of pavement for a while, until it becomes too familiar. Then you go out looking for something stronger, more thrilling. It could eventually consume you. Be careful.

The car for the job really matters. It has to be engaging on some level, meaning the Hertz special Ford Fusion isn’t a good fit. But get something that’s only powerful and not an able handler, and you’re again asking for trouble.

Confession #24: Impulsive, non-committal type seeks functional, fast wagon for friendship

(Saab Automobile AB photo)

Wagons are perfect for someone who favors diplomatic decisions over democratic ones. And even for someone who wants a quick escape, just in case the choice doesn't work.

Take a detour to Ikea one Saturday? You can spend hundreds of dollars in assemble-yourself furniture and spend the rest of the weekend scratching your head and screaming at an Allen wrench. And then return it in pieces the following weekend while trying to keep the rage to a minimum at the customer service desk.

Have you just started scuba sessions? Dozens of oxygen tanks will fit without drama.

Confession #19: Most people my age couldn't care less about cars

I’ve known something was wrong for a few years now. I felt like a car addiction was something to be closeted because people would start squirming away from me.

And if I met “Mad Men’s” Vincent Kartheiser in a bar and started talking to him about turbochargers and Mercedes’ new AMG models, his eyes might roll back into his skull.

This means I wasn’t at all surprised by a recent report suggesting my generation, the Millennials – those born roughly between 1980 and 1995 – have dwindling interest in the car.

For automakers, especially the Detroit Three, this is damning information. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler already lost the Millenials’ parents, the Baby Boomers, to European and Japanese carmakers and that’s where they’ve stayed for the most part.