Reconciling a Humble History With Caviar Tastes
Los Angeles is the world capital of the two most influential mixed blessings of the past 100 years, television and the automobile. Over time I’ve managed largely to swear off the former. Swearing off the latter is another matter in such a sprawling and public transit-challenged place as this one.
The miseries and unwisdoms of our enforced motoring are obvious. More insidious is that, no matter how utilitarian we are, the sheer number of hours we spend behind the wheel leaves us highly vulnerable to the special wantonness of cars.
Perhaps you sense a confession coming.
The cars I’ve driven have always been determined by income that, given children, mortgages, etc., failed to fabulously exceed outgo. They were old and/or frumpy and/or small and/or economical. I once owned a rattly Volkswagen beetle whose back-seat foot wells became miniature swimming pools whenever it rained. For a couple of years, I tooled about in a 10-year-old Saab I’d picked up for 900 bucks; it was so rusty that my adolescent daughters made me drop them off a block from their destinations. They called the car “The Swedish Meatball.” The only new cars I ever owned were a cramped and tinny Mazda sedan and a Honda Civic that had no air conditioning, no automatic transmission and no power steering.
The car I drove across the country to a new life in Los Angeles could not have been less “L.A.” It was a used 1994 Mercury Sable, the very soul of middle-class, middle-West, middle-age bland. It was, as though it needed to be, gray. Gray on the outside, gray on the inside, gray in the minds of restaurant parking valets, who invariably deposited it in the next area code so it wouldn’t devalue their eatery’s image.
For five years I drove it stoically, even proudly, around this image-obsessed city. Mine was a classic example of what Aaron Ahuvia, a management professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a scholar of consumer proclivities, refers to as “people getting really attached to their choices and their tastes because those things are, at a subtle level, political, in the sense of social politics.”
Then, a couple of months ago, I acquired a large, fancy car, whose name I am loath to mention (suffice it to say it’s often top-rated in what’s called the “premier luxury” category). I want it on the record, though, that I put up good fight trying not to acquire it.
My friend, a Hollywood agent, wanted to get rid of the car, and offered to sell it to me. “What would I do with a - - - - -?” I told her righteously. “I’m not a - - - - - kind of guy.” She asked me, then, to help her sell it. So, I researched a fair price and put the car in the classifieds and on the Internet. No calls. She lowered the price several times. No bites. Finally, weary of seeing it sitting in her driveway while she drove a new, more practical, conveyance, she begged me to take it off her hands, and quoted a ridiculously low price.
Let me emphasize the car is 7 years old, 8 if you consider model-years. Also, I bought it for less than half of what a new garden-variety smaller car costs. Also, if you look at it closely, you’ll see it has plenty of nicks and dings, my agent-friend being about as careful with her cars as she is with her cell-phone minutes.
Still, since acquiring my new ride, I’ve come down with a mild case of schizophrenia about it.
Yes, I’m relieved to feel less conspicuous when in the city’s tonier precincts. I also admit to experiencing acceleration exhilaration whenever I press down on the gas pedal and the car’s engine (one automotive reviewer called it a “creamy V-8”) surges into action. It’s curious, too, how leather upholstery as soft and smooth as caramel mousse; power seats and lumbar supports; church-like quiet, programmable seat back-seat bottom-steering wheel configuration; a power tiltable sunroof; and an automatic six-disc CD changer connected to a premium sound system can grow on a person marooned in rush-hour creep on the San Diego Freeway.
Not so gratifying is the thought that my creamy V-8 runs on high-test gasoline, which only a few months ago was flirting with $3 a gallon for full-serve. Or that, at a time when Americans ought to be rethinking our dependence on Saudi Arabian oil, I’m now consuming more of it than ever. Or that Corolla drivers might mistake me for the sort of ostentatious swell I’ve always wished flat tires on.
Professor Ahuvia sees in my situation a classic consumer dilemma: how to harmonize wanting to feel frugal, prudent and responsible with wanting to take la joie de vivre in a great big bearhug. “Let me make a prediction,” he says. “A Saab or a Volvo eventually will reconcile this for you. They come from a good socialist country. They’re low-emission, safe, and good investments. For guilt-ridden liberals, they’re the perfect ride.”
I don’t know about that. Wafting along in the expansive fluidity of this present car, John Coltrane blowing mellowness at me from six different directions, it’s hard to imagine ever returning to The Swedish Meatball.
