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| Embracing My Inner Man | |||||||
| Our columnist takes a spin through the souped-up fantasy vehicles at the New York Auto Show | |||||||
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| April 1 — After writing a recent column about my disgust for sport utility vehicles, I received a barrage of hate mail decrying me, at best, as a Grinch who wants to steal America’s beloved automobiles to, at worst, a “God-damned Communist” who wants to destroy America’s way of life. |
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| ONE LETTER WRITER even begged me to come to Kansas City so he could “kick my ass back to New York.” Well, you can stop with the hate mail; I’m willing to reconsider. Perhaps I have been a bit of a stick-in-the-mud on transportation issues. Perhaps I have allowed the sugary siren song of an efficient hybrid car or a solar-powered concept car to make me forget that it is every American’s God-given right to drive whatever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants. | |||||||||
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Perhaps my problem is that I have castrated the macho man that lives inside me. If that’s the case, I thought, all I needed was a refreshing trip to the New York Auto Show, going on right now. I must admit, to me, the New York Auto Show is like some punchline in an Ed Begley Jr. joke. A car show in a town where no one drives? A celebration of a product that, as a by-product of getting us from Point A to Point B, produces toxic gases that kill us? Still, I vowed to put cynicism aside as I headed for the Javits Center on my mission to find (and embrace, if he’d let me) my inner he-man, that testosterone-swilling, horsepower-addicted, cargo-space-demanding, Corinthian-leather-craving, car-buying American inside me. I tried—I seriously tried—but I could not silence my outer environmentalist. Whenever my inner he-man started drooling over some hot rod with 17-inch tires, my outer Green geek would complain about the fuel economy. Whenever the macho man within me lusted over a sports car that goes from 0-60 in four seconds, the wimpy tree-hugger without asked, “What, 0-60 in 11 seconds isn’t fast enough for you?” Every automaker’s exhibit raised questions that my inner man could not answer. For instance: Are “Concept Cars” Anything But Car-Show Porno? If you’ve never been to an auto show, you might be surprised to learn that all the major manufacturers dress up their tired old models by placing them in proximity to something called “the concept car.” This futuristic stunner—which appears as if it has been carved out of a single piece of African ivory and painted in 45 coats of gold lacquer—swivels ever-so-slowly on a silver-plated turntable so that its fenders are just beyond the outstretched reach of every 16-year-old kid about to get his learner’s permit or every 50-year-old man in the middle of a midlife crisis. But the sexier the car, the uglier the remainder of the automaker’s fleet appears by comparison. In the Buick section, a pack of sweaty men were panting over a Cielo concept car, which was so sexy, so curvy, so deserving of lust that it almost makes men actually consider buying a Buick. Meanwhile, a Buick saleswoman was standing a few feet away, beginning a sales pitch about a car that looked as though it had rolled off a 1986 Buick assembly line. Let the record show, not a single person moved away from the Cielo to listen to the woman’s spiel, further evidence that Buick is producing the ugliest production vehicles in the world (and I say that fully aware that some factory in Serbia is probably still cranking out Yugos). As I toured other manufacturers’ zones, I started to see concept cars are nothing but a bait-and-switch operation, a ploy to get your inner man so drunk on fantasy that he’s willing to endure the hangover of buying another dull sedan. Pontiac’s saleswoman, a comely lass named Jennifer, showed off her company’s Solstice concept car, a car so hot that even the exhaust pipes are sexy (they should be; oddly, they’re mounted to resemble female genitalia). “It’ll start at $20,000—if we build it,” Jennifer cooed as the Solstice spun. “But we’ll only build it if we get a big response, so go to pontiac.com and tell ‘em you want one!” As bait-and-switch tactics go, this was about as sophisticated as an electronics store that advertises a DVD player for $100 and then tells you they’ve “just run out” of them before selling you the $189 model that you didn’t want. Do SUVs Really Need to Get Bigger? Hard to believe, but the 5,000-pound trucks that the automakers like to market as cars are actually getting bigger, despite nearly two years of bad press, our nation’s dependence on foreign—read Arab—oil and enough rollover deaths to scare off a stuntman. This year, Ford unveiled its Everest SUV, which is so big that it can seat nine adults. My inner man marveled, but my outer geek wondered, “What, am I driving the Mets to road games this year?” Isuzu has a new SUV called the “Ascender,” which, at 207.6 inches, is long enough to comfortably shelter two Michael Jordans, plus a reasonably large dwarf, lying end-to-end. Isuzu proudly proclaims that the Ascender has 100 cubic feet of cargo room. I don’t even think I own 100 cubic feet of stuff. And if I did, would I want to take it wherever I go? I’m neurotic, but even I’m not that attached to my stuff. | ||||||||
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And, at long last, if these SUVs keep getting bigger, how come they still don’t have any rear-seat legroom? Seriously, if I’m going to pay $45,000 for an environment-defiling, resource-consuming death machine, the least they could do is give my passengers some back-seat room. As the Everest circled past me, I noticed that Ford stylists had filled the trunk with mountain-climbing gear, including a pair of long-spiked, ice-climbing shoes, which led me to my next question: Why Are The Largest, Most Gas-Guzzling, Air-Smogging SUVs The Ones That Perfume Their Stench With the Heady Musk of the Great Outdoors? My inner man gave in to the fantasy of driving a Ford Everest halfway up the mountain of the same name and then ice-climbing the rest of the way up. My outer geek merely wondered, “If we were all driving Ford Everests, how long would it be before the planet was so warm that there was no ice left to climb?” Whatever Happened to Economical Economy Cars? While my inner man was cruising for Porsches, my outer geek was checking out the boring old economy cars that get his heart racing. But somewhere between low gas prices and the SUV craze, makers like Honda, Hyundai and others have lost their way. How come a Honda accord with a four-cylinder engine gets only 23 mpg? Is it too much to ask that a Hyundai Accent, which is about as big as a fat guy’s coffin, get more than 25 mpg? And is it possible that the Hyundai XG350L (what, did they run out of names after they stole Tiburon from that great “Star Trek” episode?) gets only 18 mpg? My inner man could gloat: He could fit that Hyundai in the trunk of a Ford Everest and get almost the same mileage. | ||||||||
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Does Everyone Despise Ford Motor Company CEO Bill Ford As Much As I Do? A direct descendent of Henry Ford, Bill Ford has been popping up in Ford commercials all year. In an effort to deflect attention away from Ford vehicles, Ford has made himself the story, filling valuable TV airtime with tales of his family’s commitment to building high-quality cars and his personal commitment to the environment. My inner man loves the take-charge Ford, but my outer geek can’t stand his hypocrisy. How can a guy claim to be an environmentalist when his company’s exhibition space at the New York Auto Show was so packed with SUVs—from the behemoth Everest to the merely gargantuan Escape—that the entire area looked like the parking lot at a Detroit Lions football game? And not even my inner man could understand that one commercial in which Ford claims that he’s so addicted to fresh air that he never stays at a hotel where you can’t open the windows. Can you imagine being this man’s secretary? “Madge, I’m going on another business trip, so I need you to call every hotel in Phoenix and find out which ones have windows that open.” What’s next? A list of all the ATMs in a five-block radius that don’t charge a service fee? Is There An SUV Backlash Brewing? At a car show, there’s generally an inverse relationship between the size of a crowd gathered around a car and that car’s mileage figures. But there was growing evidence that people want more options than a tiny car that gets 23 miles per gallon and a planet-warming, soil-eroding, diet-breaking, widow-making SUV that gets 15. True, crowds climbed all over Ford’s biggest trucks, but there were sizeable gatherings around cars like the Mini Cooper (also known as Austin Powers’ new spy car in the upcoming sequel) and the Think, an electric car that was part of a well-hidden New York Power Authority display in the back corner of the basement. While my inner man joined a group of hooligan teenagers by kicking the Think’s plastic fenders and ridiculing it by saying, “Look at the toy car, daddy!” my inner geek started getting weak at the knees. Sure, the Think can’t go faster than 56 mph, but it can go 50 miles between charges—perfect for the daily commuter. And it emits no tailpipe exhaust—perfect for the people driving behind the daily commuter. OK, so start the hate mail again, America. My outer geek is still calling the shots. Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv © 2002 Newsweek, Inc. | ||||||||
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