What kind of Guy was I?

So far, I've covered those first and memorable cars from the beginning of my 20+ year string of constant car-changing.  I've also walked you through the seven Honda vehicles I've put in our driveway.




One might think, from the into paragraph above, that I at least had a "type" when it came to cars that I drove.  This is not the case.  In this entry I'll look back at my periodic attempts to figure out if I might be "a truck guy" or a "SUV guy."

Coming up on a promotion at work and getting ready to move across the country, I decided that I should own an SUV.  It made sense, really.  It was the end of 1999, and everybody was driving Ford Explorers.  (Not everybody was crashing them at that point, which would start making the news the following year.)

So I tried becoming an "SUV Guy."

My friend had a 1996 Toyota 4Runner, and he loved it.  It was a manual transmission, four-cylinder base model, but it was cool-looking and fun.

So, I went and got the same vehicle, but with the SR5 package and V6 engine.  In green.  It was sweet!  It was also expensive.  As in the most expensive purchase that I had ever made (or a bank had ever made on my behalf).

When the realities of this vehicle's size (it was actually much smaller inside that I realized) height (my wife struggled to get our infant in and out) appetite for fuel (should have seen that coming) and cost (see above) came to light, I began to doubt my purchase.  I never really needed it to do anything SUV-ish.  There were no snow- or rock-covered trails for me to blaze like those SUV Guys did in the print advertisements.  What's more, because it was such a massive investment, I never wanted to use it for the mundane things it could do but would trash it, like hauling bark for the flower bed.

When news hit of SUV rollovers, that was it for me.  The 4Runner was awesome, yes... but not really awesome for me.  It turned out that I wasn't really an SUV Guy.

My next thought was to emphasize the "utility" aspect of what had appealed to me about sport utility vehicles.  With this in mind, I headed to a used car dealership with my sights on a low-mileage pickup.

I was going to be a "Truck Guy!"

I found a 1999 Mazda B2300.

It was a 5-speed manual, rear-wheel drive, extended cab model just like the one shown above.

No cruise control, no power windows, no power locks.  It was a legitimate truck, and it still had the essentials:  air conditioning, power steering, anti-lock brakes, and even rear-opening doors for the extended cab.  The bed already had scratches and dings in it, so I had no problem throwing in dirt, grass, the lawn-mover, or whatever else needed to be moved around.

Suddenly, I was useful again!  I was a real Truck Guy--although I didn't talk it up too much, because I figured that there might be some Ford, Dodge, or Chevy big-truck owners who wouldn't consider this four-cylinder, japanese-branded, non-4x4 to be a real truck.  Nevertheless, I felt vindicated in the purchase.

For a while.

Then we wanted to go somewhere as a family.  We were living in a beautiful part of the country that we wanted to explore.  We had a toddler and two dogs.  And my wife still had her sedan.

At the same time that I was grappling with the relative limitations of trucks and SUVs, car makers were starting to figure out that a lot of people were doing the same thinking that I was.  (Of course, most of those people weren't constantly ACTING on those thoughts and changing cars.)  The result was a new kind of vehicle, designed for people that really didn't need the off-loading abilities of an SUV and wanted to comforts of a car.

The Crossover was born.  And I was off to the dealership (again) to get my hands on one of these new vehicles...

I bought a 2002 Toyota Highlander.  This vehicle, developed from the Toyota Camry sedan, promised me all the space I needed to take the family comfortably out on a trip.  No more struggling to get our daughter into the vehicle!  No more lack of a real back seat!  I opted for all-wheel-drive (much better for the kind of driving we were doing than the low-range, four-wheel-drive we had on the 4Runner) and avoided the higher-level trip packages to keep the cost down.  The dealership had one that fit that description:  a four-cylinder model in gold.

This vehicle did great.  It had all the room we deeded and let us enjoy trips out with the dogs.  We used it to make a 2000-mile move across the continent.  Although it had some initial quality-control issues when we first took delivery (door seals and a defective steering unit) it didn't give us many problems.

The few places the Highlander fell short all had to do with my decision to opt for a base model.  I had never owned a big, SUV-type vehicle before, other than the 4Runner, and that one had tinted windows (thanks to the SR5 package).  I had wrongly assumed, when deciding against such options on the Highlander, that these were just nice-to-have things.  But when living in the summer heat of the South with a toddler and dogs, I began to see the value of tinted windows.  The other base-model limitation was the powertrain.  The four-cylinder/four-speed automatic transmission combination worked great when it was just me in the car:  I got about 20mpg and the Highlander would move out smartly.  I soon discovered, however, that this performance quickly degraded as soon as you started adding passengers and cargo.  A friend of mine bought a V6 highlander around the same time, and was much happier with both fuel efficiency and performance.


Coming out of the Highlander experience, I think I learned that I was a "Crossover Guy."  Or at least I was more of whatever that kind of guy is who buys cars that try do do everything.  I wan't sure.  And, a few years later, I would test that theory by doing a stint as a "Minivan Guy."  (See my post, "The Honda Parade, part 2."

But before I would terrorize the roads in a Honda Odyssey, I thought that maybe I needed to slow down on constantly trading in vehicles for new ones.  I thought that maybe frugality was the way to go, so I tried a brief stint as a "Used Car Guy."  Just cheap transportation!  That's it!  I would save money and make up for all the cars, trucks, SUVs, etc., that I had been cycling through.

I bought a used, 2001 Ford Taurus SE.  In gray-green.  It was a former Hertz rental.  It met the requirements (used basic transportation) but it was not meant to be.  The dealership's thorough cleaning of the interior hid the rental-car past for a few weeks after I took it home, but hot Southern weather eventually summoned every spill, cigarette and other substance that had been left deep in the seats or carpeting, sending odors into the cabin.  Given the Taurus's floaty driving characteristics, it became a nauseating experience.  It lasted less than a year.  I can't say that I'll never be a used-car owner, but I know I wouldn't call myself a "Used Car Guy."

Most recently, I tried another experiment in car ownership--one that I never had gotten out of my system, despite reading car magazines for years and fantasizing about owning powerful and cool cars.

So, on my 39th birthday and without notice, I walked into the local Dodge Dealership and bought...

A 2012 Dodge Charger.  Just like this one.  292 horsepower and an 8-speed automatic transmission.   (EIGHT speeds!  The transmission is built in Germany--It's also used in BMWs!)  It had a high-tech V6 that could shut down half the cylinders and manage 31mpg on the highway.  (No lie.  I got 30.5 mpg during one trip across the state!)  And it was FAST.  Speeding-ticket fast.  Hooligan-styly driving fast.  This car was great--but it was also bad news.  It was largely impractical.  It was big on the outside and small on the inside.  The trunk was surprisingly tiny.

Sometimes, the universe lets you know you've made a foolish decision.  The last thing I needed was this car, and shortly after I got it, I was hit by a driver who changed lanes without looking.  He was driving... a Honda Accord.

I am not a "Muscle Car Guy."