I never intended to drive that obnoxious piece of excessive metal. I love my two-door 1986 Tercel. I really do. I love being able to squeeze into spots that everyone else passes by. I love filling up the gas tank on $10. But an hour after Stan left, as I was leaving his place with Fritz, his dog, my eyes breezed over an envelope on the counter. Next to it, a post-it said lovingly, "Just in case they clean the streets and it has to be moved, here are my keys. I don’t have to tell you to be careful." Dear Stan. Now I had to prove to myself that I could handle his beast of a machine—a ‘99 Ford Expedition, a.k.a. "The Panther"—the superhero of sport-utility vehicles.
I found his baby lodged between a sedan and another S.U.V. I trembled. It’s a big car—or truck, however you want to categorize a vehicle that runs on 12 miles per gallon, seats 6 people, has a V8 engine and power everything, including butt warmers under the seats. I glided my hand along the waxed hood. My toes tingled and my pulse quickened. Just a few times around the block, I told Fritz. I looked around—as if Stan was going to pop out of the alley--and after five minutes of locking and unlocking the doors with the remote sensor, settled into the leather seats. Yes, leather seats. S.U.V.s are marketed toward the adventurous, outdoor type, but most people who drive them are like Stan, accountants who live vicariously through their "toys." They also need to be able to tell the guys at the office they have leather interior.
I turned the key and expected a bear-like roar to frighten me, force me back to my four-speed piece of tin, but the sound was just a murmur. Very pleasant. For three minutes, I properly warmed it up and turned on the butt warmers full blast. I pulled out, managing not to tap either surrounding vehicles and scoured the street. Nine S.U.V.s on a city block, all parking in spaces that could fit two of my Tercels. S.U.V.s are hogs. Plus, once you sit behind the helm of one, your personality changes. The inherent warrior within—the bushman buried after centuries of living within the comforts of society—is unleashed.
Fritz lapped my face, telling me to get a move on. There I was, towering above the pedestrians with power at my hands, ready to wield around stray shopping carts, zip past cabdrivers and I had no place to go. I really should show off my newly adopted wheels, I thought. I called my friend Paul from Stan’s car phone. After graduating from college, Paul, a former ‘87 Ford Escort driver and member of the Sierra Club, putted into the Chevrolet dealer and leased a Blazer the day he signed on with Andersen Consulting. "Literally you’re above everyone else. You’re powerful and bigger than everyone," he said. Poor Paul. Soon the Sierra Club would be calling him, asking him to withdraw his membership. I decided to skip his visit.
For a while I maneuvered around the block getting used to the gas and brake pedals. This is like driving a bus, only I have no children. Just then a woman in her Pathfinder passed me with her kid in the front and I remembered a TV commercial for an S.U.V. A businessman comes out of work from a high rise when a slick S.U.V rumbles by. He wonders, "Where is he going—the mountains, the desert, the beach?" Well, folks, he is probably rushing off to the suburbs so he can pick up his kids from school.
The S.U.V. is about fantasy. The majority of Americans drive back and forth to work, to school, not up and down the mountain range. Why not choose an Expedition, Pathfinder, Blazer, Mountaineer to make those paths we carve more exciting? And who isn’t plagued with that image of the 1970 era station wagon à la Chevy Chase? Who wants to be seen in one of those around town?
The root of my dislike for S.U.V.s began in high school when this girl, let’s call her Kelli the cheerleader, was the first person in our class to get her license and her own car—a white Jeep Cherokee. Every morning she scrambled into school at the last minute and parked in the guest or faculty lot without ever getting reprimanded. And every afternoon she zipped out, with ABBA tunes wafting from her windows.
Strapped in my panther black S.U.V., sunglasses on, double mochacinno resting in the holder and Fritz poking his head out the window, I was on the lookout for girls like Kelli. It was neat zooming up behind puny convertibles, having them to yield to me for once. Cars with out-of-state license plates saw me coming and bucked out of the way, allowing my to zip right in front of them.
But some cars just didn’t accelerate as fast as I would have liked, like the jerk in front of me. Why won’t he move over? Can’t he see me? "Let’s get a move on, buddy!" I shouted. Fritz looked at me strangely. Finally I managed to wriggle in front of the car, blocking his view. Serves him right. At another light, the delicate flower of a car, a Mazda Miata, glided to my right and inched up every second. Did she really think she could outrun The Panther? My foot vibrated from tapping so fast. The light turned green. The Miata was in my rearview mirror. Oh yes, I was smokin’ hot.
It’s all about power. I accelerated faster when I drove Stan’s S.U.V., a.k.a. The Panther. I had a different attitude, too, as if I received a testosterone injection every time I pressed the gas pedal or cranked the baby into four-wheel drive. I was a dominator in my S.U.V, shouting "Get outta my way you sonofa..." every time I encroached upon a slow moving vehicle. This from someone who always said, "Now, honey let’s not get worked up over nothing," to Stan whenever someone in a larger S.U.V. cut him off and the veins in his neck ballooned to the size of my fingers. But as soon as I peeled around a corner and left some poor sedan having to turn on their wiper blades to clean off the dust I kicked up, my tone of voice would change as I soothed The Panther’s dashboard and cooed, "Good girl."
As soon as my Panther skulked into the supermarket parking lot, two guys checked me out. "Hey Bob, that girl is cool," one of them said. I also saw a girl that looked like Kelli wince as I slinked by. She had one of those "compact" S.U.V.s. I had the top of the line Expedition edition. I slid in my ABBA CD.
That Friday I turned in The Panther to Stan in good shape despite my off-roading experience (ok, it was a gravel road) in the state park. My tin box was where I had abandoned it, neatly tucked between two mammoth S.U.V.s. I crawled in, a little shaky and still feeling as if I was humming down the highway weaving in and out of traffic. I slammed the door shut, feeling very vulnerable. I don’t have to feel this way. If I spent $12 on groceries a week, I too could drive an S.U.V. I too could rumble down the highway without fearing that one tap by an S.U.V. could propel my Tercel into the median. If I wanted to, I could trade in my Tercel in for the Toyota 4-Runner. I could even use the $500 trade-in to pay for the butt warmers.
But I don’t have any safaris planned this year. Let’s face it, people drive S.U.V.s for the sake of image, not practicality. Do we really need four wheel drive for potholes? And if you don’t have a garage, why do you want to park your S.U.V. so close to Tercels—who don’t mind one bit thumping into the bumper of your gargantuan gas guzzling automobile? And you don’t look that cool, in fact you look pretty silly trying to put your S.U.V. into four-wheel drive while you go over a speed bump in the 7-Eleven parking lot.
