Date the Car, not the Man

I’m on a vehicle-buying spree. I have a new Kubota diesel cart, and I just joined the brotherhood of minivan owners.

My old car is a Ford Explorer which I liked upon receipt mostly because I inherited it. When my dad was declining, his old car started to die, and he needed a new one, so I found him a newer version of the same model. He liked his old Explorer, so I figured he would like to stay in the same lane. When he passed away, the car became mine. The price was perfect.

I am not picky about cars, so I thought it was great. It’s a Limited; the second-fanciest Explorer available when it was made. By my standards, it was luxurious. After all, when I was born, very few cars had electric windows, and maybe half had no air conditioning. It takes very little to impress me.

The Explorer has perforated leather seats, alloy wheels, front and rear air conditioning, all sorts of data connectivity, multiple USB ports, two sunroofs, adjustable mood lighting, and a bunch of other stuff I will probably remember after making this list. It’s more luxurious than my dad’s ’91 Town Car, although his ’85 Town Car was better. By ’91, real luxury was gone from the American car market.

The Explorer is practical for one person or a couple. I put a custom vinyl mat in the back to protect the car, and I use it for dump runs, buying pool chlorine, carrying Costco hauls, and every other thing you can imagine. It’s pretty comfortable, and because it’s unusually wide, it has more room than competing cars, at least in the beam.

It has its issues. For one thing, the geniuses at Ford put the water pump inside the engine, and they made it to last 60,000 miles. When the seals blow, coolant goes into your engine, and you get to buy a new one. Ford’s answer to the problem was to have one seal inside another, with a little weep hole to tell you when the first seal was letting coolant pass. The idea is that you see the coolant and go get a new water pump before the second seal goes. The obvious question is, “How many people check under their car for coolant every week?” Not many, because almost no one knows Ford pumps are time bombs, water pumps are supposed to last 200,000 miles, and they are not supposed to destroy engines.

My pump went out at something like 75,000 miles, and the $2500 I paid for a new one was on the low end.

It’s also somewhat cramped longitudinally. I guess they maximized the cargo area in order to excuse putting two rumble seats in it, but anyway, you can’t really use a baby seat in this car. Once it’s in there, the person in the front passenger seat will have to sit close to the windshield, so anyone over 5′ tall will be jammed up. What if you have two babies? Forget it.

One of the main excuses people use for buying SUV’s is that they hold families. That rings hollow when you’re tall, you have a baby in the back, and it’s your wife’s turn to drive.

There are other problems that are less severe, but I don’t feel like writing a treatise.

For over a year, my wife has been dealing with the cramped passenger seat, and there isn’t a whole lot of room in the backseat for the baby’s junk. We have been looking for something new.

At first, I thought a Highlander or 4Runner would be better, but they are even smaller inside than the Explorer, so I dropped those options. Then I considered a Toyota Sequoia. It had some advantages I liked. First, not American. I know American cars are a lot better than they were back when we handed the Japanese world automotive dominance, but Japanese is still considerably better. Second, not Ford. My relatives and I have had enough of Ford’s ludicrous engineering mistakes. Third, bigger than an Explorer.

It seemed perfect, but eventually, I had an awakening, and I found out the SUV platform is inferior and based almost solely on curb appeal and consumer insecurity. Most people are foolish to buy SUV’s, and I don’t mean a little foolish.

Minivans are way better. Cheaper, roomier inside, easier to work on, more versatile…better in every conceivable way unless you need four-wheel drive or a high ground clearance. Why doesn’t everyone drive one instead of a $70,000 SUV? Because minivans are not glamorous enough for them. Men are afraid of what women will think of them. Women are afraid other women will think they settled for beta males. Men are afraid other men will doubt their machismo. It’s idiotic.

SUV’s look great. At least some do. They look like tough rigs made for all sorts of rough-and-tumble adventures. They can be pimped out to look like bad boy vehicles. But they are small inside, they waste space that could be used for other things, and many of them offer features that most people don’t need. They’re harder to load and unload. They’re harder to get in and out of. There isn’t much good you can say about them, except that they don’t look like minivans.

My buddy Mike drives a diesel Mercedes SUV. It’s a piece of junk. The new MSRP was something like $70,000. I forget. He paid something like $20,000 when it was fairly new, because German cars don’t hold their value. They break down a lot, and they are very expensive to fix, so a lot of ghetto bros are out there driving three-year-old German cars on P.F. Chang’s salaries.

This car has made him miserable. For several years, it had a problem that made it go into limp mode over and over, and no one could fix it. He used to call me from the road during long trips, telling me he was creeping down the road with everyone passing him. He put a lot of money into it before he finally got it to work.

It’s not roomy inside. The Explorer is actually nicer. It doesn’t look particularly good. To change the battery, he had to cut up the carpet under the passenger seat.

I told him I was thinking about getting a minivan, and he told me how great they were. I said he should get one, and he acted like I had said he should date Melissa McCarthy for her personality. Oh, no. It wasn’t for him.

My friend Alonzo used to have 5 kids in his house, and he drove a Dodge SUV. When I said I was thinking of getting a minivan, he approved. I said he should get one. His first wife is now gone, two daughters are out of the house, but he has remarried, so he is back up to 5 kids. Oh, no. He couldn’t be seen driving a minivan, but he didn’t mind using a shoehorn to get his family into an SUV!

I guess this can be partially traced to a mental illness common among American women: they date cars, other status objects, and money, not men. Women do not want to be seen getting out of cars that are not overpriced and impractical. For this reason, men feel compelled to buy stupid vehicles they can’t afford or which just don’t work.

I have never identified with my car. I have had a couple of sports cars, a classic convertible, and two motorcycles, and I used to run around on my dad’s yacht, but it never occurred to me to use any of those things to impress women. I was always naive. I thought women were serious when they claimed they weren’t materialistic or shallow, but both of those adjectives apply to most American women.

I remember being at a fuel dock, putting diesel in my dad’s yacht. Some blonde foreign girl who was clearly an au pair said something about how we should take her with us. I didn’t even acknowledge her; I guess that was rude, but her remark was stupid and wildly optimistic, and I didn’t know where to go with it. Just because some guy hired you based on your looks so you would live in his house and watch his kids doesn’t mean every man in America will invite you into his life based on brief, awkward encounters.

When I got my Harley, I got it because I loved the machine, not the Harley-owner religion. I didn’t get it so I could shave my head, grow a chin beard, tie a dishrag on my head, get 50 tattoos, and dress like the kind of motorcycle gang member I would be afraid to sit next to in a bar. The world has enough outlaw dentists and accountants. I was amazed to find out women would show me their breasts when I rode by, just because I had a Harley.

I never used my sports cars to entice women. Why would I want someone who was attracted to a car? Might as well hand her the keys and take a cab home. I got the cars because I really liked them.

When my wife came to the US, she was partially infected with the fancy-car virus. She wanted a Land Rover or Land Cruiser. Initially designed to resemble a Land Rover, except without the constant breaking-down part, the Land Cruiser has become a chic accessory for pampered women. Go figure.

I told her it would never happen, and we have been using the Explorer since she arrived.

As for Land Rovers, they are all junk, and they always have been. Mechanically, they are pathetic. I will never buy junk again. Also, they are extremely expensive by my standards. Buying misery is bad enough when it’s affordable.

The fancier Land Cruisers my wife would have wanted are gone and have been replaced by a Lexus model. It has a very high rocker panel, so it’s hard to get in. Inside, just like a Land Rover, it’s basically an SUV, so forget practicality. It has a bunch of expensive off-road parts that will break down and cost money to fix, yet which will never provide any benefit. It’s like a Gucci purse. All hype. No help.

I told my wife we needed to consider a minivan, and at first, she was bummed out.

Once we started packing our son around, my wife started seeing the light. Getting the baby in and out of the SUV was somewhat difficult, and there were the space issues. It was also obvious the floor height would be a disadvantage when he started getting in and out on his own. Then there was the thought of trying to put two baby seats in an SUV.

Eventually, she got excited about minivans, and then we took a test drive. She loved it. Could not wait to get one. She could move her seat back with a baby seat behind it. There was all sorts of air in the cabin. The sliding doors made ingress and egress painless.

It took us a while to find a dealer I could stand. We went to Ocala Honda, and while the salesman was great, the guy they sent to negotiate the sale was so awful, it was as though a competing dealership had sent him as a mole to repel customers. We didn’t ask for a quote, but he gave us one (“It will just take a minute!), and it was over $59,000, including a trade on the Ford. That’s about $20,000 above market, so I knew he thought I was a world-class, freak-show-grade simpleton, and I also knew there was no way he would ever come down to Earth.

I decided to check out Sam’s Club and Costco, which supposedly got people great deals.

Don’t believe it. They just hand your phone number over to salesmen, and those salesmen offer you the same lame discounts they offer everyone else. Complete scam. They called, texted, and emailed for weeks. It was as though I had invited a cloud of biting flies into the shower with me. I had to start blocking numbers and deleting texts.

When I got serious, I emailed a dealership that had exactly what I wanted. A couple of emails later, I had a deal I considered acceptable, so we bought the car. Was it the greatest deal possible? No, but I didn’t care, and I didn’t push it. As I have matured as a Christian, I have come to understand the importance of generosity. God is generous to the generous. If the dealer got, say, $1000 more than I really had to pay, great. They have employees to pay and other bills to worry about. I don’t mind if they do okay on the deal, and I can afford it.

Now we have a Honda Odyssey. We drove it on our weekly Costco trip today. It was a joy from start to finish.

The ride is far better than the Ford’s. The spaciousness was relaxing. It was quiet. It had lots of pep. The electronics were better. Unlike the Ford, it had a GPS that actually worked. The sliding doors made embarking and disembarking a breeze. We adore it.

It also pulls over twice what the Ford does. So much for he-man SUV’s.

It has some issues. The engine shuts down at stoplights if you don’t turn off that “feature.” Also, it has a moronic fuel-saving scheme. At highway speeds, some cylinders shut off. This causes vibration, and eventually, it kills the engine. Honda’s solution is to make the stereo pump sound designed to mask the noise.

They also provide unreliable motor mounts full of oil, to absorb the stress. These tear open eventually, and then you waste a day and spend $600 for new mounts.

For $145 or so, depending on the brand, you can buy a simple device that kills this feature and saves your engine and mounts. You loose maybe one mile per gallon. Boo hoo. I have a device on order. Takes 5 minutes to install.

Other than that, I think the car is sound. The next-best choice is a Toyota Sienna, but you can’t move or remove a Sienna’s seats easily, so it’s a stupid design that will not work for me. I can shift stuff around in the Odyssey, and I can put nearly anything in it.

I love it, but then my feelings about my worth as a man are not closely related to the kind of car people see me driving. I’m the guy who used to show up at the gun range with a pink suitcase I got for nothing, and I outshot everyone I saw there, reliably, except for a couple of people. I guess that bothered the guys who wore tactical pants and camo to shoot badly at paper targets.

This car is great. I should have bought it sooner. I am thrilled with it. So is my wife.

Now, I quite literally prefer it to the most expensive SUV made, whatever that is. If I had that SUV, I would sell it and keep the Odyssey. The SUV would bring me misery. The Odyssey brings me pleasure and saves me pain.

Thank you, God. What a wonderful addition to our lives.