By Louis A. Zona
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – My two brothers-in-law are proud of their automobiles, going way back in time.
Albert was a Ford man all the way, and Mike was a Chevy guy – although they did cross over now and then.
On fishing trips, they did not spend as much time fishing as they did discussing the qualities of both vehicles. God forbid that a foreign car name be thrown into the discussion.
When the World War II generation began purchasing cars, those two brands were definitely front and center.
Today, such friendly arguments would be nearly impossible since all cars generally look alike.
I might sound like your grandmother’s Model A, but I believe that my Subaru looks like every other car going down my street. And if Mike and Albert were still with me, they most certainly would not have made room in their garage for my Outback.
Here’s a little car nostalgia for you. When Albert decided on a new car for himself, he purchased not a Ford, as we would have expected, but rather a Chevrolet Bel Air.
That’s right, a green Chevy that he gave to me so that I could have a car for college commutes.
He liked that car for a number of reasons, but foremost among them being that it was so easy to take care of it, like changing the oil or even doing tune-ups.
It was a cold night in the fall of 1963 when the Cuban Missile Crisis was in the news.
It was the night that Russian boats carrying missiles were expected to power their way through the American blockade. It looked as though World War III was sure to happen, given the intensity of the situation.
It was on that night that my brother-in-law chose to change the oil in my Chevy. As he poured the oil into the crank case, I asked him about the scary situation in the waters outside Cuba. “Don’t worry, Lou. God will take care of this situation, and the Soviets will turn the ships away from the blockade,” he said. He was right. All that mattered was my brother-in-law wanted to do a kindness for me.
Our neighbor Alfred was one of the funniest people that I ever knew and an expert on older used cars.
When my Chevy finally reached the end of its time on Earth, I asked Alfred to look it over. He immediately crawled under the car and said, “A-ha!” He then opened the hood and shook his head as if to say, “Too bad.” He finally crawled under it once more and then stood up beside it and said, “Just what I thought – you need a new car!”
I must admit that there are some negatives that Consumer Reports magazine gets right about my foreign car. But they also get a thing or two wrong.
Police will pull you over for using a cellphone or other electronic device while driving. But they might also pull you over if you try to change the radio station or adjust anything else on the dash of this car while driving. You change the radio station at your own risk.
And speaking of magazine assessments of car quality, I think there is a definite prejudice against American cars. Every year, the American models finish near the bottom in overall quality. Frankly, the best cars that I’ve ever owned have been domestic models. I’ll never forget walking down a street in Munich, Germany, and there it was – a Cadillac Eldorado. I stopped and looked it over. The owner of the Caddy came out of his house and walked toward me. “The best car that I ever owned,” the German fellow said. At that moment, I felt like standing on the highest mountain and proclaiming my joy!
In the end, our choice of a car is about status. Driving around in a 10-year-old Chevy says a lot about a person. It may say to the world that Zona is cheap. It may also say to the world that Zona is not in the least bit interested in showing off a car as long as it gets me to the Dunkin doughnut shop. Or it could mean that I’m looking for pity.
Of course, none of these are true – with the possible exception of me being cheap. Plus, I could not care less about the looks of what my elderly cousin refers to as his “machine.”
I once had a neighbor whose car interior was so dirty that plants grew out of his back seat. Now I can say with some certainty that I’m not at that point, at least not yet. But my Subaru might just grow a tomato or two in the near future.