Category: default || By jt3y

Garrison Keillor has written about how car-buying in fictional Lake Wobegon, Minn., was "a matter of faith." According to Keillor, Catholics bought Chevrolets from Krebsbach Chevrolet; Protestants bought Fords from Bunsen Motors. One Lutheran who was "tempted by Chevyship," he writes, was coaxed into buying a Ford by his pastor, and it turned out to be a lemon.

Keillor was exaggerating, of course, but it wasn't that long ago when car ownership was a matter of some faith. Some families swore by General Motors, or Fords, or Chryslers. Another humorist, Jean Shepherd, wrote about how his father ("the Old Man") was a solid Oldsmobile man. In my family, one grandfather was a loyal Plymouth customer until his new Volare was creamed at a stoplight; he replaced it with a giant Cadillac Coupe de Ville. My uncle was a Chrysler loyalist, too, until fairly recently. For the last 20 years or so, he's been GM all the way. My dad has been a GM customer since he bought his first car --- a '59 Chevy Impala.

In general, though, those kinds of brand loyalties started to shift during the 1970s, when Detroit "quality" was abysmal and fuel-efficient cars from Japan and Germany began stealing serious market share. Being a traditional GM buyer didn't mean much when the best subcompact the General could offer was the Vega; who but the most hardcore fanatic would have felt bad about going across the street to the Honda dealer in that case?

Like most things, however, trends and traditions tend to stick around longer in the Mon Valley --- long past the time when they should have, in fact. The Mon-Yough area still seems to feature an inordinate number of American-made cars (or at least American brand names) compared with other parts of Pennsylvania, and the brand loyalty can still be fierce.

Take the group of friends I hang around with. I'm the oddball (no surprise there) in a gang of GM loyalists, who tolerate my Ford and Chrysler ownership. Last week, I spotted this story in the Miami Herald. According to the newspaper, Lincoln-Mercury has finally found a home for its unsold Marauder muscle cars; an "anonymous benefactor" has bought 18 of them for the Florida Highway Patrol:

One of the best things Miami FHP Trooper Mike Transue's new car has going for it is that it looks like a lot of other cars you'd find in a condo parking lot. ...

Go screaming past him and you'll be picked up on high-definition digital video and on radar pointing both forward and backward. Inside the car there is an infrared camera, so it's no longer the trooper's word against the driver.

''When you have the camera, they can't dispute it,'' Transue said.

When Transue hits the gas, he'll catch up faster than ever. And when he hits the dual sirens, the noise is louder.

Speed from a modified 302-horsepower engine is important. Instead of Transue taking a mile to catch somebody, he said he might catch them in a quarter of a mile.

I sent this story out, via email, to my gearhead friends --- GM nuts all of them --- knowing that I'd get insulted for my Ford ownership by at least one person. Sure enough, one quickly took the bait (I've edited these emails slightly):

Ha ha ha ha ha. One mile was highly optimistic. Try 2 or 3 miles ... piece of ---- police drivin' car.

We have a 2004 "Furd" Explorer for our trip this week, and it's so slow, you have to plan your lane merges like 1/2 mile before it's time so that you can get up enough speed. I found out that the third gear to fourth gear shift at wide-open throttle is at 90 mph, and it can't even smoke the tires with a brake stand in two or even four wheel drive! Also, if you put it in manual first gear and redline it to 6,000 RPMs, it won't shift. It will stay at 6,000 and continue to burn itself up.

This is the biggest piece of ---- that I've ever driven. I've been beating the ---- out of it. The tranny is already blown up --- lots of clunking and slipping. We'll help speed it to a quick death.

I love the smell of flame wars in the morning. I wrote back (copying the other people on the list):

Questions: What's a Ford Explorer weigh? How's it geared? And what's the aerodynamic drag? Quick answers: IT'S NOT MEANT TO GO FAST. Also, this is a rental vehicle, right? And we all know how well rental vehicles are treated.

To which he responded:

These questions are irrelevant. The word "Furd" implies the (s----y) quality and overall (lack of) driving experience. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Now the battle was on! (At this point, someone else who was on the list asked me why I felt it necessary to instigate trouble. Why does someone climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there!)

"Driving experience"? "Quality"? ... said the man with two Chevrolets, which stands for "Can Hear Every Valve Rattling On Long Extended Trips."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

And I haven't heard ANYONE bragging about General Motors' "quality." (Celebrity? Cavalier? Chevette? Sprint? Metro? Sunbird? QUALITY?? Are you on DRUGS? What was the "driving experience" delivered by those cars? More like "pushing experience.")

The GM "mark of excellence" is an oil spot on the driveway, as far as I can tell. Or maybe it's long pieces of paint peeling off the fenders and roof, like half of the "Generic Motors" cars I see around Pittsburgh.

To which the Chevy nut replied:

Actually, it's three Chevrolets.

I don't have any peeling paint ... none of us do, so I'm not sure what that is about. When you spoke of "Celebrity? Cavalier? Chevette? Sprint? Metro? Sunbird?" you were talking about most of the entry level GM cars that most high school punks buy and don't take care of. I noticed Caprice, Impala, and Roadmaster were not listed in your comparison ... and this V6 "Furd Exploder" had about as much power as those four-bangers listed above.

By the way: We put 1,000 miles on the FURD this week and the tranny is clunking around even worse ... at only 19k miles. Ha!

Another GM fan chimed in:

Peeling paint I can deal with. At least I don't have to replace heater cores and transmissions every 35,000 miles.

That was a dig at yours truly, who had a heater core in my previous sleek, fast Mercury blow out after two years. I never lost a transmission in that amount of time ... though I know of (ahem) a few Chevy drivers who did:

No, you can get at least 36,000 miles out of a Chevy transmission. Maybe 38,000, if you don't mind driving everywhere in second gear. And as for the peeling paint, if you haven't seen Pontiacs, Buicks and Oldsmobiles with big strips of paint blistering off of them, then try opening your eyes while you're driving!

Oh ... wait a minute ... did you say this was a V-6 Ford Explorer? Which weighs like 4,400 pounds? And you expect it to go fast? You, my friend, are on drugs. That's like taking a U-Haul truck to the dragstrip and being disappointed by its quarter-mile times.

I should know better than to argue with someone who's been driving Chevys for all of these years. All of the carbon monoxide leaks kill brain cells.

Now, at this point, we could have gone on forever and ever. There's certainly no end of good material to work with. But I decided to call a halt to the shooting for a very good reason, so I sent out this email to the list:

This is kind of a stupid argument. Comparing "GM vs. Ford quality" is like comparing "which sank faster, the Titanic or the Lusitania?" or "which smells worse, a dead skunk or a porta-potty in the summer time?"

Can't we realize we all have a common enemy ... and that is punks in tricked-out Honda Civics with giant mufflers that make them sound flatulent?

The terms of the treaty were accepted gladly:

Oh yeah, you're right. But it wasn't an argument at all, more like a hilarious discussion. I hope you enjoyed yourself because I did.

I did. But let this be a lesson to politicians everywhere: Before you try to heal the "red state, blue state" divide, you may want to unite the blue-oval, blue-square divide. And as for those DaimlerChrysler people? Um ... well ... they're Canada.

OK, the analogy isn't perfect. Feel free to flame away!

...

Speaking of Driving: Is anyone else freaked out by those giant LCD video billboards? Regular billboards are bad enough, but these flashing video billboards are a major distraction, especially at night.

I've seen them on the Parkway North and at that the top of Browns Hill Road in Greenfield, but the one that really would irritate me --- if I lived nearby --- is the one on Route 30 in East Pittsburgh, just past the end of the George Westinghouse Bridge.

There are houses directly opposite that billboard, and from what I can tell, the giant video screen shines directly into their windows at night. It must be a major irritation, especially when it blinks on and off to change messages.

Regular billboards may be obnoxious, but at night, any light coming from them is merely reflected --- these video billboards are generating their own light, which shines into nearby windows, and into the eyes of passing motorists. Not to mention the creepy "Big Brother" vibe that giant TV screens invariably cause.

It was bad enough when oversized video screens became de rigeur at sporting arenas and stadiums. Did we really need them on highways?