Montrose - Daily Press

Andy Rooney

Columnist

It’s hard to remember the cars you’ve owned after a while, probably because there are some you’d like to forget. The first car I remember my parents owning was called a Durant. It was a good car and I don’t know what happened but they stopped making Durants before we sold ours. My father may have had a knack for picking losers when it came to buying cars. The word used was “lemon.” Dad bought several lemons. The next car he bought was called a Hupmobile. He finally did it right, though, because when I was in high school learning to drive, Dad bought a Packard and that was a winner. I’ve never gotten over thinking Packards were the best cars ever built.

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I think there are eight cars I’ve known well in my life. Some I know because I owned them, but I was familiar with a lot of cars before I was old enough to drive. Uncle Bill drove a Reo when I was young and he let me steer it in the driveway. Reos disappeared while I was in high school. They went along with Studebakers, Nashs and Stutzes. The last Pierce-Arrow, a great car, was made in 1938. I bought two Ford station wagons when the kids were young. I liked them, but there have been a lot of cars in my life that I liked as much. I had a Buick, a Pontiac, a Plymouth, a Dodge, and a Desoto. I never owned a Cadillac or a Lincoln. They were too expensive. I don’t know why some cars were produced year after year while others, like Hudson, Essex, Hupmobile and my Durant, faded away and the companies went out of business.

People are generally loyal to their cars. About 50 percent of the people who buy a car and keep it for four or five years become attached to the brand. They buy the same brand again when they need a new car. Ford owners buy Fords, Plymouth owners buy Plymouths.

It seems to me — although I’m guessing because I don’t have any statistics — that Buick and Oldsmobile owners have been especially loyal. Oldsmobile (sob) died in 2004.

Most people buy a car as a matter of practical transportation, but as with anything, there are always people looking for something special who are willing to pay for it. There was a boy in my class whose father was rich, and every three years they bought a new Pierce-Arrow. The principle distinction of the Pierce-Arrow was that the headlights were prominently displayed in the fenders. No other carmaker put them there. The Pierce-Arrow also had a remarkable gear ratio, one that enabled the driver to go up hills without shifting down to a low gear.

The first foreign car to make a serious dent in the American market was the Volkswagen. It wasn’t until about 20 years ago that the Japanese moved in with their relatively cheap, well-built Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans and Subarus and took over just about half the American car market. Americans are cheaper than they are patriotic when it comes to paying for a car. Henry Ford would not understand how foreign cars became so popular, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting this happen.

I keep my cars. I’m not quick to turn one in. I have a car now that I bought 41 years ago, although I confess it’s special. It’s a Sunbeam Tiger with a Ford V8 engine that I bought new in 1966 for $3,600. I wouldn’t sell it now for $50,000. It’s such a small car with such a big engine that it’ll blow the doors off anything else on the road, and I have to remember to act like a grownup when I’m driving it.

I often look at the stream of cars going in the other direction on a highway and think about how good and dependable our cars are. No matter what the brand, they don’t often break down. The reason we choose one kind of car over another is not usually very substantial. Cars, considering that they are complicated pieces of machinery, are less trouble than just about anything else we own. Our car sits out front or maybe in our driveway or garage, just waiting to be cranked up so it can take us anywhere we want to go. Cars are magic and we’re so used to them that we don’t give the manufacturers the credit they deserve. Thank you, Henry Ford. The Tin Lizzie changed our lives.

— Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at a.rooney1919@yahoo.com.

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