Women and cars!

If you read Althouse occasionally or regularly, you know about Ann's January car accident, the self-sacrificing death of her New Beetle "Li'l Greenie," and the advent in her life and self-image of a very different car, the suave Audi, Silvio. As a car freak myself, this was the post of hers I got the biggest kick out of and most identified with, as she exulted childishly: "A car! A car! A car! A car! Finally, a real car that completely thrills me!"

Me too! Me too! Me too! Me too!

I grew up in Chicago where, I tell people, "you sprout wheels at puberty." The minute I was old enough to get my driver's license (16), I was tooling around town in my trusting parents' VW bus, chauffering my best friend Margaret up to the near north side, where we'd cruise around and look for her boyfriend. I quickly discovered a truth: when women love to drive, we
***REALLY*** love to drive. I am notorious in my family for my car obsession, and I'm told that my independent and feisty grandmother Dot, Dorothy Kuh, my father's mother, was just the same. All I can say is, even back in 1962, when our hair was frozen in bouffant and our faces were pale with fear and frosted lipstick, before we had power and freedom (that didn't come till 1969), there was power and freedom behind the wheel of a car. There still is.

Living in New York City, it makes no sense to have a car unless you're rich. A garage costs much more than an apartment used to, and parking on the street is a degrading Hobbesian struggle. I never considered buying a car -- but then in late 1988 I won a new Chevrolet Corsica on "Wheel of Fortune." Metallic dark gray on the outside and red on the inside, like a dolphin -- I named her Ruby after a particularly smart dolphin I'd read about, which also went with the old Chicago radio slogan "Hruby (pronounced Ruby), Hruby, Hruby, Hruby, Hruby Chevrolet."

Ruby lived exactly nine years (nine lives?) before being totaled in a car wreck that left me unscathed, much like Li'l Greenie. She was the only new car I've ever owned, but I was hooked on having a car (and had figured out that I could stash it in a garage in New Jersey). Since then there's been Rusty, an old Honda Accord from Montréal that handled best of all my cars but rotted out with rust from all that snow and salt (I tried to buy another used Accord and discovered that people don't ever sell them); Ronnie, a matte silver Pontiac given to me by my friend Dalma, whose nonagenarian parents were no longer driving him (he was a Reagan-era car, whence the name), and wrecked by a crazy bitch I stupidly lent him to in June 2001; and Emmy (for emerald and for M-E), a green Ford Taurus SHO that I bought by accident, not knowing it was a cult car, a 220 HP hot rod disguised as a sedan -- a very happy discovery. Emmy is a gold-digger -- champagne for gasoline, platinum spark plugs, and she gets very hot under the hood -- but worth it just for the way she beats everybody else out of the tollbooth.

See? My true colors. Not so nice and demure. I am Woman, good and greasy.

- amba

Comments

[Joe]

You know what your blog......or any blog for that matter needs? Pictures.....especially if you are talking about women and cars......

[amba]

Yeah, but who wants to see a picture of a used woman with a used car??

[MrProliferation]

Wow, that's some Ford Taurus. As the proud owner of one on its last legs I can attest that mine couldn't beat a three-legged dog out of a toll booth. Maybe I should look at an SHO since I'm going to be car shopping soon.

[joe]

When do you go from being used to being a classic? My car that was old in 1985 is a classic now....

[amba]

Ah hah! I'll remember that rejoinder!