Out of the loop when buying cars

Jun 13, 2009

Comments on this story (3)

I was reading Jim Kenzie's piece about Honda Civics last week. Top-selling car in Canada for 11 years, apparently; I've never had a Civic.

My family has had lots of various cars in the stable over the years. There was a Corolla at one point, a Tercel, the always popular AMC wagons, a couple of Acura Legends, a parade of North American minivans, even a couple of Explorers and a Cherokee, back when gas was free.

A Ramcharger, two Chrysler Intrepids, a Mercury Topaz, a couple of Ford Broncos, a Suzuki Sidekick, a Toyota RAV4, a little pickup, a big pickup ... wait. My sister had a Civic. About 20 years ago. She traded for something bigger, as I recall.

The whole world knows that Kenzie's favourite car is a Mini. I've only driven one for a week, and while I loved it very much, I know I couldn't make it work in my family.

I buy based on utility; it's like drooling over the quarterback as you date someone from the math club. (She said, as if a quarterback had ever asked her out.)

I've always missed the boat when it came to cars. When everyone in my peer group drove their first BMW or Audi to prove they had a job (think back to the '80s, when Greed was Good), I drove a cargo van because work took precedence over everything else. When my little sister got married, we arrived in a giant orange cube truck – the only vehicle we had with air conditioning.

By the time we could afford the move to sportier cars, everyone seemed to start driving tarted-up pickup trucks. By the time I noticed that trend, well, the kids were arriving and it just didn't matter.

I was pulling muscles in my back every day getting two kids into the child seats in the back of a two-door car, and I was ready to sell my next fertile egg for a minivan.

If I'd been paying attention, maybe I could have just been buying a Civic all along. It seems everyone else was; I could have been trendy. I mean, if everyone else is doing it, there must be some merit to it, right?

While Kenzie mentioned banging his head and jamming his knee on the Civic's parking brake, he also noted pretty much everything else about the car was all the owners believe it to be. The upshot? The car deserves its reputation. It's a perfect date – from the math club.

After finishing Kenzie's piece and lamenting that I'd forever been out of the Flavour of the Month loop, an email dropped in from a news service I subscribe to.

It announced that there is a car that has sold 10 million units over three decades. These are some serious numbers, and I clicked it open.

The Little Tikes Cozy Coupe.

Finally, a bestseller I can proudly say I was ahead of the curve on. Christopher had a Cozy Coupe 15 year ago.

He loved it– until, like Kenzie, he started smacking his head on it.

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Saturday in Wheels and Mondays in

Living. www.lorraineonline.ca

Toronto Star