Dream car over again. Just like 70's?????
Putting the Dream Car Out to Pasture
The New York Times
By MIREYA NAVARRO
Published: July 27, 2008
JOHN FORSYTHE remembers the moment he knew the thrill was gone. It was six months ago, when a fill-up of his Toyota 4Runner topped $75, exceeding the pump’s limit. He had to swipe his credit card twice.
Mr. Forsythe had been deeply in love. He had custom-ordered the leather seats and the sound system for his S.U.V. and had waited three months for it in 2005, while living in San Antonio.
“This is the car that I always wanted to have,” said Mr. Forsythe, 31, a software engineer. “It was the car to have when you had reached a certain point in your life, when you were successful.”
But Mr. Forsythe, who now lives in San Francisco, said he could not justify $1,000 a month for gas, insurance and a car payment. The vehicle that had been a source of pleasure now feels like a ball and chain. So, this month, his heart heavy with memories of ski weekends in Tahoe and other good times, Mr. Forsythe sold his dream car. “The love affair is over,” he said. “I’m ready to let it go.”
Americans’ longtime romance with the automobile is being severely tested, and in some cases dashed entirely, now that every trip gives rise to worries about how much a fill-up costs, guilt over how much damage the exhaust is contributing to the destruction of the planet, and self-consciousness about the image a full-size behemoth conveys today about its driver.
If an S.U.V. not long ago exuded affluence, toughness and the ability to mow down lesser vehicles in the way, the message it may send now is more humble: I can’t afford a second car. I can’t get out of my lease. I can’t get rid of this because no one wants to buy it.
News of wrenching dislocations in the car industry arrive daily: automobile sales are at a 10-year low. Ford is converting factories from making high-profit trucks to subcompacts like the unlovely Fiesta. General Motors is trying to convince investors that it is not at the precipice of bankruptcy.
Beyond the bad economic news may lurk a less remarked shift in Americans’ psyches: a change in the role the automobile occupies in people’s emotional lives and self-image. For decades, automakers pitched cars as sex symbols, as extensions of drivers’ freedom or affluence or eye for beauty. Even if that pitch is inverted — if hybrids or minicars become the most desirable wheels, bespeaking a driver’s thriftiness or environmental sensitivity — is it really possible to be passionate about a compromise?
Can you love your Prius the way you once gave your heart to a 4Runner or a luxury sedan?
Increasingly, for many, the question is moot.
“I’m willing to not love it,” said Justin McCarthy, 43, a public relations executive from Long Beach, Calif., who is considering replacing his 10-year-old Volvo with a hybrid.
Mr. McCarthy said he bought his Volvo for aesthetics and comfort. It was good for impressing and pampering clients and roomy for his growing family.
But as he mulls a possible new purchase, he is keeping his emotions in check. “Before it was, Is it a cool car?” he said. “Now it’s, Is it going to be efficient and reliable transportation? Maybe it’s also a function of age, but it doesn’t have to fulfill anything in me, it just needs to be what it is: a mode of transportation.”
Such attitudes are a far cry from the way Americans have approached their car buying in the past, researchers say. Buyers have put a high value on reliability, durability and fuel efficiency, of course, but just as important have been looks and luxury.
“What are the neighbors going to think when they see the car? Is it going to impress them?” said Geoff Wardle, director of advanced mobility research at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., which is known for its auto design program. “When it comes to buying a car, people take leave of their senses.”
For many drivers, their cars are an extension of themselves, displayed as fashion or an accessory.
“You wear your car like you wear a Ralph Lauren suit,” said Clotaire Rapaille, an anthropologist and psychiatrist known as the car shrink, whose company, Archetype Discoveries Worldwide, studies consumer preferences.
But today some of these fashion statements — say, a Hummer — would land on the worst-dressed list.
Going green is climbing on the list of criteria for many consumers. Mary Conner, 52, vice president for merchandising for Gearys Beverly Hills, a jewelry and luxury gift store, has driven BMW convertibles for over 20 years. “I love the car,” she said. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”
But last month Ms. Conner put her BMW 330Ci convertible up for sale. She decided to hold on to the car she had originally bought for her two sons: a Mini Cooper, which gets twice the mileage per gallon.
The car’s smaller carbon footprint, not the price of gas, was Ms. Conner’s prime motivator. Even in wealthy Beverly Hills, she said, large cars seem outnumbered these days by Minis, Smart cars, Priuses and even Vespa scooters. At Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills, the wait for the tiny Smart is about a year.
“There’s a certain status that comes with a Jag or a BMW, but you really have to leave that at the door, the ego part,” Ms. Conner said. “My heart is going forward in a different way. I don’t need a luxury car anymore.”
But when asked how she felt about her Mini, Ms. Conner responded with all the enthusiasm of someone who settled. “I like it,” she said flatly.
In Gloversville, N.Y., another longtime BMW owner, Sam Hoye, switched to a Prius for his everyday car in September (he also owns a motorcycle and a truck for winter) for political reasons.
“I’m just trying to use less foreign oil,” said Mr. Hoye, 44, a finance company owner. “All that money is going out of the country, not to mention the price of gas. If everybody drove one it’d make a huge difference.”
One nice surprise, he said: clients seem more receptive to him when he shows up in a hybrid than when he did in a luxury car.
Michael A. Hammer, 52, a businessman and car collector in Beverly Hills, said his convertible Smart allows him to gauge public sentiment firsthand. Mr. Hammer, who owns more than 20 vintage and contemporary cars, said he gets the same reaction in the Smart as when he drives one of his 1950s models.
“People wave and give you the thumbs-up,” he said.
But even as they compromise on size, some drivers are still spending lavishly on looks. Vinnie Mandzak, a brand manager at Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills, said customers are spending as much on customizing cars with metallic candy colors, leather interiors and “goofy wheels” as on the car itself. And at the higher income levels, he noted, no one is getting rid of their bigger cars.
Not all automobile experts think a sea change has taken place. They maintain that Americans will always prefer big and showy automobiles if they can afford them. “What doesn’t change is the American psychology,” Dr. Rapaille said. “When do you have enough money? Never. When is your car big enough? Never. As soon as I have the money, I’m going to get a bigger car.”
Other experts disagree, though, saying that global warming and high oil prices are not going to fade as issues driving Americans’ purchasing choices.
“The trick now for the car companies is to come up with cars that won’t make people feel horrible about downsizing,” said Mr. Wardle of the Art Center College of Design.
The success of Zipcar, the car-sharing company that allows drivers to rent a vehicle locally by the hour, indicates that many drivers have come to view an automobile as an interchangeable commodity, like a refrigerator. Zipcar, which is popular on college campuses and in densely populated cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco, has 200,000 members in 26 states and is adding about 10,000 customers a month, it says.
Corinna Psomadakis, 22, an office manager for a Web site in San Francisco, is one. There was a time not long ago when young people like Ms. Psomadakis, who moved from Chicago after graduating from college a year ago, would have viewed buying their own car as a rite of passage. “It seemed like kind of a milestone that I’d be in a place where I could buy a car,” she said.
But now she makes do by taking public transportation or cabs and renting a Zipcar a few times a month. She said she does not see herself as ever owning a car. Concern for the environment is a big factor.
“I used to leave notes on Hummers, how inconsiderate it was for the rest of us,” she said.
Now, she said, “I do my part by not driving a car.”
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