You’ve seen them lurking about on the street, looking sexy and exciting, daring you to come closer. You’ve brushed up next to them and felt a tingle that spreads throughout you like a shock wave. You’ve touched them and been transported to worlds of fantasy and adventure. They can be difficult to handle but that is part of their charm. They are anything but practical, they drive you nuts and they are definitely high maintenance. “They” are sports cars – the little two-seater variety, usually with a soft top, no legroom and a trunk the size of a knapsack. If you had one “back when,” then their resurgence in recent years has probably caused you to suffer at least one attack of nostalgia and several pangs of desire. In all likelihood your first real true love was a balky, cantankerous hunk of steel and chrome that took all your money to maintain. Guess what? They still do.
Vehicles that boomers were attracted to basically came in three flavors: vroom vroom, zoom zoom and putt putt. The vroom vroom category included things like the Mustang, Firebird, Camaro and the ubiquitous Corvette. Really cool guys sometimes had a 442 or a GTO. These machines ate pavement for breakfast and depleted much of the world’s oil supply from about 1965 through 1975. The zoom zoom group consisted of lesser known names like MG, Triumph, Lotus, Jaguar and, if you could get it to start on a wet day, Alpha Romeo. Since these little gremlins are the main topic for today, we’ll come back to them. The last and final category of vehicles, putt putt, included the iconic “car of the people” the VW Beetle and its siblings the Karman Ghia and the VW van, aka microbus. The microbus gained notoriety as the official vehicle of the counter culture and was rarely seen without camouflage paint. It had all the aerodynamic qualities of a phone booth and was known to change lanes on its own in a high wind.
Mazda was the first to bring back zoom zoom. You might think they coined the expression as a marketing gimmick, but they actually stole it from my friend Jimmy Spearman who came up with it to describe what he hoped one day his Sunbeam Tiger would be able to do. Jimmy was a pretty good mechanic and got the Sunbeam working for a short time, but it just wasn’t running well enough to stay out of the way of a Mack truck on the NJ Turnpike. Oh Jimmy was okay, just a few bruises, and the truck driver used the embedded Sunbeam’s engine to power his air conditioner. But Jimmy became disillusioned with zoom zoom and switched to driving a 1967 Cadillac convertible that stretched approximately three blocks from front to back.
The Mazda Miata, now called the MX-5 because they think it’s cool to have numbers for names, has been described as “everything the MGB intended to be.” True. But the MG also had a lot more space in it. Mazda, in its zeal to appeal to today’s boomers, forgot to take some of us to measure. We’ve changed somewhat and, for example, the distance between steering wheel and our stomachs seems to have been severely reduced. Passengers over 5-feet tall may find the legroom a bit lacking. Again, in the MG or Triumph you could stretch your legs out straight. Today’s riders sit with legs under their chin. It’s also lacking some of the amenities we’ve gotten used to, like electric seats, power mirrors and soft plush seats. Compared to, say, a Lexus, the Miata seems to come right from the Stone Age.
But that’s not what we buy a sports car for, right? We buy it for the thrill of zoom zoom – attacking curves, smelling fresh air, getting burned to a crisp on a hot day. We love the misery as much as anything else. If you want comfort, get a sedan, if you want discomfort, get a sports car. Some companies like Honda have come out with coupe models that give a sense of being in a sports car without having to force yourself into a tiny little space. The Accord coupe, for example, has ample space for the modern boomer driver and passenger, a large trunk for groceries and junk, and all the luxuries you might want at this age. It also has a sort-of beefed up suspension, a testy little engine and a six-speed transmission for those who prefer to do the driving rather than a computer. So while it gives a “sense” of a sporty car, it’s not a sports car. It’s still a Honda Accord. Great vehicle, but it’s not zoom zoom. Honda did for some years make a “real” sports car called the S2000. It was quite a performer, but if you weigh more than about 25 pounds you can’t fit behind the wheel.
Along with the small affordable sports car offerings from Mazda, Pontiac and Audi, Nissan decided to toss its hat into the ring, giving us a zoom zoom car with vroom vroom performance. It was called the 350Z, now grown up to the 370Z. It could actually perform close to the level of a Porsche 911, but at one-third the price, and unlike American cars it used real sheet metal and not reprocessed cereal boxes for the outer shell. The car was fast, too fast. It came with a slot on the side for police to just pull up and insert tickets, and its unique shape made it the target of every radar trap on every highway in the country. Still, the idea of cruising at 115 mph and having it feel like 60 was often just too much temptation. However, we understand that if you were a long-legged blonde who wore low-cut blouses you could, if stopped, get away with a warning rather than a ticket. That’s just rumor of course.
Boomers love their toys and are unwilling to let go of the things that thrilled them in their youth. So what’s wrong with that? Who says you have to drive a dull and boring car just because you’re over 50? And there are plenty of others who will save the planet by driving a Prius or a hybrid that has all the driving excitement of a shoe box. For the rest of us, thankfully there are still obnoxious, fussy little vehicles we can stuff ourselves into and zoom zoom down the road getting sunburn and taking in the scenery.
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