Friday, August 25, 2006

Cars and car names

Suddenly, now that I have time to think about it, I've become acquisitive. I want things. And I want them now. There's no rhyme or reason to the wanting, it just popped up. I want handmade soap. I want a flat screen monitor. I want new shoes. I want goat cheese. I want a laptop. And I want a new car.

Likely, I will be buying a new car in a few months, and I decided on a Scion. I have a friend that bought one a few months ago, and she absolutely loves it. So then her friends bought one last week, and they love it too. I've been reading up on them, and I drove in one, and I like it too. The Scion is like a magic box. It's tiny on the outside but when you get in it's like the magic mirror where objects are larger than they appear. My guy friend bought it because he is as big as an ex-football player and it's the only vehicle he ever really fit into.

But in researching cars, and it's been since 1979 since I have had a new one, something terrible has happened to car names. They used to be solid sounding names, like Corvette, Thunderbird, Mustang, Land Rover, Ram, Viper- things that were powerful. Now, what you get is things that are invisible: Ion. Solstice. Sonata. Prelude.

The best car name I ever heard, was when I went to an antique car show in West Paris, Maine. There, I saw an antique Isotta-Fraschini. Now that's a car. And I love saying the name.

But, my auto destiny lay in the practical, and dare I say, charmingly ugly Scion.

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