The process of falling in love with a car is such a wonderful thing. You make a discovery and in short order, you’ve fallen head-over-heels. Maybe you didn’t expect to love that car so much, but now you’re finding yourself buying posters of it. One day, you will buy that car. For our readers who grew up with smartphones, maybe that car got plastered all over your screen. No matter how you fell in love, seeing and talking about that car probably gets you excited, which is great! Not so great is when your friends just don’t get it. What car do your friends make fun of you for loving?
I can relate to this question. Back in May 2008, my father retired a Ford Ranger. I forget if it crashed or its transmission left the chat, but the result was the same. The truck was gone and he needed something new. My parents heard about some sort of second coming of the Geo Metro, something called a “Smart Car.” As it happened, a dealership had just opened up in nearby Lake Bluff, Illinois, so we hopped into the family GMC Envoy XL to check it out. I had visions of some sort of sleek car that drove itself or something.
What I got was something totally unexpected. In that dealership, which resembled an art gallery, but with tiny cars, a salesman dressed as if he were going to a ball showed us around three Fortwos. Mr. Janka explained how these cars were engineered by Mercedes-Benz and a lot of work went into making a real car fit into a footprint less than 9 feet long. I was about 15 years old at the time and my teenage brain was blown. Everything was so exciting. My eyes grew large and beady as I found myself amazed at the dent-resistant panels, the colorful interiors, and the full transparent roofs. Janka explained how the funky contrasting steel underneath the plastic panels was hiding a high-tensile steel safety cage. So these tiny cars were as safe as something a bit larger.
My parents stopped being interested the moment the salesman said there was a waiting list a year long. Me? I nabbed a brochure and read it front to back that same day. I still have that brochure in my collection of Smart stuff. It wasn’t long until I had every bit of that brochure memorized, from the torque numbers of the puny engine to each color choice for those swappable plastic panels. The next time I went to school — I was a high school Freshman — I proudly proclaimed that my dream car was a Smart Fortwo. I even chose the first song I’d play when I bought one.
My friends and classmates? Well, they mocked me mercilessly for it. See, a lot of teenagers back then loved things like the new Chevrolet Camaro, Italian exotics, the Ford Mustang, or whatever souped-up classic their dads were driving. Cars like the little Fortwo were seen as too girly and stupid. That day, I became known as the Smart car person and was teased for loving them through every single year of high school. My parents had worse things to say about my appreciation for the Smart.
I drew Smarts in my art classes, I wrote about them in my English classes, and I even figured out ways to incorporate Smarts into science classes. I became Smart USA’s best PR person and I didn’t even work for the company. Smart USA noticed my love and over time, trusted me enough to give me press releases before the media even got them.
Everyone thought I’d grow out of it, but I didn’t. In 2012, I brought my first Smart home. Suddenly, the haters disappeared. They realized I was serious and that for me, it was a dream come true. Many of the same people who teased me apologized before congratulating me. I still have that car above today, and it helped me become the person I am now.
This is a very long way to say that even your friends may question your car choices. Has that ever happened to you? If so, what car do your friends make fun of you for? Of course, we’re pro-car here. We don’t care if you drive a Yugo, a Gillig BRT, or a Tesla Cybertruck, we love them all.
(Topshot: Smart USA)
I get some gentle ribbing from my friends about my 85 RX7. Up until this year when it just decided to “no crank no start” right after getting inspected successfully it was a car I never had any trouble with.
Not only that it was my recently departed mom’s 1st and only car she bought new. It was one of her dream cars and she put herself into way too much debt to make sure she had one before they changed it to the “awful bloated” FC model (her words, not mine)
Most of my friends are not car people, but in particular they don’t seem to understand the affection I have for the last Mazda built generation of the B-Series pickups (4th gen sold ’85-’93 in the USA). We’ve had 3. One we put almost 220,000 miles on. One died in an accident at 148,000 miles. The last one we donated when it got replaced by a Nissan Frontier. I never really bonded with the Nissan like the Mazdas. I missed the just basic functionality of the Mazdas. I’d go looking for another, but I not only don’t need a truck, but have nowhere to park it.