A lot of car buyers are loyal to their favorite automakers, almost to a fault. In my travels, I’ve met Ford guys who say they’d never buy a Chevrolet, Ram guys who’d never buy a Ford, BMW guys who’d never put their hands on anything American, and pretty much all points in between. Automotive tribalism can get weird sometimes, but it makes us think. If you had to live with a single car brand for the rest of your life, which one would it be, and why?
This is a question that’s hard for me to answer. I love all cars, even the deeply unloved ones. If anything, the more a stereotypical enthusiast hates a car, the more I’m likely to love it. I do own six Smart Fortwos, after all. Still, I also own lots of other cars and motorcycles, from American classics to a Japanese rotary. Telling me to pick only one brand feels like torture.
For the purposes of this question, the brand you choose is the one that you also have to drive for the rest of your life. This means that you can’t just rent a car from another brand as a sort of loophole. No, if you rent a car, you have to rent a car from your chosen brand. Also, brands that are technically related to other brands, like Ram, DS, Polestar, or SRT, are considered their own brands for this exercise. I suppose the one loophole would be that you can be a passenger in another brand’s car.
The implications of this can be grand. If you choose a brand that builds nothing but sports cars, you’re sort of screwed if you ever need to drive a truck to move out of your house or apartment. Likewise, if you choose a truck brand, you may never experience the thrill of driving a roadster or a sports car. Logically, the best choice here would be a full-line automaker that has everything from sports cars to trucks.
Despite the rules I set above, I would still pick Smart as my one and only brand to live with.
I’ve gotten through much of my life already, depending on a Smart Fortwo to be my everything. My 2012 Smart has worn many different hats throughout its life. There was a time I treated it like a tuner car, a time when I had it towing trailers and working like a pickup truck, a period when it was my off-roader, and more. My Smart fleet now has a frugal 70 mpg diesel, a convertible, a beater, and a speedy turbo model. Smart has also built a weird street legal go-kart, a sports car, a couple of small four-door hatches, and now it makes a bunch of crazy fast electric SUVs.
If I need to go faster, I suppose I could just soup up a stock Smart engine or have someone implant a Suzuki Hayabusa engine or a Toyota Paseo engine into my car. Some wild builders also used to make six-wheel Smart pickup trucks, too. I could pretty much have most parts of the car world covered with an armada of Smarts.
I think if I had nothing but Smarts for the rest of my life, I would depart from this mortal plane as a happy woman. So, here’s where I turn things to you. A terrible sorcerer is using magic or whatever to force you into sticking with a single car brand for the rest of your life. What brand is it, and why?
I’ll be the one to die on the Saab hill. If only because I always wanted to drive Saabs but wasn’t in a position to do so until about 6 years ago.
I see a lot of posts saying it would be Saab but…. and I guess from a practical perspective there is some sense in that.
But having recently attended my first SOC (with a record turnout) I am happy to report that Saabs are alive and well here in North America.
The theme of this year’s convention was ‘parts’ and Hedin (Saab Original) is very committed to keeping parts available. Of course there are limitations but there is a pretty strong availability of used parts.
The biggest challenge facing Saab owners ( who can’t or won’t wrench themselves) is finding service shops and/or mechanics who are willing to work on them. One of the oldest where I take mine is closing down at the end of September but I have some other options within the same driving distance ( about an hour).
On the plus side many Saab enthusiasts are aging out so I forsee a pretty stable availabilty of vehicles for the near future.
Of course my situation is unique in that I don’t drive much because I work from home and YMMV.
I love Saabs too (driven several, but never owned one) but if I were going to choose a high-risk/non-mainstream brand specifically, I guess it’d be Citroen, even though I’ve never owned or driven one ever.
Monteverdi. Yes, most of them were sports cars, but they did produce a couple of weird SUV models. And my daily driver could be be a mid-engined sportscar with a Chrysler 426 Hemi.
I will go for Chevrolet I think. They have all the stuff I would need,like a Nomad and a gmt400.
Chevy: Corvette plus a range of small(ish) to large SUVs and Trucks. Electric models look reasonably good as we transition in that direction.
Chevrolet! C8 plus awesome trucks!
Within the rules of this exercise: Porsche.
I want to say mercedes, but their new offering is not as good as the old ones. My car is a 27 and 37 years old mercedes, they are so easy to repair here in my country, no reason (yet) to change my cars. Although my parents use a camry and tucson so i have backup car readily available when my car broke down. But both rarely broken down and leave me stranded, so fingers crossed….
So I’ll probably choose toyota. They have all kinds of cars and generally more reliable than others, even when they break, their spareparts will be easier to find. And my god somehow i really like the new camry
Toyota may never win a race or comparison, but they are always crossed the finish line