I was sitting at a car dealership waiting to see some numbers when I heard a gravelly voice say, “I’m looking for a truck that fits my big butt.” I had to fight the urge to turn around and gawk, but it made me wonder when car manufacturers are going to offer the kinds of special features today’s customers really need, like Enhanced Rump Capacity.
It took me a week and some travel and a lot of test drives, and let me just say that it’s a little disconcerting to drive an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar neighborhood full of one-way roads packed with traffic, especially so soon after my head-on collision with a deer made me a little more jumpy than usual while driving. But I bought a car! I’m almost afraid to drive it because I still see phantom deer leaping from the woods every time I hit the road, but my slightly-used Honda HRV sure looks pretty parked in my driveway.
(The rental car I’d been driving, a black Kia, did not look pretty, and I couldn’t figure out what bothered me about it until I realized that it looked like one of my grandson’s Matchbox race-cars. It would be just my style if I were an eight-year-old boy.)
One car salesman asked me to call him Pappy and another made me want to ask whether his mommy knew he was out of the house. A finance guy conversed intelligently about David Foster Wallace while printing out a sheaf of papers for me to sign. One portly middle-aged salesman dashed around the freezing showroom and roasting car lot without a pause for the whole two or three hours I sat there waiting to sign my life away, but he sold me the car I wanted without pressure or fuss.
I spent the better part of a hot afternoon at this dealership because they were short-staffed and I'd driven an hour to get there so I couldn't exactly go home and come back. But then to make up for the long wait, the dealership delivered the car to me directly the next day so I wouldn't have to drive an hour to pick it up. Helpful!
In fact, every car salesman I encountered was pleasant and respectful—a far cry from the days when a car salesman could look me in the eye and say, “Well now honey, why don’t you come back when your husband can come with you?”
Also, none of them quibbled over my special needs. My arthritic hip demands something that sits a little more upright than my old Camry, and I also wanted decent gas mileage, heated seats, a rear backing-up camera (how did I ever live with it?), four-wheel drive (because of where I live), and some color. One salesman pointed out that most buyers these days prefer what he called “neutral” colors, but I don’t think I should have to defend my preference for colorful cars. If I’m going to spend that kind of money, I don’t want to drive a gray car. Or a black one. Or whatever you call that shade of green that can make a brand-new Rav-4 look like it’s being consumed by slime mold.
I decided a few years ago that I’ve reached the age when I’m allowed to drive a red car, but good luck finding one today. I would have settled for a nice blue or a woodsy green or just the right shade of orange, but I had my heart set on red. So you can imagine how I felt when I called a dealership an hour away and asked if they had any low-mileage HRVs available for a test drive and they said that one had just come in but hadn’t been cleaned up and didn’t even have a price tag on it yet—but it was red!
Well it’s my car now. It’s sitting out front looking pretty while I’m trying to motivate myself to sort through the pile of stuff I pulled out of my old car--phone charger, chapstick, tissues, stadium blanket, sunscreen, hat, reusable grocery bags, bird-call identification CD, hiking stick, expired insurance cards, a small fortune in quarters, and all the miscellaneous detritus that attests to a well-loved car. That Camry took me to a lot of interesting places before meeting its sudden end, but at the moment my spiffy red Honda holds nothing but possibility. It may not feature Enhanced Rump Capacity, but it suits me to a T.
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