I read a column in the most recent issue of Car and Driver about the fact that cross over sport utility vehicles are now the best selling type of "automobile" in America. Makes sense when you consider everything these appliance like little "cute-utes" have to offer. They're easy to drive, are very practical, have all wheel drive, are relatively easy on gas (especially the hybrids) and have a modicum of savoir fare or style that larger SUV's have in a much more manageable package. Designed for a woman but men like them too, they're the automotive "everything" unlike anything we've ever seen before. As a "car guy" who grew up with "utility first" station wagons, I feel as though the world has gone to hell in a hand basket.
About ten years ago or so I had a feeling the market was shifting when I asked my neighbor's then 15 year old daughter what kind of car she wanted when she got her driver's license. Imagine my incredulity when she said she wanted a Chevy Equinox. Ugh. When I asked her, jokingly as to not insult her, why she wanted to drive what I considered a mom-mobile she replied that she wanted something big and safe that she could handle and also something she could haul all of her friends around in. Oh. Hmph. Well, appears that millennials might be a tad more pragmatic than us Baby Boomer/Generation X types. Who'd have thunk that?
Alls I knows is is that back in my day I wanted to be as far away from anything "family-car" as I could get. Y'see, my family personified the dysfunction in dysfunctional family and with my old man driving a 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon just like this frumpy blue fedora, you might begin to understand why I flinch at the words, "family car".
That's why I like coupes; they're cool above and beyond anything else. Those who drove them when I was a kid were, to me at least, the debonairs who weren't afraid to put themselves first. Sorry, as selfish as that may sound, I believe it's perfectly fine to hold onto your individuality even if you have a family. You need a van to haul stuff or a truck for a project? Go rent one. Back in the day, cars like this 1977 Ford Thunderbird, as remarkably impractical as they were, ruled the roost. Now, were folks back then more self centered than they are now or were station wagons really that bad?
So, why did coupes fall out of favor? Driven almost purely as fashion statements, for there is certainly nothing inherently practical in a two door car regardless of how many passengers it can carry, ugly lumps like Ford's new for 1980 Thunderbird didn't help matters. Combine that with GM's semi-abortive 1978 downsizing of their A body intermediates, and the coupe or personal luxury car began it's long, slow, inevitable decline.
In Ford's case, these Fox bodied Thunderbirds were infinitely superior to anything that came before it; even the hot selling LTD II based 1977-1979 Thunderbirds. Didn't matter much, though. To those who put projecting some sort of image above all else, personal luxury cars/coupes, suddenly began to look like leisure suits. Enter the age of the sport utility vehicle to replace padded landau half roofs and opera windows.
It's so bad out there these days for us coupe people the only domestic coupe on the market, and I'm not counting pony cars like Mustang, Camaro and even Challenger, is Cadillac's very expensive (and small) ATS coupe. There is no Thunderbird, Monte Carlo, Grand Prix etc. I plan on doing a deeper dive in the near future on the history of the two door car. Stay tuned.
I asked my wife the other night that if I could get her any car she wanted what she want. She didn't waste a half second telling me she'd like a two door Mini Cooper. Is it any wonder we've been married 23 years and counting?
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