12
The New Parents' Guide To Car Shopping
Jon Methven is the author of This Is Your Captain Speaking, due out in 2012 by Simon & Schuster. He can be reached here, or follow him on Twitter @jonmethven.
AFC (actually funny content).
I am so glad my minivan days are in the rearview window.
LOL parents today. I spent my youth alternately in the "way back" of a station wagon and in the seatbelt-less bench thing in my dad's Triumph TR-6. Until he totalled it on the way home, destroying the bench thing.
@Bryan Keller
Parents' cars, in sequence:
POS Datsun I barely remember –> mom's Chrysler Champ hatchback, dad's shitty lemon of a Chevy S-10 –> dad's no frills Ford F-150 (straight-six), mom's POS used Ford Taurus –> mom's Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra (on sale from a near bankrupt dealership) –> dad's second no frills F-150 (still straight-six, but now with A/C!) –> mom's Ford Escort (but sporty!), nothing for dad (out of the picture)
So parents, tell your headphones wearing, backseat TV watching, whiny-ass brats to go fuck themselves. Oh, and tell them I said hi.
@NFK Seriously. Back in the day, when I took roadies with one or the other of my separated parents, we did things like "talk" and "play car games." And "make the child suffer through listening to the new Linda Ronstadt for the eighth time in five days."
@NFK Geez, this is fun. As far back as I can remember: the Gold Duster that hit so many deer my parents claimed it was actually aiming for them, a sequence of Renault Alliances (sold by AMC back then), a Volare station wagon that my brother referred to as the "Brown Destroyer" in reference to his habit of smashing neighborhood mailboxes with it (this car was later entered in a demolition derby that mom & dad only just found out about in time to stop. It finally died when someone pulled out of the driveway got going down the road, and the car steered itself into a ditch – broken tie rod. It was then put out of its misery), a sequence of incredibly crappy Dodge Colts, a 1987 F-150 (that was actually a reverse hand-me-down from me), a sequence of Ford Explorer/Mercury Mountaineers.
@SeanP P.S. where's the "like" button for the article? This was hysterical.
@Bryan Keller – when my parents moved from the northeast to Mobile, Alabama, they ripped out the backseat of a Chevy and custom-built a plywood box in that space. Then they filled the box with pillows and blankets and their THREE infant/toddler children. We all survived unscathed.
When I was 7 or so, my parents went to a dealership to buy a minivan, and it went something like this:
Dad: …No, at this price, we're going to have to look elsewhere. Unless there's anything else you can do.
Mom: But, [Dad], I thought we decided this was going to be the last place for sure!
Dad: …..
Fortunately, since I was at that moment playing bumper cars with my siblings on the showroom floor in rolling chairs we stole from someone's office, the salesperson decided to give in.
In-Voyage Nanny System: iPad and a pair of headphones. Steve Jobs > Mahatma Gandhi.
This is excellent.
In all seriousness, though, the answer is a three-or-so-year-old Mazda5.