Drive by Tim Falconer Read Free Book Online

heart.” So they make up an excuse. He pointed out that the Ford 500 and the Chrysler 300 came out at about the same time. “One appeals to the brain—the Ford 500—and the other appeals to the heart—the Chrysler 300,” he said, noting that while the powerful and impressive-looking 300 has been a huge success, “Ford comes up with this bland thing and they can’t fucking give them away.”
    Less aggressively, Wayne Cherry, retired vice-president of design at General Motors, suggested that style and image are more important than many people realize. “I hate to talk about people who think about cars as appliances, but I know there are some out there,” he admitted before laughing ruefully. “But given that, some appliances are better looking than other appliances.” Indeed, even those new car buyers who just want something to get from A to B may compare several similarly priced practical models and end up buying the most attractive one. That’s why he couldn’t completely shake his skepticism about people who say design would never influence their buying decisions. “And here they’ve got the very latest suit cut, the right lapels, the tie, the shoes,” he pointed out. “A lot of it is subconscious. Something looks right. Some people say they wouldn’t buy something for the looks, but subconsciously they do.”
    I wasn’t surprised that an auto journalist and a car designer would make such arguments, but I also ran the results of the survey by a few other people, including a couple of car dealers, the people in the auto industry closest to the consumer. Mike Shanahan is a guy I played hockey with for many years, though I hadn’t seen him for a while when I drove up to Shanahan FordLincoln Sales in Newmarket, Ontario. A strapping guy with a bushy moustache and huge hands that dwarfed mine—his handshake stopped a little short of crushing—he is the fourth generation of his family in the vehicle business: his great grandfather started making buggies and sleighs in 1880, his grandfather manufactured bumpers and motor bodies and his father opened a Ford dealership in 1965. In 1974, as a sixteenyear-old high-school student, Shanahan spent the summer working for his father as an apprentice mechanic. He’s been with the company ever since and now owns it.
    He sat behind his big wooden desk in an office decorated with a model ship, nautical paintings and an old musket. Behind him, eight scale model cars—including an Edsel, a Cadillac and a Fairlane—sat on a credenza. “Interestingly enough, once I got into the car business I fell out of love with cars,” said Shanahan, who grew up a big fan of auto and drag racing. He last owned his own vehicle, a five-year-old Pinto, in 1979. Since then he’s driven an ever-changing array of company cars, usually the dealership’s flagship or hottest-selling product. “To me, those aren’t automobiles and trucks out there on the lot. That’s $6.1 million in new cars and $710,000 in used cars. And if you ever take your eye off that ball, that’s when you get in trouble in this business. Then you become the bar owner who loves booze.”
    Despite his own mercenary relationship with the car, he strongly dismissed the idea that his customers see their automobiles as appliances. For downtowners, a car might be a necessary evil, but not for most of the people living forty-five kilometres north in Newmarket. “People are very interested in what their vehicle looks like in their driveway. It’s amazing listening to people argue about what side of the driveway they get—it’s like what side of the bed!” said Shanahan. “A real estate agent who shows houses around here will tell you, ‘Look at the cars in the neighbourhood. Don’t just look at the houses; the cars will tell you the personality of the people who live