A Tale Of Two Cars

I wear the stereotype of Volvo liberalism proud. Between me and my wife, we’ve owned seven Volvos over the past 12 years (so we’re picky and have upgraded every opportunity we could).

Driving a Volvo was practically a prerequisite for liberal hipsters (pseudo or otherwise) living in Athens, Georgia in the early 90s. Hell, once Michael Stipe bought a Volvo for each of his family members, everyone knew what they had to do. By the time my wife and I left Athens for good in 1998, she had been driving her 240 Wagon for over three years.

The politics of the Volvo driver was solidified when Gary Trudeau gave props to the Volvo Liberal in a Doonesbury sketch twenty-three years ago. (In a 1985 Doonesbury cartoon, Duke asks Honey how she knows that a potential organ donor for him is a liberal. “They pulled him from a Volvo,” Honey says.)

When our kids came along, we touted our Volvoism like proud parents doing everything to protect the children while remaining liberally hip by putting a subtle DEM and F**K It Skates/Free Christian Hosoi sticker on the back windshield.

We didn’t care that Ford had stepped in along the way, working a complete makeover of body style and engine performance. A Volvo is still a Volvo and we kept buying well into the S series.

But, alas, the Volvo days are coming to an end. It started last year as the AC in both the S60 and V70 were failing. It continued into this year as struts started going and anti-lock brake fluid started leaking.

Now, with gas creeping towards $4.00 a gallon, with predictions that it could hit as much as $5.00 per gallon by peak summer travel season, the choice became patently obvious.

We always knew that our Volvos weren’t the best in fuel economy and that one day we would have to make a switch of sorts to something in the Japanese line. Now that time has come.

So what’s a thirty-something aging liberal to do to cut back on automobile expenses while maintaining at least a modicum of concern for the environment? It’s not like I can move much closer to my office. I already hoof it when able. Even my wife works within a mile of the house and our daughter goes to school just over the river in San Marco. So from a daily commuting point of view, we’re about completely tapped on the inner core conservation ideas.

The only solution left was to go Honda (I know, we could have gone Toyota, but we didn’t). Not hybrid, mind you. We haven’t made that leap yet (a bit out of our price range, actually). But we looked at the gas mileage comparisons on several different Honda models (The Pilot was the only model with worse gas mileage than our car) and stepped up our conservation and penny pinching efforts a notch by ridding ourselves once and for all of the V70.

So that’s one Volvo down, one to go. Once we’ve swallowed the hurt, the loss, the separation pains, we’ll look seriously at the Civic or Accord to make the transition complete.

I know I haven’t lost my liberal credentials just by switching cars. Nor has my wife. But I’m purchasing the elbow patch tweed blazer and turtleneck ensemble (with matching pipe and Noam Chomsky Reader, of course) just in case anyone later tries to question my bona fides.

Sure, we could just as easily put a Clinton or Obama sticker on the car, but we learned the hard way that overtly displaying ones left of center politics in this town (i.e., with a Kerry sticker) is apparently an invitation to the local, less than tolerant hicks to run you off the road.