DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour      al@motorwayamerica.com

One of my favorite automotive executives is a really neat guy who just might be the next CEO of his global company. To protect his anonymity I’ll just refer to him as “Mark” and to give equal secrecy to his company we’ll just say that it’s headquartered in a big glass house Dearborn, Michigan. That’s all the clues you’re getting. I’m not going to make things easy for you.

In any event, for some time Mark and I have been having occasional conversations about one of his company’s products from the mid-‘60s that meant more to me than any other vehicle I’ve ever had. Without giving away the manufacturer of this magnificent machine let’s just refer to it as a “7-Litre.”

The other day I saw a rather lengthy article on this car and there was a beautiful picture of it in hardtop form. I sent it to Mark with a note that said the vehicle was just like the one I had, but mine was turquoise (with a matching interior). I got an e-mail back from him that stated he didn’t take me for a “turquoise” kind of guy. Since he’s at least 1-1/2 generations younger than me he probably wasn’t familiar with the fact that back then, turquoise was today’s blue or green. It was a fairly common color and at the time didn’t bear any kind of stigma about being a less-than-masculine color.

I wrote Mark back and told him that not only was my favorite car turquoise, my first new car I ever had — also made by his company — was turquoise (with a black interior).

I saw him at an industry event the other day and he chuckled again about the color turquoise being something less macho than one would expect to see in a Viking movie. I then told him that in 1955, my father bought my mother a new convertible and the color was fuschia. He commented that my family seems to have had interesting tastes in color. I told him that we were all comfortable with our masculinity, even my mother.

This got me to thinking about what kind of person would select certain colors for their vehicles. One would normally expect burley truck-driving lumberjacks to drive black or red pickups or SUVs. Professional people’s vehicles would most likely be silver or some shade of gray.

Females can be found in vehicles that range in color from Mary Kay Pink to Sky Blue White. A surprisingly popular color has been yellow and I’ve noticed all degrees of testosterone-laden drivers with them. Ferrari Yellow really looks neat, particularly on a Corvette.

But ever since I started my dialog with Mark over the color of two of my vehicles I have been looking hard for any turquoise vehicles and damn, they’re about as rare as an “A” was on one of my report cards. How could a color that was such a common sight when I was growing up disappear like the sabre-tooth tigers? I know tastes change. There was a period of several years that it was almost impossible to find a green. Now that’s all one hears of, ”Green this and green, that.”

I’m a patient man and I feel in my bones that someday I’ll catch Mark driving a turquoise vehicle and when I do, all bets are off.

After all, let’s not forget the brutal reputation of Aqua Man.