Road Rage

– Lynn Vogel

If you noticed the title of this post was different, good eye. This is the point when the California folks wrested total control of the magazine from the Miata Club of America founders in Georgia. The word “Volume” was chopped from the magazine’s cover, replaced with the month & year.

Cars were slowing down all around, and the people inside were looking. Staring. Smiling. I was recently on the freeway, directly behind a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Since its recent showroom debut, the PT’s proven to be a winner, drawing crowds like you’d find at an ice cream stand on a hot summer day. So I knew that for as long as I drafted the silver stunner, I was going to witness people enjoying themselves in spite of themselves. I was going to be treated to a show. I knew, because the same thing happened to me back when I took an early trip in another example of an automotive triple-scoop.

Mazda’s Miata had only been on the market for a matter of weeks when I picked up a red B-package version from their North American headquarters in Irvine, California. I was to have use of it while making a couple of casual media appearances in Southern California. Lucky me? Yes.

I was no sooner on the I-5 heading south towards San Diego than it started. You’d have thought I was escorting Princess Diana to the prom. People were doing one of three things:

1 – Riding alongside and gawking. Everyone in the car. Teens, grannies, dogs. (By the way, doncha love when they hang out the window, tongues flapping in the wind?) (The dogs too.)

2 – Speeding up from some distance behind so that they could be (see 1 above).

3 – Passing by in some glazed-over, hours-at-the-wheel state and being jolted back to life by the defibrillator, they love shouting, “Honey, stop! Stop! STOP! What was THAT?!” when they were hazily daydreaming about the next rest stop. (The dogs too.)

Windows were rolling down, questions were being shouted, and I was certain that I was going to be the cause of the largest pile-up since Custer’s Last Haircut. At the very least I was in the eye of a hurricane and, as secret agent and Sunbeam Alpine driver Maxwell Smart would say, “loving it.” Oh, don’t think I didn’t enjoy it. Reflected glory and all that. Cool car? Must be a cool dude.

But I returned to warm after a few days (real ownership being about a year away). And though that brief time was certainly fun, my envy gave way to dread when I imagined what it must have been like for the true Miata owners, many of whom also had to pony up plenty o’ pennies just to be first on their block. It’s the kind of attention that makes one appreciate the existence suffered by movie stars or celebrity racecar drivers.

(Yikes! What must it be like for someone who’s both? Does Paul Newman ever wish he weren’t “Paul Newman”?) (Does Paul Newman race in the woods?) And yet, as stunning and shocking as the car was at first, once it became a more familiar sight, the non-owning public’s excitement largely dissipated.

Call it the phenomenon of phamiliarity: the unusual becomes usual as usual. It happens with technology, with human progress, and sadly sometimes, even affairs of the heart. With cars, we’ve seen this modern pattern as evidenced by the Miata repeated with Volkswagen’s New Beetle. To the horror of exterminators everywhere, people wanted bugs! Though I doubt, as the original ’50s and ’60s group of 2-seat sports cars now has a parallel in our modern roadster resurgence, that we’ll see other Beetle-ish cars in the future. Call me Cynical Stan, the Told-You-So Man, but I find it difficult to imagine that there is a new Corvair or Renault Dauphine in development at this time.

Once the PT Cruiser becomes as common as sliced bread, it’ll be hard for anyone to imagine that anyone was really that excited about it. Like sliced bread! It will inevitably follow along the path trod by the Miata and the New Beetle: cars that once captivated the public, won countless awards, didn’t require three nickels- worth of advertising, and then settled into happy and quiet lives amongst the Accamrys. Cars that once were all the rage.

My freeway exit appeared, and I banked away as the PT Cruiser continued on. I was never able to see the face of its driver. He was undoubtedly smiling, as was I; a relation born of shared experience. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia for those early days of Miata craziness.

I drove along a suburban country road in the late-day warmth. Spotting a bustling soft-serve ice cream stand, I pulled in for a treat. I sat in the car, enjoying a cone and watching people come and go. And just as I was finishing up and getting set to leave, a mom and dad passed right in front of me with their little girl in tow. She must have been six or seven years old. And she couldn’t stop looking at the Miata.