My family thought I had lost it when I moved to Manteca 20 years ago.
Not because I moved here but due to the fact within a year I had traded my Volvo 240 in for a Chevy Blazer SUV, actually bought a white vehicle, and was listening to country music.
Having come from Roseville where they have one of the largest auto malls in the country you tend to notice what’s at new car dealerships. With the exception of the now defunct Manteca Honda dealership, every purveyor of new vehicles in Manteca back then had mostly pickups and SUVs on their lots with what few cars they had tucked behind them. Also the majority of the vehicles were white.
Until Manteca, all of my vehicles had been dark colors such as the red wine-colored Volvo I was driving at the time. It took me just three days in Manteca to understand why white was the preferred color. It was great at not showing Manteca dust kicked up from agricultural activity and the fine sandy loam soil whipped up by dry winds.
I still remember what Bill Sexton of Tradeway Chevrolet told me when I went to trade in my Volvo for the S-10 Blazer. He was apologetic but he couldn’t give me top trade-in value for it because no one in Manteca drove them. It was, he said, more of a pick-up kind of town with more “traditional” American sedans and smaller import compacts for hardcore commuters.
The times definitely have changed in Manteca.
And so have my taste in vehicles. Prior to moving here I had no use for an SUV-style vehicle. I also pretty much was a GM guy although my previous vehicle to my Volvo had been a Datsun 280ZX T-top.
Fast forward 20 years and I’m driving a Ford Escape hybrid.
I figured that when the time eventually comes to look for a new vehicle contrary to the best efforts of Cabral’s Marty Steves to get me into a Jeep I’d replace the Escape with another Escape. (No, Marty, I’m not in the market for a new vehicle.)
Now I’m not too sure.
That’s because Ford has rolled out a prototype of what they are thinking about replacing the Escape with - a crossover that has the sleek lines and is dubbed the Vertek.
Reading the rationale behind the envisioned radical shift was a little unnerving. The automobile gurus figure that Escape buyers bought them because they wanted the boxy look simply to be like the mega gas guzzling sports utility vehicles that are all the rage even if they had to settle for a wimpy compact version.
They believe buyers want sleek aerodynamic styling that screams hip and fuel efficient.
Obviously the focus groups they based this wonderful concept on don’t need their vehicles to haul things around as well as for every day commuting and such.
Ford did make a big ado about the Vertek having about the same cargo capacity in the Escape. The problem is it is likely to drive people who really make use of the Escape’s SUV-type configuration to make trips to home improvement stores and such to another vehicle. When Chevy replaced the Blazer S10 with the Equinox it sent me straight to Ford because I could no longer carry items such as my bicycle in the back with the back seat down due to the wider wheel wells for a more stylish look.
I realize Detroit can’t tailor make vehicles to the wants and needs of individuals., But you’d hope sooner or later that they’d remember the people they are selling to aren’t all urbane nor are they the drivers that Al Gore and other environmental politicians want everyone to be.
Even Gore - after all of his slamming of the Chevy Suburban - was ferried around in a Chevy Suburban when he was vice president. The SUV concept works because it is practical in what it can do although the gas mileage leaves much to be desired. That is where Escapes and such came into play.
Instead government types that want to dictate auto production contend people buy them as status symbols or because of some need to display their machismo while driving four wheels and burning through gas like there is no tomorrow.
Consumers aren’t idiots. They don’t flock to SUV-style vehicles simply because gas prices are dropping. They obviously want a vehicle that fits their needs and once the gas pressure is off a bit that is where they head.
Of course, government types think vehicle buyers do that only because we are stupid.
The unfortunate thing is that Detroit seems to be buying into that instead of concentrating on significant ways to reduce gas mileage besides simply turning all SUV-style vehicles into crossovers.
Not because I moved here but due to the fact within a year I had traded my Volvo 240 in for a Chevy Blazer SUV, actually bought a white vehicle, and was listening to country music.
Having come from Roseville where they have one of the largest auto malls in the country you tend to notice what’s at new car dealerships. With the exception of the now defunct Manteca Honda dealership, every purveyor of new vehicles in Manteca back then had mostly pickups and SUVs on their lots with what few cars they had tucked behind them. Also the majority of the vehicles were white.
Until Manteca, all of my vehicles had been dark colors such as the red wine-colored Volvo I was driving at the time. It took me just three days in Manteca to understand why white was the preferred color. It was great at not showing Manteca dust kicked up from agricultural activity and the fine sandy loam soil whipped up by dry winds.
I still remember what Bill Sexton of Tradeway Chevrolet told me when I went to trade in my Volvo for the S-10 Blazer. He was apologetic but he couldn’t give me top trade-in value for it because no one in Manteca drove them. It was, he said, more of a pick-up kind of town with more “traditional” American sedans and smaller import compacts for hardcore commuters.
The times definitely have changed in Manteca.
And so have my taste in vehicles. Prior to moving here I had no use for an SUV-style vehicle. I also pretty much was a GM guy although my previous vehicle to my Volvo had been a Datsun 280ZX T-top.
Fast forward 20 years and I’m driving a Ford Escape hybrid.
I figured that when the time eventually comes to look for a new vehicle contrary to the best efforts of Cabral’s Marty Steves to get me into a Jeep I’d replace the Escape with another Escape. (No, Marty, I’m not in the market for a new vehicle.)
Now I’m not too sure.
That’s because Ford has rolled out a prototype of what they are thinking about replacing the Escape with - a crossover that has the sleek lines and is dubbed the Vertek.
Reading the rationale behind the envisioned radical shift was a little unnerving. The automobile gurus figure that Escape buyers bought them because they wanted the boxy look simply to be like the mega gas guzzling sports utility vehicles that are all the rage even if they had to settle for a wimpy compact version.
They believe buyers want sleek aerodynamic styling that screams hip and fuel efficient.
Obviously the focus groups they based this wonderful concept on don’t need their vehicles to haul things around as well as for every day commuting and such.
Ford did make a big ado about the Vertek having about the same cargo capacity in the Escape. The problem is it is likely to drive people who really make use of the Escape’s SUV-type configuration to make trips to home improvement stores and such to another vehicle. When Chevy replaced the Blazer S10 with the Equinox it sent me straight to Ford because I could no longer carry items such as my bicycle in the back with the back seat down due to the wider wheel wells for a more stylish look.
I realize Detroit can’t tailor make vehicles to the wants and needs of individuals., But you’d hope sooner or later that they’d remember the people they are selling to aren’t all urbane nor are they the drivers that Al Gore and other environmental politicians want everyone to be.
Even Gore - after all of his slamming of the Chevy Suburban - was ferried around in a Chevy Suburban when he was vice president. The SUV concept works because it is practical in what it can do although the gas mileage leaves much to be desired. That is where Escapes and such came into play.
Instead government types that want to dictate auto production contend people buy them as status symbols or because of some need to display their machismo while driving four wheels and burning through gas like there is no tomorrow.
Consumers aren’t idiots. They don’t flock to SUV-style vehicles simply because gas prices are dropping. They obviously want a vehicle that fits their needs and once the gas pressure is off a bit that is where they head.
Of course, government types think vehicle buyers do that only because we are stupid.
The unfortunate thing is that Detroit seems to be buying into that instead of concentrating on significant ways to reduce gas mileage besides simply turning all SUV-style vehicles into crossovers.
