The car industry and the U.S. auto manufacturers have been in the news a lot recently with the apparent / likely collapse of Chrysler and General Motors.  Cars have also been an interest closer to the home front for us as we start thinking about whether we’re at the point of needing to plan to replace at least one of our vehicles.  My beautiful wife’s 2001 SUV has performed exceedingly well, but as we move past the 100,000 mile plateau, we’re aware that the car won’t last forever.  Similarly, my 2003 wagon has been a model of modern engineering and long-term performance through my long highway commute.  I’ve now passed 200,000 miles, with the overwhelming majority of those being cruising miles at highway speed.

So as we started thinking about cars in a more personal way, I started reminiscing about cars I have owned and/or driven throughout my life.  The old commercial used to say, “Sooner or later, you’ll own General,” for General Tires.  I’m not sure that’s actually been the case for me despite the many tire brands I can recall having purchased, but I’ve certainly driven or owned a variety of different makes of cars.

Some families perhaps have an established loyalty to a particular car maker.  My Uncle Don and Aunt Judy drove Lincoln-Mercuries and Pontiacs for years, and still have a Lincoln in their garage.  They also managed to beat Pontiac to the punch in switching to a Buick before Pontiac’s demise.

My grandmother drove Oldsmobiles as far as I can remember, and my grandfather drove at least a couple of Chevrolets that I can recall.

In our household, there didn’t seem to be quite the same car maker loyalty, for whatever reason.  My earliest memory of my mother’s car was her Ford Cortina wagon.  Mostly, my memory of the car is of the cigarette lighter, as I had to test whether the red coil that popped out really was hot.  The memory of the seared tip of my index finger tells me that it was.

After the Cortina, mom had a ’74 Super Beetle, which was with us for quite a while.  It was the car both my sister and I learned to drive in, and it made it until I graduated from high school in ’83.  I even got to drive it to school my junior and senior years, much to my sister’s dismay at the time.

Dad’s cars were company cars, but he and Papa were the company, so he had more flexibility than most when it came to choosing a vehicle.  I know he had a station wagon when I was little, but I’m not sure what kind it was.  My guess would be a Chevrolet, but I’ll have to confirm that with him some other time.  The first car of his that I have specific memories of is his first VW Bus.  He bought that I think not long after Mom’s Super Beetle joined the family.  The first Bus gave way to a replacement Bus a few years later, and was another vehicle on which I learned to drive.

In college, my sister, and then I, inherited a ’73 Plymouth Valiant.  My friends and I called it The Staff Car, as it was Army green inside and out.  It had been my Aunt Bab’s car, and it definitely looked like something a little old lady would drive.  There was no radio, and to get cool air circulating, you had to open the box vents under the dashboard.  Still, it ran great, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s still out there somewhere being driven by a high school student today.  It was over 10 years old and only had about 27,000 miles on it when it became my ride.

Upon preparing for college graduation, the Staff Car was replaced by a Honda Accord hatchback.  It was blue, and cute, and ran like a top.  Right until I came over a hill in Ohio, was surprised by a traffic signal, and wound up running a red light and getting hit by cross traffic.  Fortunately, the only casualty of the incident was the Accord.

To replace the Honda, another VW came along, this time a Jetta GLI.  It was a little quirky with its hand crank moon roof, but with the GLI engine it really had room at the top end for highway passing.  The miles started to pile up, and with 2 water pump replacements already having been done, I traded the Jetta for a Mazda Protege in order to have some reassurance that I could make long drives between upstate New York, Indiana, and New Jersey.

The Mazda was another car that ran like a top.  It’s only flaw was that it seemed to be invisible, as it was backed and/or run into four or five times in broad daylight.  The champagne color was great at hiding dirt, but apparently it hid the entire vehicle!  Still, none of the fender benders were serious, and the car was still with me when Christine and I were preparing to bring home our first child.

Like all expectant first-time parents, we sought out a vehicle that would protect our newborn like a tank.  Enter the Jeep Grand Cherokee!  It was sufficiently tank-like that it wiped out at least one deer with only minor damage to the front fender panel.  Then when we moved to New Jersey and my days of long, highway commuting began, the Jeep had to be eliminated in favor of something that had better fuel economy.

That brings us all the way to the current Subaru Outback, which has been humming along the northeast corridor for over 6 years now.  I’ve been extremely happy with the car and how it has performed, and was hoping that Subaru would bring their new diesel engine to the U.S. later this year so if I want or need to modernize, I could get even better gas mileage.  Alas, Subaru informed me Friday that there will be no diesel in their 2010 vehicle lineup.

So as I started to think about my vehicle future, I also started to think about my vehicle past.  And it occurred to me that, while I really have liked and been happy with my Subaru, and my wife’s Acura has been a rock-solid vehicle, there’s still something about a Volkswagen that elicits a different, more emotional response and feeling of familiarity in me.  It’s a little like Tom Hanks in “Sleepless in Seattle” when he’s talking about how he knew his wife was the one for him.  He was just taking her hand to help her out of a car, and it felt like coming home.

That’s at least a little like the feeling I get when I checked out the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Sportwagen.  There’s a certain level of familiarity and comfort to the whole layout and feel of the car that just feels and looks “right” to me.

I feel a little guilty even thinking about a different car.  My Subaru doesn’t deserve to be thrown over after all the faithful service it’s given me.  And our hope is that it will give us at least another year or so of solid performance.  With continued maintenance, there’s no reason that it won’t.  But when the time comes, I know I’m going to be tempted to switch.

I tweeted earlier this week about identifying with Homer Simpson in the episode where he finds his long-lost brother, who it turns out is an automobile tycoon.  The brother decides that Homer is somehow representative of the “common man” and what such a potential customer wants in a new car.  So he puts Homer in charge of designing the kind of car HE wants the car companies to make.  Of course, Homer winds up with a wildly impractical design that bankruptcy the company.

But there’s a part of me that understands the desire to be able to take the various parts of cars you’ve had that you really like and somehow make the “perfect” car for you.  My summary of the car specs would include the Subaru all-wheel-drive system, a VW air-cooled diesel engine, and the seating capacity of a Mazda5, with either a third row, or even better a rear-facing flip-up third seat in a small to mid-size wagon.

And of course, the cockpit and main body would be done by VW.  Just so it would feel like home.

UPDATE:  I received an email from Uncle Don commenting on the brief recitation of the history of family cars.  He adds the following valuable contribution that is both automotive and, in its own way, romantic:

Your Dad's first auto (purchased with his own W.F. Lilly earnings) was, I think, a navy blue Buick Skylark station wagon.  Of course, this information is suspect since it comes from a grey-hired old man who wears glasses and doesn't hear too well.  At any rate, it was a sharp vehicle and snowed Marianne Schlosser so that she was wiling to change her name to Lilly.

Thanks for the additional history!