Car Story

The only time I ever bought a new car was in 1983. I was looking for a used car, but everything available seemed awful. It was the end of the model year, so I got a deal on a stripped down new Plymouth Champ. It didn't even have an FM radio. I told Mom I might call it "Bullet" because it was silver and sloped in the front. She said I should name it "Little Old Lady" because it was small, gray, and didn't go very fast. I drove Little Old Lady for about ten years. 

The fall of 1983 was a weird time to buy a car. One dealer tried to sell me a new '82 DeLorean. There was no way I could afford even a deeply-discounted DeLorean, but I humored him a while. I asked where I would be able to get it serviced. He said, "Right here! Until I get these four sold." We both laughed at that. 

Since then, I've sometimes wondered about that dealer. If he held onto those four cars until that movie came out in 1985, he would have made a killing. But it was more likely he took a loss. 

Skip ahead twenty years or so, and I wrote an article for Mental Floss on cars as metaphors. In a list of about ten vehicles, I used the DeLorean as a symbol of "hubris and failure" because of John DeLorean's story. I got my first lesson in being an out-of-touch Boomer when I was raked over the coals in the comments. The DeLorean was a metaphor for "time machine"! Yeah, I saw the movie, in which the DeLorean was used as a joke (and a good one at the time). But I didn't realize how much that film meant to the Gen X kids who saw it. I learned my lesson about how things change.   

(Image credit: dave_7)