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They're looking for a new set of wheels. Could it really be time to... Ute, Ute, Ute for the Home Team?By Rick Horowitz She's looking down the road -- he couldn't be happier. It's how she's looking down the road -- he's not so sure about that. Actually, he's perfectly sure about that: He doesn't like it. Is he cruising for a bruising? It's the way of all flesh, not to mention all auto parts: Their trusty old car isn't getting any younger. It's not getting any trustier, either; in fact, it's beginning to swallow dollars at a tapewormish rate. They've considered the situation, and they've agreed -- it may be time to make: A Move. He assumed that meant another car. Cars are what he drives. Cars are all he drives. Scrap a car, get a car; it all seems so clear to him. She may have other ideas. She's thinking sport ute. He can't believe it. It started out as a joke, some sweepstakes teaser in a stack of junk mail: Come match the winning number and take home your very own Toyota RAV4! So they went, and they looked. "Cute ute," he thought -- but not for them. Not this particular ute (their numbers didn't match), and not utes in general. Cars are what he drives, not cars on steroids. He thought that was the end of it. It wasn't the end of it. He'd find her dropping the name into conversations every once in a while, then every twice in a while. He'd roll his eyes. He'd snort. He'd wonder, just as gently as he could, exactly what kind of rugged terrain she was expecting to encounter on the daily 12-minute commute, and exactly where they were going to buy the crowbar they'd need for wedging people into the back seat. He thought that was the end of it. It wasn't the end of it. There was something there, some (auto erotic?) infatuation she just wouldn't abandon. When the time came to collect information about possible replacements for Old Trusty, Young RAV4 was right in the middle of things, and stuck around. It's not the only one she's been looking at -- she has her practical side, too -- but she's still looking, no doubt about it. And no apologies. She likes sitting up high, she says. A sport ute would let her sit up nice and high. She'd like that. "You'd like it, too," she says. She knows her man. If there's one thing he hates when he's driving, it's getting caught behind some tall, wheeled thing that blocks his view of the road. He needs to be able to see down the road, he insists, needs to know right now when somebody up ahead has jammed on the brakes. It used to be just the occasional truck that gave him conniptions. Then the mini-vans started rolling. Now it's the utes. And the more people feel boxed in, he's convinced, the more they opt for bigger, taller, heavier, boxier beasts themselves. Which makes even more people start opting, and for even bigger beasts. (It's how the Cold War happened, he figures: Stalin in a Jeep Grand Cherokee.) So why be the only holdout? Why not ute, ute, ute for the home team? He sees her point. They could do what everyone else is doing. They could dump their pygmy profile and go head-to-head, eyeball-to-eyeball, with the rest of the world. He just can't get past the giggle factor: The way he sees it, they've got as much business tooling around town in a sport ute as they do in a cement mixer. Will she settle for booster seats and a periscope? Posted
7/10/98. Fresh stuff right here twice
weekly!
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