Station Wagons and Me

Most mornings find Jeff and me drinking our coffee and reading the news on our iPads. Most mornings when I peek over at what's on his screen, it's cars. Our current car, a 2015 BMW station wagon, is getting to be high mileage. Its replacement should be an EV or at least a hybrid. Jeff always does his homework, and I am confident that it will be the best vehicle for us.

That doesn't mean I won't miss our station wagon. Not long after I moved back to Southern California from New York City in 2003, I took a quiz that said that my ideal car was a station wagon. Ridiculous, I thought—I was driving a racy red BMW sedan. Then I had a racy silver convertible. But ultimately, the quiz had me pegged. Over the years station wagons have played important roles in my driving life.

Our 1958 Ford Station Wagon was all white with a red interior.

I learned to drive in a 1958 Ford Ranch wagon, white with red vinyl interior. My father took me to the big parking lot at the San Buenaventura State Beach to practice the basics of driving. After that I drove around our suburban neighborhood until I was ready to take the test for my driver's license. On my first effort I failed the road test almost sending the examiner through the windshield at a fast stop. Undeterred I went back the next day and passed. The station wagon was the perfect car for teenage me. I could pile friends or my brother's surfboard in the back, cruise Main Street or drive my mother and grandmother to the hairdresser. My family moved on to other more stylish cars—Pontiac and Oldsmobile sedans—but the '58 wagon was my automobile first love.

The station wagon served as the backdrop for many family photos. My mother and father on the left, brother Jimmy on the right.

My next station wagon was a VW Squareback Sedan that I drove in Paris for the few months when I imagined I could live and work there. My friend Sylvia, who had been part of our group of University of California students studying at L'Institute des Professeurs de Français a l'Étranger at the Sorbonne, loaned me the car. When our semester ended, Sylvia was returning to Bakersfield, and I was staying. She suggested I borrow the VW wagon a relative who had worked in the oil business in Libya had lent her. I don't recall the exact details of the agreement but soon I was driving the VW wagon around Paris.

Student friends from our Paris program on an outing. Sylvia on the far left, me third from the right, the station wagon behind us.

It was wonderful to be able to drive myself to the Monet Museum in Giverny or a job interview on the outskirts of the city. Not so wonderful to try and escape the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe or to find a parking place near my chambre de bonne in the Latin Quarter. While I never mastered escaping the Arc, I learned that I could park pretty much anywhere since no one was going to touch a wagon with Libyan plates in 1972 Paris.

Muammar Gaddafi had become the leader of Libya in a coup d’état in 1969. He removed the monarchical government, nationalized the oil industry, and expelled some 20,000 Italians, which explains why the wagon was no longer in Libya and why the Parisian parking authorities left it alone.

What was the model and color of the Paris station wagon? I have no recollection.

After few months of living in a small single room with cold water in the hallway and failing to find reasonable work, it was time to go home. I left the car where I had first picked it up, in the parking lot at the Cité International Universitaire. I patted the hood au revoir knowing I would never see the wagon again.

It would be more than 40 years until I was once again behind the wheel of a station wagon. When Jeff and I both realized that the silver convertible was not the car of our California dreams, we were spending much more time in Santa Fe. It made sense to have a more practical vehicle and Jeff did have his own racy 2004 BMW 330ci coupe with a stick shift. We purchased a BMW 5 Series SUV from friends who were moving to a new model. It seemed like the perfect solution—a serviceable SUV and a zippy coupe.

Jeff’s zippy coupe—I love being the passenger, not the driver.

The problem was that I hated driving either car. The sightlines on the SUV were terrible, I clenched every time I pulled on to the highway or tried to change lanes in busy traffic. Driving the coupe was worse. Even though I owned a number of cars with manual shifts, this one seemed crazy difficult, the clutch seemed to be located way too far away from my foot. I managed to kill the engine on nearly every small incline stop in Santa Monica where there was at least one on every route back to our apartment. Finally, I had a breakdown. Or was it a tantrum?

Jeff watched me patiently as I carried on about not having a car I could drive with confidence. He said little. The very next day he took me to the BMW dealership in Santa Fe where we test drove the BMW 328i sports wagon. A handsome grey with a red leather interior, it was easy and fun to drive. I could hardly believe that he was indulging me this way. Now, I do believe that cars are one of his love languages and he speaks it fluently. We will see how it translates to an electric vehicle.