Together, Wherever We Go

According to Mr. Webster, an automobile is “a passenger car, usually four-wheeled, propelled by an engine or motor . . . meant for traveling on streets or roads; a motor car.”

This is why children groan when a perfectly reasonable question is met with: “Look it up in the dictionary.” Dictionaries are so literal, so limited, so boring. Is that the best definition they could come up with? Motor car? What about “large, mobile purse or briefcase,” “private concert hall,” “motorized lullaby service”? Or “very bestie pal and confidant.”

According to a recent survey by Goodyear, a quarter of Americans converse regularly with their vehicles--thanking the old thing for a job well done, or begging it to keep running in the face of gas depletion or worse. More than half of us sing in (though not to) our cars, 25% let fly the occasional oath or obscenity, and the more abusive among us (32% of men and 16% of women) admit actually swearing at the poor “four-wheeled, propelled” dears. But then the path to true love never did run smooth.

Of these “Car Confessions” (the name of the survey), the most revealing is the startling information that almost 40% of men and 24% of women said that given the choice between kissing their in-laws or their cars, they would buss the old bus. One may assume that this scenario rarely if ever occurs, but still--what sort of mind comes up with a question like that?

According to Liz Rytel-Mudronicik of Goodyear, it arose from the notion that Americans did not so much own their cars as engage in love affairs with them.

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More predictable was the number of folks who nickname cars (about 20%), although the top four (Betsy, Big Red, Old Blue and Nellie) indicated remarkable lack of imagination. Clearly, they did not talk to enough Angelenos.

Doug McCleod, a mechanic at Precision Motors in Silver Lake, for example, can rattle off the monikers of a dozen or so regular “patients.” Blueberry and Lemon Drop (two VW Bugs), Elmer G., Fanta, Cliffie, Max, Agnes and D’Artagnan are just a few. “Some people are just in love with their cars. They’ll call and say, ‘How’s Max doing?’ ”

“If I had a new car, I probably wouldn’t name it,” said Lisa Thackaberry, owner of the above-mentioned Agnes, a 1978 Volvo, named for a beloved great-aunt. “And you know, I don’t talk so much to Agnes. I have talked to cars--I talked to my last one all the time, because I had so many mechanical troubles. I’d say ‘Come on baby, be good.’ You have this weird idea you’re going to talk the car into doing well.”

It may be a weird idea, but not unusual. My perfectly-reasonable-in-every-other-res- pect brother became convinced that a car he owned for a short time was possessed by the devil (hence the car’s nickname--Christine), so he didn’t talk so much as pray.

Jim Rice of Los Feliz, on the other hand, has named many of his cars, but kept conversation, and the subsequent commitment, to a minimum. “I never talked to Turvy,” he says of his previous car, a Ford Tempo named for Dolly Parton’s character in “Steel Magnolias.” “But when I felt that she was letting me down, I just sold her.”