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Edmunds, The Automobile Research company, compiles many reports for the auto industry — best car, most researched vehicle, the car safety guide — but one of the most interesting paper they publish is, The 50 worst cars of all time, list. This is a study that looks at every car ever produced and ranks them from the bottom up and is comprised of such lemon legends as the The Edsel, the Gremlin, the Yugo and of course, the Pinto. Remember, the Pinto? The car that blew up if hit from behind at 30 mph?

Now, the Pinto has a great backstory because when Ford discovered early on that their new compact model had a potentially dangerous design flaw  — the car had no reinforcement between the bumper and the gas tank which meant the tank could rupture upon impact — they decided to go ahead and roll those little beauties out anyway. In fact, there is a very famous memo where Ford amortizes the potential cost of lawsuits — it calculates the number of possible burn and death victims that could occur — and compares it to the cost of making the design change before production. And from this calculation, Ford determined that they would save 70 million dollars by not making the fix.

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And so the Pinto rolled off the assembly line and into car history.

There are other notable goof ups in the auto world — The Bricklin SV1 (Safety Vehicle, One) that had doors that couldn’t open after a crash, there was a Saturn where your foot got caught under the brake and then there are numerous 3-cylinder and even 2-cylinder disasters. But besides these noted lists of bad ideas the truth is that with current safety, emission and quality regulations, all vehicles now remain somewhere upstream of the standards. Which means that your average car or truck, is, well, your average car or truck — so they are all roughly in the same playing field and range from average to great.

So the model you choose isn’t as important as the type of vehicle you choose. Once you chose the type — car or truck — then the rest is just details. After that, it’s just a question between Coke and Pepsi.

So before you take the first step in deciding what your next vehicle will be, take one step back to determine the type.

Are you going with a car or a truck?

Now, this doesn’t seem like a difficult decision because we should know which type we want?

Maybe. But in actuality it’s very common for us to simply drive what we’ve always driven in the past — I’ve always had a car so I’ll buy another car — and few of us have actually taken the time to think about what is best suited for us; what makes the most sense or what will make our life easier.

What if a truck will save you money, better fits your lifestyle and will last longer in the type of driving you do?  What if a car is a better fit for the business lunches you need to host and the type of creative parking you need to do in the city? There are myriads of sources to guide you in deciding which car to buy or which truck, but absolutely nothing to make the decision which one to start with; when that is more important and is the very first step.

Oh, and by the way, SUV’s are not in this equation. Why? Because SUV’s are cars. Meaning car buyers buy a car or an SUV. Truck buyers buy trucks. It’s true. In speaking to car and truck buyers they both consider SUV’s more of a car than a truck so we will lump them together.

Now there is no set formula, no piece of software designed to determine that Career-A is best suited for a truck and Lifestyle-B is one for a car. Nope. You need to ignore the emotional and see what makes sense.

Now the left brain emotional side says to buy something you like. Something you can be proud of and enjoy driving. Well that’s true, but here is the part you may not like.

As far as pure practical decisions, the truth is that if you don’t need a truck — meaning if you are never, or rarely, going to use the truck part of it — then don’t get one. Because if you do, then you are paying for the gas, tires and repairs for a large part of the vehicle that you’ll never use. Unless you are working on a farm, construction or you head to deer camp for four weeks out of the year, a truck is impractical — it may be cool, macho or fun, but it’s still impractical.

And on the flip side, if you have ever strapped a sheet of plywood or a chair to the roof of your Corolla, a car may not be the right type of vehicle for you either.

What do you need?

Truck owners — who’ve never owned a car — tend to think that cars are weak. Car owners — who have never owned a truck — see trucks as intimidating.

So don’t think with emotion and simply ask yourself — what do I need?

Who knows, you could have been driving the wrong type of vehicle for decades.

BY:

evdemorier@aol.com

Everett De Morier has appeared on CNN, Fox News Network, NPR, ABC, as well as in The New York Times and The London Times. He is the author of Crib Notes for the First Year of Marriage: A...


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