I caught myself looking longingly at a beige Volkswagen Beetle parked in the office garage. Not a vintage example, like the one patiently enduring a particularly polar winter from under a triple-layer car cover while parked (not in but) next to our garage at home. No, this one was a current model that must’ve been part of our short-term test fleet as it clearly wasn’t a “civilian” car. I’d obviously overlooked it on the car board, where it was likely buried among the midsize crossovers and bigger sedans I find myself largely relegated to these days. Others on staff get to enjoy all the sportier—and often smaller—fare.
The Volkswagen’s hunkered, speedster profile paired with a set of chrome smoothie rims to turn a car I’d always thought of as a bit of a dorkmobile into something ... OK, if not quite cool, at least visually interesting. I walked by it several days, and each time my eye lingered—until one morning I realized why it struck me so: I cannot remember the last time I drove a coupe!
Corvettes, Ferraris, the odd Infiniti Q60 or Honda Civic coupe or Audi RS 5—even the Dodge Challenger, of which we must have the highest concentration in the world in these parts—all have made their way in and out of our test fleet without my getting close to one for any appreciable time. And Porsche, the maker of some of the best, sportiest four-doors on the road, apparently makes a few darn good coupes, so I’ve heard. But ask me how much I dug my stint in a Mac- an a few weeks ago. Answer: a lot!
No, not since having to lug a 25-pound car seat from ride to ride have I spent any real time in a two-door. I did once wedge my kid’s then-rear-facing seat into the back of a Mustang to make a point of it—how derelict a job would I be doing as a car mag-slinging parent if I didn’t?—but my right hip is still paying the price for the contortions required to do so.
My husband has never bought into the coupe-is-cooler ethos espoused by a lot of avowed car folks. I think his need for practicality has always canceled out whatever go-fast attitude the two-door form is supposed to impart to a car (despite having proudly owned a number of coupes himself over the years). Besides, the notion of the cool coupe is often rendered moot since most automakers produce four-door riffs on their sportiest formulas anyway.
But it can wear on one after a while, driving only four-doors, you know? At least it does me.
The first car I bought with my own cash was a first-gen Ford Probe GT. It already had like 140,000 miles on the clock, and being an auction car, I couldn’t test-drive it beforehand, let alone poke around under the hood, so buying it marked perhaps the biggest gamble of my (up till then) life, but to me it overflowed with the promise of cool. Those pop-up headlights! That turbo Mazda motor! A five-speed manual! And that shape! It torque-steered like a mofo, and the auto-sliding shoulder belt was annoying at best, but to my domestic-bred life, having been reared on a steady diet of basic Ford products, the Probe felt exotic.
I’m not sure had I taken the beige Beetle home that it’d’ve given me the same sense of youthful self-assuredness my Probe did. But from across the parking garage, it sure looked like it could.
On the other hand, I do covet a Pacifica.
Executive Editor NATALIE NEFF can be reached at natalie.neff@hearst.com
