A lot of car buyers are loyal to their favorite automakers, almost to a fault. In my travels, I’ve met Ford guys who say they’d never buy a Chevrolet, Ram guys who’d never buy a Ford, BMW guys who’d never put their hands on anything American, and pretty much all points in between. Automotive tribalism can get weird sometimes, but it makes us think. If you had to live with a single car brand for the rest of your life, which one would it be, and why?
This is a question that’s hard for me to answer. I love all cars, even the deeply unloved ones. If anything, the more a stereotypical enthusiast hates a car, the more I’m likely to love it. I do own six Smart Fortwos, after all. Still, I also own lots of other cars and motorcycles, from American classics to a Japanese rotary. Telling me to pick only one brand feels like torture.
For the purposes of this question, the brand you choose is the one that you also have to drive for the rest of your life. This means that you can’t just rent a car from another brand as a sort of loophole. No, if you rent a car, you have to rent a car from your chosen brand. Also, brands that are technically related to other brands, like Ram, DS, Polestar, or SRT, are considered their own brands for this exercise. I suppose the one loophole would be that you can be a passenger in another brand’s car.
The implications of this can be grand. If you choose a brand that builds nothing but sports cars, you’re sort of screwed if you ever need to drive a truck to move out of your house or apartment. Likewise, if you choose a truck brand, you may never experience the thrill of driving a roadster or a sports car. Logically, the best choice here would be a full-line automaker that has everything from sports cars to trucks.
Despite the rules I set above, I would still pick Smart as my one and only brand to live with.
I’ve gotten through much of my life already, depending on a Smart Fortwo to be my everything. My 2012 Smart has worn many different hats throughout its life. There was a time I treated it like a tuner car, a time when I had it towing trailers and working like a pickup truck, a period when it was my off-roader, and more. My Smart fleet now has a frugal 70 mpg diesel, a convertible, a beater, and a speedy turbo model. Smart has also built a weird street legal go-kart, a sports car, a couple of small four-door hatches, and now it makes a bunch of crazy fast electric SUVs.
If I need to go faster, I suppose I could just soup up a stock Smart engine or have someone implant a Suzuki Hayabusa engine or a Toyota Paseo engine into my car. Some wild builders also used to make six-wheel Smart pickup trucks, too. I could pretty much have most parts of the car world covered with an armada of Smarts.
I think if I had nothing but Smarts for the rest of my life, I would depart from this mortal plane as a happy woman. So, here’s where I turn things to you. A terrible sorcerer is using magic or whatever to force you into sticking with a single car brand for the rest of your life. What brand is it, and why?
The post You Have To Stick With One Car Brand For The Rest Of Your Life, What’s It Gonna Be? appeared first on The Autopian.
