A timeless message.

You Are What You Drive

What does your car really say about you?

Photo by Sudhith Xavier on Unsplash

As I car shopped this week, I thought about a story I wrote sixteen years ago. It’s about a then sixteen-year-old car I was driving at the time and how it reflected who I was, if I were to believe the radio commercials of the time.

Even though the ad campaign is dead, it’s still easy to succumb to brand identity. If I am what I drive, then over the course of my life I’ve been a Cavalier, a Colt, an Explorer, a Patriot, a Mustang, and a variety of alphanumeric entities.

And if it’s true, then I must be a Rogue, because that’s what I bought.

I pulled a yellowed copy of my story out of the file and re-read it. The model names are outdated, but the message is timeless.

You Are What You Drive

First published in the Sunday Gazette-Mail, March 16, 2003

Image by Rebecca Hall

“You are what you drive…” So said the commercial that blared from the original speakers in my faded silver 1987 Pontiac that my family fondly calls “The Gray Ghost.”