General Motor's Dreams

My first boyfriend had a car. It was a boat of thing. A lime green Cadillac with white leather interior and white walled tires. I think there were even fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. He was well over 6ft so the car suited his frame and he would jokingly say he bought it because it matched the color of his eyes. It looked every much like the car in the attached photo, but a little less tricked out.

I spent a lot of time hiding under the front seat of the "Dominican Mobile" as he and his brother lovingly called it. NOooooo..not like that! I hid because didn't want my friends to see me in that car! I was small enough to be able to duck beneath the dashboard at chance encounters. That car was so big that I could have just stayed there and had a picnic lunch! I was 15, not an excuse but an explanation in regards to my ignorance and desire for him to tone it down or at least buy a Harley! I once asked him why he didn't just paint it a more "respectful" color, even his mom hesitated to ride in that car, and he reminded me that the color was original and changing it would devalue the car.

I grew up in a family that loved cars, especially American made cars. My father, uncles and cousins all bought and restored cars, usually muscle. They would spend months salvaging and working on them in oiled stain driveways just to get the cars "pristine" before searching for the new car that would be "the one". When questioned about my first love's defense of color they all agreed that changing the original color of a car or making any drastic alterations to the lines would ruin it. In retrospect the color wasn't the issue it was the attention that car drew as it made it's way up and down the tiny streets of the Queens area we lived in at the time. Hell, at one time my father even owned a lime green Camero that didn't seem as offensive as the "Dominican Mobile", probably because it was half its size.

With the announcement of General Motor's bankrupcy situation memories of cars owned and loved by friends and family came flooding back. Luckily many readers of the NY Times reacted in the same way. Have a look at reader's pictures and memories of G.M.'s cars -

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/06/01/automobiles/01GM_USER_SLIDESHOW_index.html