Car Culture Shock

By George Davis - I wasn’t a total automotive neophyte. I mean, I had driven rental cars all over France and Italy. During summer and winter holidays each year I had returned to the US and trafficked New York State’s highways and byways often enough. And I had owned vehicles practically since the day I received my driver’s license as a teenager. But American car culture had perceptibly evolved since I moved to Paris four years ago. Something had changed. Something was different in me, in everyone else, or perhaps in both…

Okay, we all know that “being American” and “owning an automobile” are effectively synonymous. And I would have to have lived in a bubble to overlook the current trend, er… obsession with “bigger is better” automobiles in the US. But my regular visits and relative familiarity with current consumer patterns did little to prepare me for the turbulent re-entry I would experience as I readjusted to the American automotive mentality after my stint as an expat.

Ever seen a 1972 Toyota LandCruiser FJ-40? Arguably the coolest, chunkiest, gas-hogging-est prehistoric SUV, the FJ-40 series enjoys rare distinction as one of the longest running production 4x4s, manufactured continuously between 1960 and 1984 (or even longer if you want to count the Bandeirante, a clone manufactured in Brazil until 2001.) I’ve loved FJ-40s for as long as I can remember. Evoking a rugged safari lifestyle, they would have been featured prominently if J. Peterman had attempted an automotive catalogue.

Upon relocating to Santa Fe, New Mexico in the mid-‘90s, I promptly purchased two essentials, a motorcycle and an FJ-40. If I were prepared to submit the rational to the romantic, to swap a professionally promising Washington DC lifestyle for the “Land of Enchantment” uncertainties of blue sky Santa Fe, then it was only sensible to complement (supplement?) this quixotic move with the perfect transportation. I sought and bought the perfect steeds (certainly two Rosinantes are better than one,) a rocket-fast motorcycle and a 1972 Toyota FJ-40.

Ahhh… the LandCruiser. That two-tone wonder, more artifact than showroom restoration, could climb trees, or so I liked to claim. I never did much more than drive around Santa Fe feeling a bit like a late 20th century Hemingway, but I did use it to slog through a mountain snowfall or two, and I did manage to sell it a couple years later for more than I had paid for it. And I spent some time under the hood, tinkering and absorbing the vernacular that has served me well for negotiating with mechanics and playing chameleon among some challenging types of company.

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