Car ownership and masculine self-esteem
Automobiles, including a first set of wheels, are a subject of male emotional concern
One of the highlights of Philip Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint is the episode in which the hero’s father, shortly after the Second World War, takes his son, young Portnoy, to the car dealer to exchange his 1939 Dodge for a brand new Kaiser.
“What a perfect way for an American dad to impress his American son,” Portnoy exults in memory.
But there is a hitch. At the dealership, the salesman pressures Portnoy Sr. to buy innumerable accessories.
“The fast-talking salesman acted as though he just couldn’t believe his ears, was simply incredulous, each time my father said ‘No’ to one after another of the thousand little accessories the . . . sucker wanted to sell us,” Portnoy recalls.
The pressure was unrelenting. “She’d look two hun-erd per cent better with the whitewalls — don’t you think so, young fella?” the salesman says.
“Wouldn’t you like your dad to get the whitewalls, at least?”
Poor Mr. Portnoy. What should have been a moment of triumph turns into a moment of humiliation as his father is revealed to be not such an American success after all. What good is a Kaiser without whitewalls?
I was amused when I read this episode, recognizing the vulnerability we feel in the presence of a salesman who embarrasses us because of our refusal to act like Diamond Jim Brady — penny-pinching petite bourgeois that we are.
It is also significant that the episode concerns itself with car ownership, a subject of some emotional concern for males.
As children, we championed the various cars that our fathers possessed, although in the 1950s, there wasn’t much variety. It was pretty much Ford vs. Chevy, unless one’s dad had money enough for a highend car such as a Pontiac or Buick. But our fathers, it seemed to me, kept out of this childish competition.
My own father certainly was not ashamed of his station wagon, but it was a pride connected less with the vehicle itself than with its being a symbol of his ability to care for a wife and four children. The vehicle came into its own on Saturday mornings when my father drove it to the local A & P to fill it with bags of groceries. That was a North American dad for you.
What is even more impressive, in retrospect, is that my father more or less passed on to me a car of my own, a slightly battered Plymouth, after I got my drivers’ licence. I can’t recall the vintage of the car; perhaps I never even inquired about it.
In any case, it made teenage life possible in that corner of upstate New York where you had to drive to get to a bowling alley or miniature golf course or movie theatre — including, of course, a drive-in. So that well-used Plymouth was another thing more essential and manly than whitewalls. The history of the brand was interesting. In the early ’30s, the Plymouth was marketed as a vehicle with “floating power.” This had something to do with judicious use of rubber engine mounts. It made the reputation of the Plymouth as one of the three high-volume, low-cost cars: the Ford, the Chevrolet and the Plymouth.
By the time I got my Plymouth, it no longer had “floating power,” but something just as good: namely, a low price tag and push-button transmission.
That was magical. Freelance writer Philip Marchand is a contributor to Toronto Star Wheels. A former books editor of the Star, he can be reached by writing
wheels@thestar.ca and putting his name in the subject line.