What is today's IT car?

By John Rogers

February 14, 2002 - I'm so numb from all of the so-called "segment busters" and vehicles that are designed for a niche within a niche within a niche, that I could whack a torque wrench against my thigh and not feel a thing. (Be my guest. -Ed.)

The numbness isn't helping me answer a question I've been struggling with: Just what is THE cool car out there these days? And I don't mean a particular make or model, I mean a genre. At any given point in post-modern times, culture has dictated that there was a type of car that defined cool. It was the car that the high school quarterback with the richy-rich parents cruised around in and had to scrape the cheerleaders off of with a crowbar. It was the car that middle-aged men coveted, once the kids got shipped off to college. Like the fickle fashion industry with its rotating lineup of IT girls, car guys knew what car was IT.

Until the '60s, except for rare foreign exotica like a Jag X120, the North American car market was fairly straight up. You had standard-sized sedans and station wagons, and, er, that was it. The import-fighting Falcon and Valiant subcompacts were the thin edge of the wedge for breaking the monotony. For most of the decade, the IT car to have was definitely The Convertible, epitomized by the '64 Mustang. You could argue that the Mustang's popularity alone caused automakers to include convertibles throughout their product ranges and create the faux-vinyl top option for convertible wannabes.

But, ah, the evil fickleness of fashion. Eventually, it wasn't cool enough to just have a top that goes down. You needed to have some muscle for opposite-sex-impressing smoky burnouts. Which leads us to our next IT car: The Muscle Car. Although Pontiac's Tempest/LeMans-based GTO started it all, we're nominating the '70 Plymouth Superbird as the apex of the genre.

Mr. Ed limits me to about 800 words here, so I don't have the room to cite every reason why the '70s sucked. I'm just going to designate The Van With Airbrushed Nude on Horseback as our next IT car for the disco generation.

Of course, spending a year's salary on a shaggin' wagon and then having the mural rust away was, to say the least, "a drag, man." Next time might as well get something that looked good beat up and muddy to begin with. By the '80s, you were a nobody unless you had our next IT car: The 4X4 Pickup. Jacked to the sky with a lift kit, huge "mudder" tires, and gazillion-watt CIBIE auxiliary lights mounted on your chrome rollover bar, these precursors to monster trucks were everywhere.

A generation of kids graduating Driver's Ed in their moms' Accords set the table for our next IT car: The Japanese Sports Car. Laying the foundation with earlier Celicas and 240Zs, by the early '90s cool was a Miata, an RX-7, a Supra Turbo or the iconic 300ZX Turbo. But by the mid-'90s, defining the IT car starts to become a challenge. A combination of high insurance rates and baby boomers not wanting to cram their kids into their CRXs killed The Japanese Sports Car. In fact, if you look back as to what car was IT in the mid-'90s, you'd have to say it was The Minivan. For about 15 minutes in 1996, Chrysler's Town & Country was the apex of minivan ownership and was a status symbol to some (Who? - Ed.). And of course this leads us to the now ubiquitous IT car of the late '90s: The Sports Utility Vehicle. With rap stars being the new purveyors of cool, Range Rovers became IT. For a while.

The "15 minutes of fame" standard seems to be shrinking when it comes to the car world. As the niches pile on to the niches, our choice in the marketplace has exponentially exploded over the past ten years. So, just what is THE cool car out there these days? Is IT hot hatches? They seem to be back. Is IT luxury four-door pickups like the Escalade EXT that's popping up in all the music videos? Is IT compact five-doors like the Vibe/Matrix twins or the hot-selling Protege 5? Is IT crossovers like the Lexus RX-300? Is IT quasi-rally cars like the WRX or Lancer EVO? (My God, where's that torque wrench, now I'm getting numb. -Ed.)

Can you name what's IT?