I'm In Love With My Car

This morning in a 7-11 parking lot, I saw the first car that I ever really wanted: a 1974 Sun Bug. It may have been a vestige of my fondness for my father's red convertible bug, but when I first saw the ad campaign, I knew that I would have one someday.
I never did get a Sun Bug. I had a metallic blue Super Beetle for a good long while through college, but it didn't quite fill the bill. I yearned for the sun roof and the special hubcaps. I know that if I had been more adept at pimping my ride, or even more willing to pay somebody to spray the thing gold, I would have been closer to my goal. I wasn't and I didn't, and consequently I carry this pang of regret.
Then there was the Plymouth Arrow. This was the car that appeared on the advent of my getting a driver's licence. Sure it was stylish and sporty, but the fact that Chrysler ponied up the money to use Harry Nilsson's song "Me and My Arrow" to sell it to the masses was enough to hook me. My problem was that these were new cars, and therefore were approximately ten times more expensive than the money I had saved to buy my first car. I bought a Vega. On the plus side, the Vega was named Motor Trend's Car of the Year in 1971. On the downside, it had an aluminum block and burned oil.
But the vehicle I wanted most in the world was a black Chevy van. In the summer before I entered high school, I made elaborate sketches of the artwork I wanted to paint on the side. This was 1977, and so I vacillated wildly between a very Frank Frazetta kind of thing and a detailed vision of the Rebels' attack on the Death Star. I think it made my parents nervous to think that their teenage son would be driving around in "one of those vans", but I saw it more as a moving canvas. Many years later, I married a woman who painted on her car.
Now my son has set his sights on the 2009 Camaro. He picked it for its connection to his favorite Transformer, Bumblebee. He had a brief thought about saving up for a Maserati, but once he saw this Camaro, he made up his mind. The car won't be available for another year, and he is still six years away from a driver's license, and depending on the car's relative Blue Book value after that time, he might have a shot. In the meantime, I'll keep riding my bike and dreaming of a sun roof.