It was only when he parked next to a Camry did Peter Cheney realize that his Accord was strikingly dull.
There are some contests you don't want to win. So it was with a sinking heart that I realized my own vehicle is a leading contender for the World's Dullest Car title.
It hit me as I pulled into a Home Depot parking lot in our 2002 Accord. Parked next to me was an aging Toyota Camry, a car that reminds me of a dentist's waiting room with no magazines. I knew our Accord was no Ferrari, but on the great totem pole of automotive coolness, I'd always placed it least one notch above a Camry.
Now I wasn't so sure. Looking at the two cars side by side, I realized that our Accord might actually defeat the Camry in a Bore-Off. Our car was dull. Really dull: just looking at it made me feel like I'd been shot with a tranquilizer dart.
How could it have come to this? As a young man, I always had cool cars. Over the years, my stable included everything from a Fiat 600 to a BMW 2002 Tii to a modified VW Beetle that could dust off some Porsches. Now I was driving a machine with all the thrill of a slow cooker.
Like hair loss and weight gain, dull-car ownership has a way of creeping up on you. It happens by degrees, and then, poof, you're there, fat and bald (or in my case, piloting an '02 Accord).
Looking back, I could easily chart my descent into the abyss of automotive mediocrity. It began back in the 1980s, when I parked my 1967 Beetle, the car I owned through journalism school. That car was a classic, and I used to spend hours staring at it, drinking in its funky details and the iconic shape that went back to the time of the Beer Hall Putsch.
But the Beetle soon fell victim to my rapidly changing life. My days of motorcycle racing and student journalism were coming to an end. I graduated, got married, moved to Toronto, and settled into a high-rise apartment and the around-the-clock life of news reporter. I was a former Porsche-VW mechanic, but I no longer had the time or the place to do my own tune-ups and carburetor rebuilds.
My wife and I bought a Jetta - somewhat sporty, but definitely less interesting than the Beetle. The Jetta was a two-door, with a manual transmission, so we still had some degree of street cred and coolness, but that would soon disappear, along with our free time and discretionary income.
When our daughter was born, we traded the Jetta for a four-door Honda that made it easier to load the baby seat. A few years later, a minivan looked like a good idea.
Then came our son, a decade of serious hockey and a house renovation that left us on the financial ropes. Automotive style (and function, for that matter) took a back seat to sheer economic survival - we were paying a Hindenburg-sized mortgage plus hockey bills that approached tuition at an elite private school.
So when my mother-in-law's five-year-old Accord became available, we went for it, simply because it was cheap and because it would do the job.
This was not a car I would have chosen. It was forest green with a tan interior - the kind of colours that senior citizens love. (Only powder blue could have been worse.) Adding insult to injury, the Accord had fake wood interior trim and a four-speed automatic transmission that made it sound like a lowing Holstein when you pulled out to pass.
But I gritted my teeth. I was dealing with teetering lines of credit that had been used to pay off structural engineers, carpenters and a drain specialist who dug out our crumbling clay sewage lines. I had two kids to put through university.
Over time, I convinced myself that I actually liked the Accord. It was an automotive variation on the philosophy espoused in one of my favourite Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young songs: If I couldn't be with the car I loved, I'd love the one I was with.
In my mind, the Accord was the thinking-man's BMW. Why pay for a 3-Series when you can get dual overhead cams and fully independent suspension for half the price?
We might be riding in a four-wheeled sedative, but we took amazing trips in it, and prided ourselves on the fact that we didn't need fancy wheels. We watched people go by in Porsches and Mercedes and mocked them as poor, status-obsessed fools. Such is the power of self-delusion.
And then came my drive to Home Depot. I saw my car for what it was - a workman-like appliance with all the artistry of a refrigerator (and not a Sub-Zero).
It was a cruel realization that shattered an important personal mythology. I'd just decided to do a picture story on the dullest cars of all time, and had immediately thought of the Ford Topaz, the Opel Kadett and the Chevy Cavalier. Then I looked at my own car and realized that it could actually be the winner.
I headed into Home Depot to buy some gallon-sized jugs of Lysol and a collection of mops, buckets and disposable sponges. (We'd just had a sewer backup after someone flushed a wad of paper towels down the basement toilet.) The emergency Roto-Rooting and plumbing repairs had cost nearly $300, and the cleaning supplies required to disinfect the basement would run to almost $100 more.
It had been a rough winter on the financial front. My son's university meal plan had cost twice what we expected. Our cat James had just died in costly fashion after a long and healthy life. In James' last six weeks, we spent more than $1,000 for emergency veterinary treatments and a dignified send-off: home euthanasia, cremation, an urn with his name on it and plaster casts of his paw print.
Now one of the geckos was off her food and looking rough. We took her to a vet who specializes in lizards, snakes and birds. The initial estimate was $913 for X-rays, ultrasounds and a hospital stay. We decided to take our chances with a lesser course of treatment that included hand feeding and a course of fluid injections, but it would still cost more than $300.
So there went my cool-car budget - down the drain, up in smoke, and injected into a lizard. I may buy new cars some day soon, but in the meantime, I have more laps to do in the Dullsville 500.