I have nothing against automobile enthusiasts, particularly since I'm married to one, but my main interest is reliable transport. All I ask is that a car doesn't leave me stranded in an unfamiliar Washington, D.C. neighborhood because a deeply embedded $5 part inexplicably snapped. Twenty-four years later, I still haven't forgiven that 1972 Volvo, even if some people consider it a classic.

At the time, it was embarrassing driving a vehicle characterizing early '80s Yuppiedom. I self-consciously excused myself to disinterested strangers, "My late uncle bought this car. Did I mention he was Swedish?"

Cars traditionally hold a special place in American society, symbolic of cultural mobility and excesses, as well as representing commercial marketing and design failures that we love deriding. Too bad somebody lost his job over that.

I always discourage scrapbookers cropping background cars out of photographs, as they are emblematic of eras. Mention '50s innocence and everybody fondly recalls big-finned cars boating along Route 66; half a century later, suburbs + Hummers = global warming.

My father, who loved to tinker with cars before they became computerized, bought his first new vehicle in 1973, a yellow Ford Pinto, complete with wood paneling like our den. Luckily, no one ever rear-ended us.

Recently, my husband pointed out a Thanksgiving article on the greatest automotive turkeys, which, of course, included the combustible Pinto. The list also featured the Yugo, an automobile name and concept everyone assumed from the start was destined for infamy. In 1986, a neighbor's nine-year-old son casually observed at brunch, "You know, if I sold all my toys, I could buy a Yugo." We advised him a Big Wheel was safer and would better hold its value.

One of my sons remarked a professor deadpanned that his salary necessitated driving a Yugo and the class looked at him blankly. As a kid, I always assumed my contemporaries recognized the Edsel analogy my father commonly used describing so much promise with so little delivery.

My kids can't drive by an Aztek without a derogatory remark, although they are strictly judging style. It made the turkey list, but predicting legendary turkey status in automotive history may be premature. I still think it doesn't really matter, as long as it takes you where you want to go.