The Long & Winding Road

Like any good boomer, Robert Bloom was driven to existential angst when asked to explain his car choices over the years. Today the 54-year-old family man drives a sensible and ecofriendly Honda Accord hybrid. But in his salad days, Bloom had a thing for sports cars with stick shifts. His first and still favorite car: a sage green, two-seat 1971 Opel GT with four-on-the-floor. And when he put himself on the car couch for NEWSWEEK, the Northbrook, Ill., psychiatrist admitted that he never stopped lusting for reckless speed. The new object of his desire: a 2007 Pontiac Solstice roadster. "In being asked about my purchases, I was forced to think about my conflicting motivations," Bloom wrote in a follow-up e-mail. "I now realize that it is easier to be held accountable for professional opinions than personal ones." Still, Bloom used his best boomer skills of rationalization to resolve his conflicting passions. "At some point in the future, there's going to be a two-seater, hybrid sports car," he said, "and I'm going to buy it."

What a long, strange trip it's been for boomer drivers. The group that started out as hippies at the wheel of psychedelic VW Microbuses has taken many forks in the road—from muscle cars to minivans, Beetles to Beemers, Hondas to Hummers, pony cars to Priuses. The one constant in boomers' conflicted car culture: you are what you drive. On the road, the Me Generation became the Look at Me Generation. "The vehicle became the picture frame around the boomer," says auto researcher John Wolkonowicz of Global Insight. "They carried cars as fashion statement to the extreme."

How did two-ton machines with four wheels and an internal-combustion engine come to define us? Because to most boomers, cars are like breathing and television—essential to everyday living. They were never the mysterious mechanical marvels our parents drove from point A to point B. Rather, cars are a rearview mirror that reflects a restless generation intent on reinventing the rules of the road. (Those roads, by the way, are boomers themselves, since the Interstate Highway System was born in 1956.) To boomers, the wheels you choose are the ultimate expression of freedom and of self. After all, taking to the open road has been a lifelong love affair. Boomers were the first generation to grow up in the back seat, or, in some cases, the back window. "I'd ride up in the rear-window deck of my dad's '54 Plymouth," recalls Bob McDonald, 52, an auto analyst for Edmunds.com. "I rode there one last time when he traded it in for a white 1960 Impala."

As boomers moved into the driver's seat, they pushed automakers to create cars especially for what they needed—and needed to project—at each stage of life. Carmakers complied with muscle cars for the early years, fuel sippers in the days of gas lines, family haulers for the "Baby on Board" stage and status-symbol cars and SUVs for the age of affluence. Now that boomers have learned the inconvenient truth about global warming, they're ditching their SUVs and lining up to buy the Toyota Prius and crossover utility vehicles that combine the attributes of an SUV in a slimmer, more fuel-efficient package. Think of it as the SUV that hit the gym and now runs on half-caf skim latte. Detroit is desperate to come up with the next big breakthrough to give boomers what they need for their empty-nest years, and hope to score with new crossovers like the GMC Acadia and Ford Edge. "Fifty-four percent of all vehicles purchased last year were by people over 50," says Chrysler trend watcher Steve Bartoli. "We call it the silver tsunami."

It's not just the cars that changed over the years. Boomers also transformed our culture with their automotive obsessions. For starters, they filled their driveways and our highways with wheels. In 1962, when the first boomers turned 16, there were 78 million cars and trucks on the road. Today there are 237 million, a threefold increase, according to the U.S. Highway Administration. Cars now outnumber licensed drivers in American households, giving rise to the three-car family. One in five new houses today is built with a three-car garage, double the rate of just 15 years ago, according to the National Association of Home Builders. "The American garage started out on the back of the lot," says car-culture expert Michael Marsden of St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis. "Then it moved closer to the house, then it was attached. Now it's the entrance to the house."

The car itself became a rolling home with boomers at the wheel. First there were the passion-pit years, when the back seat served as the boomer bedroom. (Honda recently honored the days of "shaggin' wagons" with commercials for its Odyssey minivan that featured '70s conversion vans decked out with water beds and bolero beads to the sound of Foghat's "Slow Ride.") These days, though, the car is more a kitchen-cum-dining-room, as drive-ins begat drive-throughs, which begat dashboard dining. The average American now consumes 33 meals a year in his car, according to NPD Group, a Chicago consumer researcher. And one quarter of all restaurant meals are now ordered from a car. "One of the most important appliances in America is the power window," says NPD's Harry Balzer. "At some point, you'll see drive-throughs at the side of supermarkets."