The Long & Winding Road

Long before boomers turned their cars into multitasking machines, they were interested in only two things—speed and style. And Detroit delivered just as boom-ers were getting their driver's licenses. First came the original pony car, the Ford Mustang, whose arrival was heralded with simultaneous covers of NEWSWEEK and Time in April 1964. Next came muscle cars with memorable names like the Pontiac GTO Judge, the Plymouth Road Runner and the Dodge Super Bee. How did boomers afford all this hot iron? Their indulgent parents picked up the tab. David Spero will never forget the baby blue 1967 Camaro SS he got for his 16th birthday. "It was, like, 'Hell yeah!' " recalls the 55-year-old music manager. "This is the perfect car."

As the Vietnam War created the generation gap, boomers began to view their cars as another form of protest. As soon as they graduated from college, they often used their first paychecks as a way to reject the motoring mores of their parents. Judi Rettich, 60, bought a bright yellow 1974 Super Beetle (a bigger bug) to show she was taking her own road. "My mother didn't like the car—which pleased me no end," says the Lancaster, Pa., artist. "My parents had huge cars and four kids. I had a small car and one child. I was different from them—that was important to me."

Buying a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic was another way of rejecting The Man. "After Vietnam and Watergate, big American institutions were not to be trusted," says General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz. "We were the poster boy for the industrial part of the military-industrial complex." That's why Lana Harris has never bought American. "American automakers seem like the enemy to me," says Harris, 52, a restaurant worker in Two Harbors, Minn. "They seem like behemoths—big, old, sluggish and white."

Politics aside, Detroit also gave boomers plenty of reasons to steer clear. After the twin oil shocks of the 1970s, Detroit went on a disastrous downsizing campaign that resulted in some of the worst cars America ever built. "We had grown inefficient, complacent and lazy," admits Lutz. "Then people got a taste of well-put-together cars from the Japanese." Bob McDonald still painfully recalls his '73 Chevy Vega that burned more oil than gas. "That Vega gave me a reason to look away," says McDonald, who since has driven only Nissans.

Still, Detroit managed to capture boomers—and save itself—when it came up with entirely new categories of cars. In 1984, Chrysler pulled out of its tailspin on the wheels of the minivan it invented. Timed perfectly for boomers' childbearing years, the minivan was another rejection of their parents' tastes: it was the anti station wagon. Lisa Dembo made the move into a white Dodge Caravan when her children came along in the 1980s, despite her husband's objection that it would look "really suburban." "When you're doing a lot of carpooling," explains Dembo, 51, who now drives a Lexus, "you need to be able to get in and out quickly." David Bostwick, who worked on Chrysler's original minivan, recalls that Lee Iacocca expected the Caravan to lead boomers back to Chrysler's boxy LeBarons. "Mr. Iacocca used to describe the minivan as a stalking horse," he recalls. "Unfortunately, during the K-car era, we didn't have anything else these people wanted."

But BMW did. As fatter paychecks rolled in, the Yuppie years arrived and the BMW 3 Series became the essential automotive accessory. "Yuppies had the power suit and the power jewel-ry, and you needed the power vehicle to go with it," says generational expert Madelyn Hochstein of DYG Inc., a social- and market-research firm. A plus: a black Beemer (especially with a drop top) seemed to cover over those tiny crow's feet and emerging paunch. "A Beemer says, 'I don't exercise, but my BMW says I do'," says Wes Brown of Iceology, a California trend-spotting firm.