The Long & Winding Road

For those boomers who still had kids to haul around, the SUV rolled up big in the '90s. But unlike the minivan, SUVs were cool. "Minivans never quite captured boomers' souls," says Hochstein. "There's not a lot of me in minivans. It's a lot of us, and that's not what boomers are about." Riding high and loaded with leather, SUVs were the perfect boomer blend. Engineered to scale mountains, most SUVs made suburban assaults on the shopping mall—less than 5 percent were ever taken off-road, according to automakers. And the generation that invented Earth Day managed to rationalize its fixation with the three-ton gas hogs. "I refuse to feel guilty," says Bob Sanders, 59, a Covington, Ky., lawyer who owns a Hummer H2, but once was a Microbus-driving, commune-living hippie. "Other cars in my life were an MG Midget, VW bugs, the tiniest sports cars made. I've already saved the environment for most of my life. If I'm abusing it a little right now, I can live with that."

But not everyone could. As SUVs grew in size, so did the controversy surrounding them. First, environmentalists began to howl about how much gas they gulped. (The Sierra Club dubbed the Godzilla-size Ford Excursion the Ford Valdez.) Then came the grisly realization that SUVs pulverized other cars (and their drivers) in accidents. And finally, the confluence of the Iraq War and soaring gas prices rendered SUVs uncool. Boomers exited them in droves.

Initially, the Prius became the antidote to a Hummer hangover. After Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins climbed out of one and onto the red carpet at the 2004 Oscars, the Prius became a car cause celeb. Buyers lined up and paid thousands over its $23,000 sticker price. "I wanted a car that made a statement against wastefulness, against the current administration, against the war," says Prius owner Burt Constable, 49, an Oak Park, Ill., newspaper columnist. "My voting hasn't controlled the U.S., but my car can control a little part of it."

But replicating the Prius phenomenon has proved problematic. When automakers stuffed gas-electric hybrid systems into existing models, like the Ford Escape hybrid, boomers shrugged. Those hybrids, with their tiny leafy badges, were far too subtle. Boomers, not surprisingly, want to shout their green street cred in a car that looks like nothing else. That's why the Prius, with its avant-garde look, remains the hottest hybrid. "I want to change the world through shopping," declares Prius owner and reformed SUV driver Debbie Levin, 53, of L.A. "Oh, yeah, and I feel like I'm cool."

Where will boomers turn next? That's what the auto industry is spending millions to figure out. Just a few years ago, all anyone in the car business cared about was Gen Y, the 13- to 30-year-old children of the boomers. But it turns out that there are still plenty of miles left in boomers' car cravings. And once again, they're not going to act like their parents and stop buying new cars when they hit retirement. Honda started shying away from boomers earlier this decade, fearing it was growing old with the generation that put it on the map. But now Honda is making a U-turn and re-embracing its boomer buddies—because it's good for business. "We're trying to figure out what happens to these people when they become empty-nesters," says Honda senior researcher Robert Bienenfeld. "They're going through this dramatic shift into a new life stage, and we want to get under their skin."

The fact is, no one really knows what boomers will drive into the sunset. They've always been a generation driven to defy expectations and blaze its own trail. But some futurists believe boomers' wheels of tomorrow will weave together the tapestry of their lives—from fomenting revolution, to bringing babies onboard, to taking the high road in high style. "A lot of boomers want to re-engage with things they protested about in the'60s and '70s," says J. Walker Smith, author of "Middle Ageless," a forthcoming book on aging boomers. "But they don't want to give up the comfort and luxury they've grown accustomed to. They're not going to man the barricades this time. The new form of protest will be with their pocketbooks."