THEREFORE I AM: Lamborghini or minivan? It's a tough choice

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February 2, 2009

By David Spates / davespates@tds.net The Crossville Chronicle Mon Feb 02, 2009, 03:01 PM CST

Recession? What recession? Sure, your house may be worth a fraction of what it was just a year ago and your 401(k) has taken a dive that would make a Kamikaze pilot blush, but all is not lost. Maybe what you need is a solid investment, perhaps a $300,000 ultra-futuristic sports car.

This is probably the only sentence in which you'll see these two companies mentioned together, but could it be that Wal-Mart and Lamborghini are the only companies that are recession-proof? We all know that Wal-Mart is doing well despite the economy being in the toilet. After all, people still need the basics of life, such as soap, pork rinds, discount soda and a "wide" selection of XXXL sweatpants. One thing you won't see at your local Wal-Mart is a Lamborghini parked outside, but there's a commonality nonetheless. Like Wal-Mart, the high-end sports car manufacturer is actually doing pretty well these days.

The Associated Press recently reported that Lamborghini's worldwide sales increased in 2008 over the previous year. U.S. sales were down a little bit, but when you're hocking automotive bling that starts — starts — at $200,000, geography is little more than a distant high school memory. And really, who's going to buy a baseline $200,000 Lamborghini? By the time you slip in a cupholder or two, a cassette player and a real simulated wood interior, that sticker price is going to jump a 100 grand easy. If you've got the ducats to drop on a car like that, you don't settle for hand-crank windows.

I've written many times that I'm not a car guy. Some men feel like weenies driving around town in a minivan, but not me. It's utilitarian, it's boring, it's dorky, and I couldn't care less. I'm not so insecure that I need a flashy ride to tell the world that I'm a manly man. In fact, the way I look at it, it takes an exceptionally manly man to drive a minivan. Even the biggest weenie in the world has a modicum of self-respect in a Cadillac Escalade, but it takes a real man to feel good about himself in my Honda dorkmobile.

For me, a car isn't much different than a computer mouse. I have no interest in it beyond its capacity to do its job so I can do what I need to do. However, the exception that proves my rule is the Lamborghini.

The Lamborghini is the only car that impresses me, and for that I blame the only man I can think of who dresses worse than I — Morley Safer. In 1985, Morley did a story on "60 Minutes" about the Lamborghini. I was 15 at the time and intermittently taking my learner's permit out for a spin in my mother's light brown Dodge Caravan. (I swore to myself back then that I'd never buy a minivan, but that 15-year-old boy insisted on growing up.)

Anyway, Morley was in love with the Lambo. He went to Italy and visited the Lamborghini factory, chatted with Lambo drivers and pored over every testosterone-filled cylinder and sex-starved angle. I was smitten.

Back then, a Lamborghini would set you back a mere 120,000 Reagan-era dollars, but for a 15-year-old, money was no object. From that Sunday evening forward, it was my life's pursuit to pick up Christine Reese and drive her to the movies in a red Lamborghini. I did, in fact, eventually pick up Christine Reese and drive her to the movies, but it was in my mom's minivan — a decidedly different experience than the red Lambo.

Things didn't go very far with Christine back then, and the Lamborghini remains on my bucket list. I don't pine over Christine these days because I married the last perfect woman in North America, but I still think about the Lambo from time to time. Sadly, unless I win the lottery (which I never play) I see no Lambo in my immediate future. At this point I'd settle for a ride with Morley.

David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@tds.net.

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