Diatribe: Allow me to introduce you to my car

• Reprints

When I was growing up in Indiana there were only so many times you could tip over a cow, make out at Bartz’ Woods or eat a “pig’s dinner” at Brownie’s Drive-In. So creative juices flowed and out came the trend of naming one’s car.

Not just a name to talk about, but to actually paint on the vehicle. I wasn’t immune from this, either. I had a 1955 Ford in high school at the time the Everly Brothers had a hit song titled “Problems.” So I chose that moniker for my Ford, even though I didn’t have any problems with it, and had the name painted below the left quarter-panel window. Cool!

Only thing was, the name was so small and unprofessionally done that I might as well have written it in pencil and waited for the rain to wash it away.

Other non-song names were somewhat predictable, like an all-white car would be called “The Milk Wagon” or “Dairy Delight” or something that would connote vanilla ice cream. A black vehicle would quite often be named “Black Beauty” or “Midnight.” Usually the cars that were other colors — like yellow, tan, green or blue — were the ones that were named after songs.

My Ford was black and white, so if I had been of the mind and the song had been available I could have named it “Ebony & Ivory.” (Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and I used to have long conversations about this but usually the alarm clock went off before any solution was resolved.)

You don’t see things done like this anymore. Most cars look alike — so there’s no single characteristic that makes a statement. Back then, a car was your identity. There was also another thing many of us did to personalize our vehicles: We had them pinstriped.

Pinstriping was an absolute art, and I’ve seen some of the most intricate patterns done freehand — and that included an identical right and left design. Watching someone with a fine-edged paint brush in their hand, held like Europeans hold their cigarettes, was more enjoyable than watching the World Series and much more professional.

Eventually the factories began offering pinstriping as an option, and although they were obviously well done there seemed to be a subliminal loss of personalization by having a machine do something a true artist could do with a steady pair of hands. As far as I can recall, no factory ever painted a name on the side of a car per the customer’s request. Had it been offered as an option, it might have added to the sex appeal of the car because — unlike pinstriping — painting a name is something that requires solemnity.

I guess in retrospect it was better to name a car after a song or even a movie than give it an actual name. Somehow the name “Ralph” doesn’t fit the image of a high-performance Chevy. By the same token, it sounded much better to name a 425-horsepower Ford “Shake, Rattle & Roll” than to have the name “Clarence” painted up in fancy letters.

I realize the chances of someone introducing you to his or her car by name probably would be quite rare, but after seeing a commercial where dozens of employees are congratulating a building on its selection as “employee of the month” it seems possible.

I always have believed that machines have life, and if not life, at least a soul. Thus, it makes sense to name a car. But the name given to a mass of metal can’t be equated to those of a human being.

Al Vinikour is a Midwest-based freelance auto writer. Proving a mind is a “terrible thing to use” he sometimes sits in traffic and ponders about things — generally auto-related — that make him mad. Believing the “pen is mightier than the sword” (and generally results in a whole lot less jail time), he vents his anger through a word processor and produces the Driver’s Side Diatribe column. Email him at vinikour@comcast.net.