Front Wheel Drive is an invention of Satan. Along with automatic transmissions (also auto related) and the Windows OS (unavoidable in the Modern World, unless one is a Scot, which we are not), Front Wheel Drive is a Device Of Satan which I generally try to stay Well Clear Of.
But. Alas, there is a But. And the But is this: Volvo does not make a Rear Wheel Drive minivan. And, after years of enduring the increasingly frequent, increasingly strident howls of the distaff, “I am being squished!” and “I am being squashed” as the Sons have grown larger and larger, it became time-to-get-a-minivan. Some might say the time was ten years ago, when Son Number Four came into this world. But they would be wrong. He was small, as were the others, and we all fit JUST FINE, thank you, in the Volvo wagon.
Now, however, they all tromp, they clomp, they hulk. The two who came first are wide, well, wider than when they were six and one year old respectively, and they both tower over their parents, and the youngest two are full-sized children, not little childlets, as they were ten years ago when I could pick them both up with one hand. Now I can’t pick either of them up even with all of my hands!
So. Vantime. Well, at least I knew what to get. Thirteen years ago, a friend asked me to find her a van, a van that met a long list of requirements, many mutually exclusive. She wanted a van that was large and safe which was light and got good milage. She wanted a van that was reliable, durable and cheap. She wanted a van that was comfortable and commodious, easy to maintain, attractive and easy to drive. She wanted the moon and the stars.
So, I looked and looked and looked. Out of the pile of vans available, one emerged at the top of the heap: the Volkswagen Eurovan. What my friend needed most was room. Though she only had three small children, she managed to fill an ordinary van to the brim with them and their detritus with no effort whatsoever. She needed all the room she could get, and more. I knew she would fill the van to capacity and have things left over, but with this van, I knew she’d have less left over.
So, I took her to test drive one, and it was great, and she bought something else. Fine, see if I care.
But at least, a baker’s dozen years later when I conceded defeat to the forces yelling, “Van, van, van!” I knew what we needed: a 1993 Eurovan. If I had any notion of buying a more recent vintage, they were vaporized when I confirmed that 1993 was in fact the last year one could get a passenger Eurovan with a five speed. It was one thing to get a Front Wheel Drive vehicle. An automatic transmission was totally beyond out of the question.
It took a year to find one. It had to be in good shape, it had to be free of rust, it had to have a manual transmission. It was in Austin, Texas. We bought it on eBay, and a month or so later, Martin and some of his friends from college flew down to Texas to fetch it home on his Spring Break. Two thousand miles and only one unscheduled repair later, they arrived in Brunswick, and we had entered the ranks of the millions of other soccer moms and their husbands. I considered naming it NOTAHAB, as well as BEHEMTH, but settled instead for the more prosaic and less literary MOMZVAN.
It is big. It seats seven, and it has room for enough rubbish to sustain seven for weeks. It gets no miles to the gallon. It’s wide, it’s tall, it’s long. It drives like a pregnant moose. It has a gas tank big enough for a Mack truck, so even with its appalling milage, we can drive 400 miles between stops. Conspicuously, of course.
I suppose gracious compromise is a part of life. For twenty years, when all about us were getting Caravans and Previas and Voyagers and Villagers we soldiered on with our boxlike Volvos. I suppose having one Front Wheel Drive Tool Of Satan in our fleet is not the end of the world. But we will remain vigilant, and make sure this is not just the top of some slippery slope.
Progress. There’s no stopping it.
