Three Cheers for Chick Cars

Three Cheers for Chick Cars

Feature Article from Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

November, 2006 - Craig Fitzgerald

As much as it wants to project the image of the quintessential, cool, devil-may-care 1960s European roadster, the Miata has always been unfairly labeled as a "chick car." Maybe that's because Mazda made the fatal mistake of offering it with an automatic transmission.

If you've ever driven one, you know how false a characterization that is, because a used Miata is the most capable handling car on the road for less than $5,000, and will whip the snot out of cars five times as expensive as soon as the road turns twisty. But, if you want to drive one, you've got to resign yourself to suffering the slings and arrows of the unreconstructed.

Compounding the sorority pledge image, the 1990 Miata I owned was painted white. It looked like a breath mint with a thyroid condition.

But after six years of goofy fun throwing the Miata into every corner I met with my right foot planted to the floor, I'm now ready to enthusiastically give any chick car the thumbs up. By their very nature, chick cars are fun. You wouldn't expect a cheerleader to drive anything boring like a Topaz or a Beretta. Chick cars are small, nimble, economical, lightweight, and nine times out of ten, they're fitted with convertible tops. For a sporty car fan, what's not to like?

I've been e-mailing back and forth with Keith Price, who is a PR guy with Volkswagen. His current ride, a car that he regularly flogs in autocross events in Michigan, is a 1988 Volkswagen Cabriolet, which probably came standard with a lifetime subscription to Cosmo. Price has managed to doctor the car up with a GTI transmission and a short-shift kit, an 80 percent Pelolok diff, upper and lower strut supports, front and rear anti-roll bars, shorter springs and sticky 55-series Bridge-stones on BBS 15-inch wheels. None of which matters, because it still looks like the Olsen Twins' staff car. All it needs is a set of Ronal Bears to round out the package. And he made fun of me for wanting a P1800ES.

The definition of a chick car is elusive. Consider the recently extinct Volkswagen Cabrio: chick car extraordinaire. But how about the Audi TT Roadster, with the same car providing its DNA? Any car from France should be a chick car, since no guy I know would ever shift gears via an umbrella handle. But because French cars need to be worked on more or less constantly, that keeps them out of chick car territory.

Therefore, I submit the three constants in identifying a chick car:

One: Any car that has ever been used as a promotional vehicle qualifies. I don't care if it's the 225hp, 1.8-liter turbo version of the Beetle; if it was ever used to entice a bunch of college girls to drink Zima, you're driving a chick car. The (not so) New Beetle, for example, has been used to hock everything from perfume to Thighmasters, so it would be a chick car even without the bud vase.

Two: Did Barbie ever drive one? If the answer is yes, then it's a chick car. She's driven Jeeps, Miatas, Boxsters and even a Hummer or two. The American sports car crowd always gets its collective muscle shirt in a twist when it is reminded that Barbie also drove a Corvette. In pink.

Three: If any teenage girl ever called your car "cute," you're driving a chick car. When I was deep in my muscle car phase, bombing around town in a 1969 Chevrolet El Camino with a 396, straight-through dual exhaust and a four-speed, no young lady ever called it "cute." In fact, they'd drive to the opposite end of an empty lot to avoid parking next to me, for fear that I was some kind of a hillbilly serial killer. Yet, when I ride my 1965 Vespa, they'll cut across four lanes of traffic to tell me how cute it is.

There is a conundrum that bucks this rule, though. Take the original Mini, for example: There isn't a car ever built that's any more cutesy-pie than the original Mini, yet maybe due to its racing heritage and a helping hand from the original tuner, John Cooper, Issigonis Minis have managed to elude the chick car sobriquet all these years. The new Mini? Bigger inside, bigger outside, more power under the hood...see rule number one.

I can think of at least a dozen cars that I wouldn't have been caught dead in when I was in high school that I think would be the very apex of ironic good humor today. When I was in my first year at Shawsheen Tech (Mixed Doubles Hazing Champions, 1982), I wouldn't have accepted a ride in a Saab 900 Turbo convertible if I'd been up to the back pocket of my 501s in wet snow. What if I'd been seen by one of the hoodlums, miscreants, recidivists and ne'er-do-wells that populated the Machine Shop? Regular beatings were administered if you were caught reading a book with words in it, for crying out loud.

But today, I'm combing through the local want ads, keeping my eye out for a nice BMW 3-series convertible or a late Alfa Romeo Spider, preferably owned by a Mary Kay lady. Or maybe I should just go rent Steel Magnolias.



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