What is a Cool Meter?

My wish is to be cool!

The Shelby GT350 is the most iconic nameplate that is basically a hyper-expensive souped-up FORD. It is the cool-est of all cools.  First of all, there are different grades of cool. The guy pictured above seems to tickle the cool meter some.  Just like anything else, cool depends on the beholder.

Let’s go beyond the picture above and look at some real world happenings that affect the cool meter. Cars seem to affect the cool meter the most.  I’m not talking about some modern and comfortable monstrosity like a Lincoln or a Cadillac, I’m talking real cool like a gull-wing Mercedes or its American cousin the DeLorean.  The above two certainly budge the cool meter to delightful zones.

Then there are more pedestrian uber-cool cars like the 70’s muscle cars. Then in the category of the coolest of the cool also showed up in the 1970 Plymouth Hemi Superbird. The mention of the car to people in the know hurtles the cool emotions into the sky.

After 69 years of living, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve never been cool. Do you remember the coolest guy in your high school class? In our high school he was the quarterback of our forever-losing football team.  His girlfriend, of course, was the nicest and firm-est cheerleader of the lot. He was almost six foot and I was a puny 5’3” - not exactly the height that young girls swooned over.

I complained to my mother. She said not to worry, it’s brains that count. Brains!!??

Girls like uber-cool tall macho guys and not some 5’3” guy that I was, and probably, just averagely smart. Smarts was maybe for later.  What I urgently needed was a girlfriend. It never happened. I was dumped on a couple of occasions for taller guys. I was given the stupid “let’s be friends” excuse.

At this advanced and supposedly learned stage of my life, cool is graded by the chariot you drive. I drive a decidedly un-cool 2005 Buick. Yes I need a new car, but the old clunker runs and I don’t feel like  laying-out $35,000, in cash and borrowings or more, for a new car.  Said another way, my better-half’s position is you don’t need to impress anybody - the old Buick will do. No it will not - I say.  I want a Mercedes Benz just like the one Janis Joplin sang about. The one I like has a sticker price of $120,000 plus a raft of taxes and for everything under the sun. I may be rich enough, but not $120,000 in cash now and will not, at this stage in life, go in debt for anything - leave alone a  fancy, German car.

Just for fun, I went to the local Mercedes Benz in my regular attire - as in shorts, Hawaiian shirt and Sketchers. The sales lady cautiously approached me and said excuse me SIR(!) - may I help you? Yes you can, what does this beautiful sedan cost?

She froze and her nose touched the ceiling. A long silence and the inevitable question was kinda dropped in passing - Excuse me, what kind of work do you do? In other words - can you pay for this car?. My answer: I’m retired geologist from the oil and gas business. Then suddenly, her polite meter warmed. Oh, that’s very interesting.  More prying followed: Are you still working? No, I retired when I was 53 years old. Then her polite meter turned hot. She announced: The car is $119,999.99 plus dealer fees and taxes all-in approximately $126,000. How would you like to pay for it? I’ll write you a check - would that be OK? Why yes, yes of course, SIR(!) a check will do just fine. 

My cell phone rang. It was the memsahib - where are you? I put her on speaker phone. I’m at the Mercedes Benz dealership looking at a car - the car is really nice. The memsahib: You aren’t going to buy a Mercedes - are you? Well yes, I’m looking. The memsahib: Come home and let’s talk about it.  Hearing that, the saleslady became obviously unhappy. In other words, I slipped the hook! I said, thank you for your help and I’ll be back. The saleslady: Do you have a card? No, not anymore I don’t, but I’ll write out my name, our phone number here and our phone number in Hawaii. When she heard Hawaii, her mood morphed back to serene.

Speaking of German cars and more specifically BMWs: in 1993 I turned 40, I decided I had, had enough of the 1981 Oldsmobile, and it was time for a cool car. It turned out that I didn’t have a say in the type of car to buy. The memsahib said: I want a truck. A truck!!? Why do you want a truck? I don’t want anybody pushing me around on the road. OK, fine - a truck it is.  I called a friend in Cheyenne that owned a GM dealership and asked him to send me down a pickup truck.  He said I have a gentleman’s truck that I just took in - in trade. It is 2 years old. How much is it? Only $25,000.  OK send it down. A few days later, this monster GMC truck showed up with an 8-foot long bed.

Two years later, a Firestone tire blew out on the highway (actually it de-laminated) and I called the dealer friend back.  I’m sending you back the truck. Send me a BMW. He said that he would call me right back. 10 minutes later, the phone rang. I have a sleek black 735i BMW that just came off of a doctor’s lease.  Do you want it?  Sure, how much is it?  $33,000 less the trade-in for the truck. The net trade-in for the truck brought the bill down to  around $19,000 - including the insurance settlement for the blown tire damage.  

Down came a beautiful 735i BMW. I kept it for 10 years and put 250,000 miles on it. 

Given that I don’t learn from my mistakes, when we went to Hawaii in 2001 for a while, we needed a car.  Guess what came up? A beautiful 740il BMW that was as long as a hearse. The BMW was of a 1997 vintage and almost brand new. The car was only $7,000 and, in no time at all, $12,000 of repairs bills promptly piled-up. The car was cool with a big 8 cylinder engine that didn’t exactly sip gasoline. It was beautiful. I kept it for 10 years and finally gave it away to a mechanically inclined person.

So, I want to be cool but it doesn’t seem that it will naturally come about. I need a snappy chariot to budge my cool meter. The memsahib says, No - you don’t need a new car.  Look at the bright side of things - you still have all of your hair.