When you hear the expression that something is “green” these days — especially something that can be a potential polluter of the atmosphere — you naturally think of anything that does not require a hydrocarbon fuel such as gasoline or Diesel fuel. If it does not consume these substances as a fuel it is commonly referred to as “green.”
But when I say green in reference to an automobile, I don’t mean that. I mean green the color. And that does not imply anything about the fuel it uses. With the 2014 model year I have noticed that cars that are painted green are making a comeback. Since we were once the owners of a sequence of green cars, I notice these things, and I can say with some confidence that few if any manufacturers have sold a new green colored car in this country for at least the past decade — maybe even much longer. We have gone through spells when gray or silver were popular, and red, blue, tan, or black, but never green. Lately, white has also been popular, not only for cars, but also for trucks of all sizes and types. I guess it’s easier to have eye-catching advertising on a white background.
But, going back a long way, my first car was a used 1940 Dodge that was 11 years old when I bought it from a Princeton grad student. It was sort of gray in color — or maybe it was cream color and needed washing. (Since I didn’t own a hose or a water source, that was out of the question, and commercial car washes didn’t exist then. So it stayed dirty.) Then came a black 1947 Studebaker (five years old), a forerunner of the famous Raymond Loewy designs that were said to look the same from the front and the back. People used to joke that it was impossible to tell whether they were coming or going. But, even then, I don’t recall ever seeing a green one.
Our first green car was a used 1953 Plymouth. I used it when both my wife and I worked and needed separate cars. Hers was another used Plymouth that was black. But the curious thing about my 1953 green car was that it had seat belts. Yes, even in 1953. They were only in the front bench-type seat, and they were just lap belts. As far as I know, Plymouth was the only make that had belts then, but there were no laws at the time about requiring their use. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea to me, so I started using mine and soon got used to it. I never felt any resentment about some higher authority telling me that I must use a seat belt when driving. It seemed like the natural thing to do.
While I still had the 1953 green Plymouth, we acquired our first new car, a 1955 Studebaker station wagon that was gray with red trim. We bought it at Ken Doten’s Studebaker dealership in Princeton, which occupied the building at the foot of University Place where the Wawa market has been in business for a very long time. Doten ran the entire business in that building, selling new and used cars in the front, and providing full service and repairs at the rear. He had a salesman, a shop manager and two mechanics — a very compact and efficient setup. And he had a lot of customers because he was a very friendly guy.
I remember once having a conversation with Stan the service manager when I dropped my car off for an oil change. He had just been given short and firm notice by the very elegant and officious Princeton woman ahead of me that her car had to be ready by 11 a.m. because she had very important appointments to attend to. Her driver would bring her back then in his car. Stan thought the idea of her having “important appointments” was a big laugh — and so did I. But I don’t remember ever seeing a green Studebaker, even at Doten’s.
A few years later, after we had moved to West Windsor and started camping with the three kids in the mid-1960s, we acquired our next green car — another Plymouth, this time a roomy station wagon in which we carried our tent, sleeping bags, stove, and all the other camp-site stuff. We started to like having a green-colored car. In fact, green was our favorite color for almost anything. Maybe it was because we both liked to garden and grow mostly green vegetables in our own backyard. (Some friends told us that because of so much natural green in the countryside they wanted their cars to be a different color — anything but green.)
But that first green station wagon was succeeded after about five or six years by another brand new green one. Two green ones in a row. But by the time that green car had started to show its age, our family camping boom had run its course, and it was time to start taking advantage of the new popularity of so-called “sub-compact” cars. Our first one was a used green Chevy Vega, a car that some people said was the worst car ever made in the U.S. The Plymouth dealer I bought it from gave me a really good deal. I think he wanted to get rid of it, and I figured I could fix anything. Actually, it worked pretty well.
In 1972, after years of public comment about why a small economical car couldn’t be produced in the U.S. to compete with the Volkswagen “Beetle,” the Detroit “Big Three” came out with their versions of small economy cars. Ford made the Falcon, General Motors the Chevy Vega, and Chrysler the Plymouth Valiant. All three were panned by most of the public, who claimed they weren’t really “small” cars at all, and they did not sell very well. It wasn’t until the Datsuns and Toyotas started coming in from Japan that the Volkswagens had some real competition.
But it turned out that the Vega was to be the last of our green cars. It wasn’t the worst of our cars, either. That honor belonged to our 1963 French Simca, a small car that actually started to fall apart as I was driving it to work one day, and which I ended up giving to a scrap car dealer right here in West Windsor. He collected “junkers” in his yard on Penn Lyle Road. But that’s a story for another time. Our next new car was a yellow Datsun, to be followed by a dark blue ’83 Honda Prelude, the start of a long loyalty to Honda — but never a green one because in most years they weren’t offered in that color.
So, as far as I can tell, green-colored cars became a rarity around 1990, or even before — and not just for us. I have no idea why, but that’s the way it seems. I suppose tastes change, even in the color of automobiles. But over the past couple of months, nearly every time I go out in my blue car I see at least one new green one. They’re not all really bright green — some are a very dark shade and some are a light green with a grayish tinge — but they are green nonetheless. Something that hasn’t been around in years. I’ve even seen some new trucks with the cabs and hoods painted bright green. Now I wonder how long it will be before people start talking about there being too many green cars — again.
I’m reminded of one of the first cars I ever saw. It was my father’s light green 1929 Model A Ford. So much for Henry Ford’s famous comment that an automobile could be any color as long as it was black. After a year or two with the green one, my father went back to tradition and had nothing but black Fords for the rest of his life.
