"area man" (hurrburgring)
05/13/2016 at 09:40 • Filed to: Roadtrip, In Plain Sight
12
21|
"area man" (hurrburgring)
05/13/2016 at 09:40 • Filed to: Roadtrip, In Plain Sight | 12
| 21 |
“What you have to do is you have to take the bad thought and put it into a box in your head. Then, you have to take the box out of your head and put it in a cupboard, and shut the cupboard.”
All the windows are down, including the oft-ignored tailgate glass, but Ira Glass’ voice cuts through the warm wind sweeping off the endless fields of soybean and canola. He’s relaying the advice a mother once gave to her adult son who was “going through a rough time.” The details are not given, but then again that’s not the point. It’s just one person’s method of dealing with problematic thoughts. Ira likes the completeness of it, and as we rocket through the abandoned back roads of North Carolina, I find myself in agreement and turn the phrase over in my mind. Put it in a cupboard. Shut the cupboard. A lot has happened in the past week to show me the value of fighting back against my anxiety.
“You know, that’s good advice for you,” my wife says from the passenger seat before I can verbalize anything. Always one step ahead of me. It’s very good to marry someone like that.
“Yeah.”
This is approximately 5 hours since my last mini-meltdown, which itself was preceded by one about a week and a half ago - a couple days before we left for a weeklong road trip from Brooklyn to Georgia and back. This morning, in a bit of multi-camera slapstick, we managed to lock ourselves out of the rental cottage in Savannah while preparing to load the car for the journey home by exiting on opposite sides of the building and assuming the other had a key. This, as anyone else with generalized anxiety will understand, was the end of the world. It’s going to take forever to get someone to bring a spare! How could this happen, now of all times? We’ve got a 12 hour journey ahead of us. This is fucked! Today is ruined. Ruined!
My wife told me to text the rental agent like it said in the contract, that these things happen and everything would be fine. When I didn’t get an immediate response I stormed down the alley, ducking out of the bright Georgia sun to sulk angrily in the driver’s seat of the 4Runner. I huffed. I puffed. I felt this overwhelming urge to assign blame, as if this would restore some sense of balance to an off-kilter universe. But it couldn’t be my fault, of course.
I
had been wronged. Being the only other person there, she was the natural and undeserving target.
When I informed her of this, she told me it was a ridiculous and childish impulse, and now she was annoyed that I was being an ass. It took me a few minutes to absorb how horrible I was acting, but as I tried to formulate an apology the rental agent texted me back.
Less than ten minutes later her assistant pulled up with a spare key. “People get locked out of here all the time,” she said cheerfully. My wife gave me a knowing look. Always one step ahead.
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One of the things that provokes the most anxiety in me is unwanted change. When the course deviates from the pre-planned, pre-approved roadmap my mind has generated as a way of feeling in control of things, I can spiral quickly. It can be a little thing, like when a restaurant is unexpectedly out of a dish that I ordered, or a big thing, like when I get to the Advantage rental car counter at JFK airport at 7:25 on a Saturday morning only to be confronted with a crude handwritten sign reading “SORRY — NO CARS. 2-3 HOUR WAIT MINIMUM.”
The man in the blue polo shirt behind the counter, his eyes dead and face defeated, appraises me as I approach clinging to hope. No way that sign applies to someone with a reservation made months ago.
“Hey, I’m here to pick up my 7:30 midsize rental.”
“Unfortunately sir we are currently out of cars, my manager is trying to find some more right now but it will be at least a two hour wait. There are two people ahead of you in line, but you’ll get whatever car we can get when it’s your turn.”
Here is where the spiral would begin. I steady myself as he explains the Passover-related overbooking, responding with only a mild level of indignation as he takes my information and return to sit next to my wife. But I feel my anger rise as I explain the situation to her, internalizing her justified annoyance as profound disappointment in my choices, possibly our marriage, and I step outside to have a shouty and unproductive conversation with Priceline customer service. Dejected, I retire inside to stare angrily at the vending machines, standing on a precipice.
It’s past 8am. My wife reminds me that we have time, that our first leg to the Outer Banks in North Carolina will only take about 9 hours. We could leave at noon and still get in at a decent hour. I look in her eyes and something clicks - I understand I need to step away from the ledge and be positive about the start of our first extended road trip together. So we sit and wait while person after person comes in and yells at the man in the blue polo for not having any cars while he delivers the same exact schpiel; the Sisyphus of Advantage Rent a Car.
8:30. The manager appears, breathless. “I got a Sedona!” Man #1 takes off with an almost apologetic goodbye. Minutes later the manager returns. “Another Sedona.” The middle-aged woman waiting ahead of us cracks a joke returning to Long Island, the place she once fled, in a minivan but happily takes the keys and hustles out the door.
It’s almost 9 when the manager finally reappears, only this time he doesn’t say anything as he strides towards the counter. I’m trying hard to not get excited about the totally random possibility of an upgrade, to not rewrite the mental roadmap, because that’s a great set up for a pouty few hours when things don’t work out. But Sisyphus waves me up and smiles. “Okay, we got you a 4Runner.”
I’m thrilled, and more than a little amused. In 2012 my dad sold my older brother his old ‘98 - a rare-optioned SR5 V6 complete with a 5-speed manual gearbox, blue-grey cloth sport seats, moonroof, factory CD, tow hitch and privacy glass - and the three of us drove it from Connecticut to Denver. A couple of years later I met my brother in San Francisco and we drove it from there to Denver as well. We all love that truck - I learned how to drive stick on it, Dad kept his midlife crisis at bay by occasionally driving over the neighbor’s lawn and it’s still going strong for my brother with over 260,000 miles on the original engine and transmission.
“See, it all worked out,” my wife says as we walk outside, dodging the first scattered drops beginning to from the pregnant skies. She’s said it a thousand times, and she might have to say it a thousand more, but this time I feel like I’m really hearing it. Roll with the change, I think. Maybe things do really work out without me obsessing over them. Maybe.
The “Super White” 2016 4Runner SR5 sits alongside a chain link fence ahead of us. I click the key, hear the familiar single beep and step up to investigate what Akio Toyoda and the years have done to one of the greats.
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Anxiety, especially over change, can make it hard to be a car enthusiast sometimes, or at least one with anything to say about a car made in the last ten years. It could be I’m programmed to see the fragility of the attachments we create - deep, sometimes all-consuming connections to brands and machines that can be utterly transformed at the whims of executives, politicians or the market - or it could be that I rely on continuity and routine to keep myself grounded, and year-to-year model changes have great potential to fuck with that. In any case, it’s often difficult to view a new car with anything but a jaundiced eye clouded by bias and nostalgia.
The new 4Runner, however, is something like a security blanket to block out all those confused emotions. If you want a new body-on-frame SUV in America in 2016 that truly carries the DNA of its ancestors for under $35,000, you have two options left - the Wrangler Bros or a 4Runner.
Image: Toyota
First, a little history for the uninitiated/uncorrupted. The 4Runner started life in the early 1980s as essentially a half-convertible pickup with a fiberglass tub and a bench in the back instead of a utility bed. Winnebago - yes, Winnebago - started converting Toyota Trucks in 1981, selling them through Toyota dealers as the Trekker. Toyota realized where the market was headed and developed a similar model in-house based on the Hilux platform, introducing it in 1984 as the 4Runner here in the states and the Hilux Surf, which is a much cooler name, abroad.
Image: Toyota
Now I’m not exactly sure why the automotive world went crazy for half and full convertible pickups for approximately 15 years in the late 70s and 80s, but I’m not complaining because that’s basically what the first 4Runner was. Two doors, solid axles, locking hubs, low range and a removable top. Back seat optional. How could you not love it? The only downside was they neglected to upgrade the truck’s rear suspension to handle the increased weight, so first and second-gen models tend to sag worse than a sunburnt retiree. Also, rust.
Image: Toyota
Toyota tinkered with the formula through the rest of the decade, notably replacing the front solid axle with independent suspension and briefly adding a Turbo model with a
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before launching the second generation in 1989. Think of that one as a walking fish, a time where we can see the bones of today’s model - four doors, a fully enclosed cabin and more car-like seating and amenities - starting to break through the vestigial toughness and off-road ability of the Hilux.
Image: Toyota
Launched in 1995, the third generation is where it all finally came together. Gone are the Hilux underpinnings - the 4Runner now shared a chassis with the Land Cruiser Prado. A wider track, new coil-spring suspension and more powerful engines greatly improved the driving experience; an all-new interior gave occupants more head, elbow and leg room and things like side-impact airbags and adjustable seat belts brought the truck into the 20th century; while the solid rear axle with optional locker, high ground clearance and eventually
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kept its off-road cred intact.
Image: Toyota
The fourth generation is some yadda yadda yadda shit. They did add some more off road whiz-bang gizmos like Downhill Assist Control and a baby Land Cruiser trim with a V8 and third row seating, but they dropped the manual transmission, the styling was uninspired and the 4Runner fell victim to the same late Bush-era bloat as the rest of us. I mean, the 2007 model was literally identical to 2006. Not even a new paint option. Then the economy crashed.
Image: Toyota
And that brings us to today. Built on the same platform as the FJ Cruiser, this generation has been with us in 2009, though obviously its gaping maw and teardrop-tattoo accents are more recent developments. We’re all a little less sprightly than we were twenty years ago, and the 4Runner is no exception - that 5 speed automatic is really showing its age, ground clearance and approach angle have shrunk a bit and all the gadgets and safety features have packed on more pounds - but it’s far less diminished than any of the models it used to compete with back in the mid 90s. Throw in A-TRAC and Crawl Control and you can go just about anywhere.
That’s actually a pretty stark illustration of how what we expect from cars in this country has changed in less than two decades. The 4Runner used to slot alongside things like the Explorer and Pathfinder as top-of-the-line midsize SUVs. With comparably few refinements, its closest analog is now the Wrangler. Getting a little anxious thinking about it...
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We may bitch and moan about the way the body-on-frame SUV segment has been almost swept away by the crossover tsunami, but as we saw in the great muscle car extinction event in the mid-1970s, the survivors benefit greatly from increased demand and decreased competition. Thus, of the 18 BOF SUVs still available in this country,
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. The 4Runner alone jumped over 26% to 97,034 units, outselling everyone in the segment except, you guessed it, the Wrangler Bros. It ain’t dead yet.
So what gives? It’s easy to point to size as the definitive category people use to cross-shop cars these days, because in a general sense that seems to be true. The ol’ positive feedback loop, brought to you by low gas prices - people are buying bigger cars in greater numbers, and automakers have responded by abandoning sedans, funneling money into CUVs and increasing the average model size across all categories. So then it’s a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, right? People want size, SUVs are big too, end of story.
Image: Toyota
But wait! Think about why crossovers outsell almost everything else these days. People want size, yes, but they’ve now realized they don’t have to sacrifice things like comfort, fuel economy and maneuverability that used to go out the window in a lot of trucks. So looking at these sales numbers, I’m willing to bet there are still a lot of people, even a growing amount of people who are buying 4Runners not because they’re big, and certainly not because they’re supremely comfortable or economical or easy to drive, but because they are actually capable. There are still consumers who want real off-road ability in an SUV, and even if they’re just suburban dads who just like the idea of it, I’m very grateful their dollars are keeping this model alive.
Look at the other brands with positive gains on that list - Mercedes, Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, Land Rover, Lincoln. These sell because of their value as status symbols, so a higher-dollar buyer is willing to give up some of the convenience of a luxury sedan or crossover for the experience of balling out in a $70,000 TRUCK. That’s part of the reason why the Chevy models aren’t doing so hot - the brand’s cache isn’t strong enough to cover that convenience gap.
So while the bean counters at Ford and GM have decided there’s no business case for giving us the new !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Toyota has been smart to keep an eye on this niche and market/exploit the hell out of it. Now whether you buy what I’m selling here or you think those VSCO-toned commercials showing hipsters communing with nature via their new 2016 4Runner are just doing their job, Toyota has been rewarded with the model’s best-selling year since 2006 and a frankly astonishing 393% sales jump from the depths of the recession in 2009.
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Image: Toyota
Approaching from behind, the first thing I notice about our rental 4Runner is the flattened back window, belying its power operation. This will come in handy. The second is that iconic quadrilateral rear side window shape. My anxiety appreciates any design feature that lasts 30+ years.
After throwing our bags in the backseat for easy snack access, leaving the cargo area hilariously empty, my wife and I clamber up front unaided by running boards. It improves the look, but if you have bad joints or small children you’ll probably want to opt for them - not the easiest climb. Inside, we’re confronted with a chunky center console and infotainment unit, replete with hard plastics and knobby knobs for climate and audio controls. This being the SR5 4x4 model, there’s also a knob for the transfer case. Add in the base-level black cloth seats and I can see why some complain about things feeling a bit cheap inside.
And yet - I immediately feel at home. Yes, the HVAC slider in my brother’s ‘98 feels more solid and I’m sitting further away from the passenger than I recall, but the overall shape and near-vertical positioning of the dash is an immediate throwback. The seats aren’t as comfortable but they do have power lumbar support. The terribly cheap cupholder design where they used to pop out of the dash and block the HVAC controls has been rectified. The bluetooth is seamless. It’s clean and uncluttered. We’re in good shape.
I turn the key and the 4 liter V6 roars to life. I have to suppress a laugh when I shift into Drive and discover that first gear is still monstrously loud, one of the things I always loved about the ‘98. My wife is fiddling with the music. We stop for some Munchkins just outside the airport in Queens before starting off in earnest. It’s hard to be anxious now.
That is, until the skies finally open up as we’re cruising down the Belt Parkway headed towards the Verrazano Bridge. Traffic is getting heavy, visibility plummets and one look at the radar confirms the rain will be with us for hours. I can feel myself tensing up as we struggle across Staten Island. My wife can tell and places a hand on my knee. Someone’s going to crash right in front of me. I just know it. Probably on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. That’s going to happen. Stop.
North Carolina is 9 hours away, Savannah (our ultimate destination) another 10-11. The smells of industrial New Jersey are beginning to permeate the interior as the gray ribbon of I-95 pushes us ever south. The clatter of raindrops on the windshield and roof are joining the chorus of wind and tire noise for an extended rendition of fuck your music, this is your soundtrack now. It’s going to be a long day.
Stay tuned for Part 2, coming next week!
Party-vi
> area man
05/13/2016 at 09:51 |
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Why do these cost so much damn money!? The engine is over a decade old, the transmission is a decade old - I’m amazed that Toyota can still get away with selling old-ass deli meat on new bread.
Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow
> Party-vi
05/13/2016 at 09:56 |
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If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The 4Runner formula is a good one, and people will always buy them.
That being said, it’s always good to keep things fresh. I have to imagine there will be a decent shake up coming before too long.
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area man
> Party-vi
05/13/2016 at 09:58 |
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Considering the prices of all new cars and especially trucks are going up, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad deal. Adjusting for inflation they’re basically the same price they were in 1998, and the base model is better appointed than it used to be.
Dru
> area man
05/13/2016 at 09:59 |
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I really liked this piece. Both your sharing of your own struggles, and the creative review of the 4Runner. It made me take a head count and over the last 30 years my family has owned 16 Toyotas. 11 of them 4Runners.
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Party-vi
> Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow
05/13/2016 at 10:04 |
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The Corolla is still using a 4spd auto. The only thing Toyota is going to shake up is another batch of beige paint.
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Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow
> Party-vi
05/13/2016 at 10:13 |
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If you were the top selling company in your industry, would you change things?
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Party-vi
> Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow
05/13/2016 at 10:20 |
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True, but:
‘15 4Runner sales: 97,034 units
‘15 Wrangler sales: 202,702 units
Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies
> Party-vi
05/13/2016 at 10:25 |
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Because Murica and Convertible.
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Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow
> Party-vi
05/13/2016 at 10:27 |
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I’m not saying they couldn’t be doing better, just that there’s not a ton of reason to radically change things.
SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman
> area man
05/13/2016 at 11:04 |
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Posts like this make me miss my ‘86 5-spd manual 4runner. Great truck and lots of fun to drive. Hell, I learned to drive in it. Lots of good memories of my youth in the thing
I await the next installments. This was a great read. Thanks!
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area man
> Dru
05/13/2016 at 11:06 |
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You're very kind. And you appear to have great taste.
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area man
> SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman
05/13/2016 at 11:08 |
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You’re lucky to have had one - I think the first gen is the coolest. Thanks for the kind words!
vicali
> area man
05/13/2016 at 11:20 |
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Sometimes I get ‘roadtrip vision’ when starting out- that dark cloud that shows up when everything isn’t going exactly as planned. It’s especially easy in a Toyota - our Tacoma never misses a beat, it’s always something or someone else that muddles everything up.
It never happened when we traveled extensively in our 86 westfalia- every time we stopped I was happy to have made it, check the temps, check the oil, coolant levels, yup looks like we can keep going! It felt like every km we covered was a bit of a miracle.
On these days I try to remember that getting there is part of the trip, and my mood has more of an effect on the family than a late start, roadwork, or missed ferry.. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Great article, and timely as most of us are planning and starting out on our first roadtrips of the year. Thanks for sharing it - I look forward to the next part.
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area man
> vicali
05/13/2016 at 12:04 |
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Those are wise words. Thanks!
MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig
> area man
05/13/2016 at 13:54 |
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The first half of the article hit me right where I live, man. I can’t wait for part 2, I really enjoyed reading this.
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area man
> MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig
05/13/2016 at 14:03 |
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Thank you!
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area man
> MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig
06/10/2016 at 18:16 |
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Shameless plug: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/2-000-miles-or…
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area man
> SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman
06/10/2016 at 18:17 |
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Shameless plug: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/2-000-miles-or…
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MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig
> area man
06/13/2016 at 07:59 |
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Sweet!
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area man
> vicali
06/17/2016 at 21:43 |
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Here you go! http://oppositelock.kinja.com/2-000-miles-or…
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area man
> Dru
06/17/2016 at 21:43 |
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ICYMI http://oppositelock.kinja.com/2-000-miles-or…