– Ann Arbor, MI
I think that many people, not just “car people,” have a notion of cars as being part of the text of their lives, their stories. Like houses, stand mixers, or a pet tortoise, cars are items most of us don’t purchase in large numbers and therefore help to mark the chapters of our lives.
Or maybe that’s just a trait that I get from my Mom and extrapolate out to the universe of auto owners. Often, when she’s trying to remember the year something happened, she’ll look up at the sky, concentrating, and say, “Well I guess Dad was still driving his silver Chevy at that point, so it must have been ’81 or ’82…"
In my line of work this gets a little tricky. Of course, I’ve always owned one or (more often) several cars. But for the last 18 years I’ve typically also had a test car in my life at a rate of one per week or more. So while I’ll never forget that we brought my first son, Jack, home from the hospital in my wife’s Scuba Blue 2016 Audi Q5, I can’t always tell you what I was driving three weeks ago without looking at my calendar app.
The week is going to be different. The car in my driveway right now is pretty special, a 2024 Lexus LC 500 Convertible painted in a stunning, flaked metallic rose gold called Copper Crest, over a blue and white leather interior that makes me feel like I’m in the biggest-budget Nautica commercial of all time. In a stroke of pure luck, this Lexus loan coincides with my beloved Boston Celtics clinching their 18th NBA Championship and, after what has felt like an interminable period of development time, the launch and public debut of CARiD Drive. Pretty good week.
Remember To Feel Happy
The rear seats of the LC are more of a gesture to passengers than a reality. With the driver’s seat positioned where I’d really like it – remembering that I’m 6-foot-5 – there are exactly two fingers worth of space between by seat back and the leading edge of the rear seat cushion.
Still, there are LATCH anchors, and one of the advantages of having boys that are 5 and 3 years old is that their forward-facing car seats don’t take up a ton of space. For the last few days, I’ve used the Lexus to do my morning daycare run. Jack (the older of the two) sits behind me so I can only hear him, but I can see Finny’s face in the rear-view mirror. He lights up when I put the roof down, and laughs massively every time I goose the throttle and his white-blond hair is blown back in a rush of wind.
Any convertible makes me feel like a kid. And really good convertibles – a category that this sumptuously designed and indulgently powered LC 500 easily falls in to – are some of my favorite cars to pilot, full stop. The Lexus is fast and handles nicely, sure, but it also has a natural cruising vibe that’s just perfect for summer drives (and daycare runs, I guess).
Sharing all of that with my family not only makes it a little more special, but it helps me to remember that when things are good, we should recognize that things are good. I think people call this “being in the moment,” which is something that sounds stupid when I say it but feels right when I do it.
The Reader Is The Story
I’ve also been trying to focus on the positive where this new blog of ours is concerned. I am over the moon to have these words appear on a CARiD Drive page that can be found and read by car enthusiasts like you. We’ve been working on the concept of this editorial space for a long time, since the end of 2023, and seeing it come to life is a joy but also a kind of relief.
My old boss once said, “I may be the luckiest guy in the world: a car enthusiast and I live in car enthusiast heaven,” and he wrote similar sentiments many times over the years. Early in the summer here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a convertible in the garage out back and the limitless possibilities of our new publication in front of me, I feel about the same way.
The chance to drive, think about, and talk about great cars for work is a blessing. But for once, because CARiD Drive is more about owning a vehicle than just recommending a new one to buy, I also get to ask you the reader to take an active role in the process.
If you’ve poked around the website a bit, you’ll probably have seen places where we’re asking for you to give us your feedback, write us an email, etc. That’s critically important because we want Drive to tell your story – your latest build, top-down drive, project car chapter – to inspire the next person. And so on.
Champs, All Of Us
And hey, if you happened to, I don’t know, say, drive a duck boat in Boston? Maybe you recently chauffeured a bunch of talented tall dudes around a city populated by cheering fans? I’d love to hear about that.
You’ll forgive me if you see me take a few victory laps. But if we’re going to go 16 years between titles, only to get one in the same week I help to launch a new publishing platform, then I’m going to take advantage of that coincidence. There’s room for a little basketball-flavored partisanship on a car site, at least during a week as happy as this one.
The overarching point is this: CARiD Drive is going to be a place where you can read highly personal stories about cars and the people who love them. Or watch them and listen to them by way of our podcast on YouTube and social channels. And a place where your next car story is told. You never know: If you’re in the right place at the right time, you might even get a ride in a pink Lexus.
