Over the course of the last couple of weeks my girlfriend has become my fiancee. Along with the happiness and excitement of an impending wedding come the adjustments to one's life when you go from being a solo to a member of a pair (In my situation neither my fiancee or I are truly "solo" as this is a second marriage for both of us and we both bring two children to the marriage). The adjustments from your previous "single" life to "married" life includes domestic issues like where will you live as a couple, how to deal with household bills or who does the dishes after dinner. But the one issue that may be unique to the At Home Mechanic has to do with cars in the family.
I am a hardcore Car Guy; I love them all with a special interest in high performance vehicles. I have been modifying and racing street cars (in a safe and controlled environment) since the Nixon Presidency. I revel in my garage full of tools and I count the time spent with grease up to my elbows as quality therapy time. I have very high expectations of my vehicles and I will not tolerate less than perfect function from my cars. So you would expect that my daily driver of choice would be some sort of fire breathing road warrior.
My lovely fiancee is a petite and demur lady. She is the consummate professional in a high profile industry who has managed to successfully balance a terrific career with all the duties of Motherhood. A talented and creative artist, my Lovely Intended is brilliant with a paintbrush and cooks like a dream. Although she can hammer and nail like a professional carpenter and is proud to have her own cordless drill for home improvements, she is completely at sea when it comes to the workings of her cars and has absolutely no interest in the hands-on realities of automobile maintenance. Your first impression would be that she is driving a practical Soccer Mom vehicle or maybe a foreign luxury sedan that befits a successful professional in her station in life.
To recap: I am a knuckle dragging Car Guy and my Future Bride is the stylish professional. The expectation is that I drive something sporty and she drives something practical.
Wrong! I drive boring, practical economy sedans since I became a father 16 years ago and my Dearly Beloved has crammed her kids into the tiny confines of series of sport coupes since Day One.
While I know and love all things fast on four wheels, I also know that the overwhelming majority of my time in a car is spent in Los Angeles' slow commuter traffic all by myself. A sporty car would be great fun on those very rare times when the road opens up, but I know that hauling kids to school and groceries home from the Mega Box store is my basic domain. The practical streak that runs a mile wide through my sole will not allow me to consider anything more exotic than a Honda Civic as my regular ride to work.
The Woman I Love started driving in a 5 speed Toyota Celica as a teen and has never looked back. Her daily drivers have included a Porsche 924 turbo, a Honda Prelude Si and a Mitsubishi GT3000. Currently she makes the rounds of Los Angeles in a pristine Infiniti G35 Sport Coupe. Just as she sees nothing immoral about spending $400 dollars for a pair of tiny Italian slippers, she sees it as her divine right to burn rubber in a sport coupe that requires her children to bend themselves more times than an origami swan to fit into the back seat of her car.
I feed my need for speed with a hobby car, a 1987 Honda CRX Si that I have modified heavily for autocross and "open track" events in my local region. Faster than a speeding bullet, it is low, loud and stiff; I love this car for what I have built it to be. But I would never consider using it as a daily driver because I need my regular ride to be practical so I commute and haul the kids in my boring 2003 Honda Accord sedan.
It is said that women look at men the same way a real estate developer looks at a run-down old house; they both make a decision based upon potential for improvement rather than current condition. I can tell that my fiancee is tolerant of my current daily driver, but that she sees an automotive upgrade in my future.