Andy At The Auto Show
The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.
Cars and trucks are big business in America. We have 237 million of them - more vehicles than licensed drivers. Thirty-five percent of all families in America own three or more cars. Now, how's that for a statistic? We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
I went to the International Auto Show in New York recently. They had hundreds of new models at the show and I love seeing so many cars that I don't want to buy.
There were a lot of cars at the car show I wouldn't have driven home if they gave them to me.
I don't like a car that calls a lot of attention to itself. For instance, I don't want a red car. Red cars take a lot of dusting, too. You'd want one of these guys to come with the car when you went home.
Cars get more streamlined every year presumably to make them go faster but cars have always gone faster than it's legal to drive them.
"That delivers zero to 60 in just under six seconds," a woman at the auto show said. "Actually 5.7 to be exact."
My uncle gave me his old Hupmobile 60 years ago and it would go 90 miles an hour back then.
A big feature at the car show every year are the attractive women they have reciting sales pitches.
"It features multi-tone accents, available leather trim seating in rich detail such as satin, pewter and chrome," one woman claimed.
"These elongated led headlamps flow up the hood into the three section chrome port holes all in one continuous arc," described another.
Now, why would anyone think elongated headlamps, chrome portholes and a pretty woman would sell cars?
The big new word in cars is "hybrid". My dictionary says "hybrid is the offspring of genetically different parents." Well, if that's what you want in a car, get yourself a hybrid.
I've owned about 12 cars since that first Hupmobile I had. The biggest change in cars I notice at the Auto Show every year is the cars get harder to get in and out of.
Written By Andy Rooney