Andy's Trip To The Auto Show
The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.
I went to the New York International Auto Show last week. I call it the car show. They have a building full of new cars. When I was young the cars I remember best were: Ford, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Hupmobile, Packard, Studebaker, Dodge, Plymouth, Cadillac, Chrysler, Pierce Arrow and Pontiac. Some of those are out of business now.
The German Volkswagen didn't get here until after WWII and there was no such thing as a Jeep yet.
Some of the names are different but the cars are more the same than they used to be, I think. You used to be able to tell a Plymouth from a Chevrolet or a Cadillac from a Ford but it's harder now. I don't even know a Subaru from a Suzuki.
The manufacturers may be running out of names, too. They're using a lot of letters and numbers now on their cars. The Jaguar X-JR, the Infiniti M35X. I'm about ready for a new car myself. Maybe I'll go out and get myself an AUDI A4 2.OT Cabriolet.
The Cayenne S must be a hot car.
One car looked as though they left it out Halloween and the kids got at it.
You don't see a lot of dirty cars at the auto show. They have about ten people just dusting them. They don't encourage touching the cars.
Car dealers ought to have one car out front with mud on it so we'd all know what it's going to look like most of the time in our own driveway.
There were more red cars at the car show than there are in real life. I don't know why that is.
One car has Hybrid Synergy Drive - whatever that means. I'm sure it costs more.
The one car that's still easy to identify is a Chevrolet. It has the most widely recognized emblem of any product in the world.
The Bentley was one of the most expensive cars in the show, $276,795. I'll take two of those.
Cars are big business in America. We own a total of 200 million vehicles. If all our cars and trucks were on the highway, bumper to bumper, at the same time – well, none of us would be surprised. And you can bet some idiot at the back of the line would blow his horn, too.
Written By Andy Rooney