I'm a car nut. I love all kinds of cars, and wish I were rich enough to own one of every model ever made.

Let's see. It's Wednesday and sunny? I think I should like to have my driver carry me to work in the 1978 Subaru Brat. I'll be strapped in the outdoor, rear-facing seat, like a tail-gunner on the lookout for tie fighters while he plugs in an 8-track of Neil Diamond.

Life whoring (verb): spending money on impractical things and pretending to live in ages other than your own.

There is one vehicle that receives more than its fair share of derision – the well-appointed minivan. I don't understand it. Why would we single out one of the most practical and kick-ass types of vehicles ever invented for the kind of hatred we normally reserve for boy bands?

I swear, I would do better to defend the Taliban at a cocktail party than the minivan. Stay-at-home mothers will convince their trophy husbands to buy them a $50,000 SUV just to avoid what they really need, which is a $30,000 minivan, because the American female sees the minivan as the death of sexiness. Never mind that expanding sweatpants are much more of an erection killer than what kind of a vehicle she slides her buns into. She just hates the van.

The Sybilizing of American automotive females began with the station wagon. In the day, every family who loved its crotch-fruit had a station wagon in the garage. It was a great kid hauler and capable of carrying massive quantities of family paraphernalia. Moms loved its practicality almost as much as dating teenagers despised its hearse styling. I never understood why teenagers with hair-trigger genitals wouldn't want to take a rolling bed on a date, but they preferred dad's Mercury for dry-humping.

Finally, when the wagon became a symbol of domestic, unsexy bliss, women hated them. Then, in 1984, the death of the station wagon came in the breadbox form of the minivan. Station wagon sales plummeted and minivans began their evolution into the greatest highway vehicle that didn't have "conversion" in its title.

But did the MILF celebrate the sexy warrior that killed her station wagon? No, she merely transferred her hatred to it. Why?

I don't pretend to understand women, I just pretend to sleep with a lot of them. Preferably in roomy minivans.

Hear Gordon on "The Ticket" KTCK-AM (1310) weekdays from 5:30 to 10 a.m. E-mail him at gordon@gordonkeith.com.

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