Remember – you are what you drive – so they’d have you believe!

We’re coming up on the anniversary of my brother’s passing. It’s been tough – and I’ve been working on a few things through my grieving.

One of these things is to remember someone the way they would want to be remembered. Contemplating my own eventual demise has helped with this reflection.

I would want family and friends (Sue especially) to remember me at my best – my side-splitting wordplay, dominant hockey performances, irresistible charm, disarming humility… you get the idea. I would not want them to remember my moments of weakness or any nasty details surrounding my exit.

With this in mind, I remember Jeff after his diagnosis insisting on purchasing a new vehicle for Sheri. Upon delivery, although he was of limited strength and mobility, Jeff assessed the powerful Audi by racing up and down the road at about three-times the speed limit. His grin said it all. The car passed his test and – as always – Jeff passed his.

I find the world can be organized into two categories of people: those that get cars – and those that don’t. My brother was always much more of a car person than me. He understood how they worked and had insight into the right vehicle for the right circumstance. Me – not so much.

For the life we left in Montreal six years ago, with its mad-scientist-designed highways, downtown commutes, falling bridges, narrow streets, and constant construction, I drove what I thought to be an appropriate car: a white Prius hybrid.

Now Jeff may have used it as a proof-point for my lack of virility and Sue made snarky references to its hamster-powered engine, but for urban conditions my little Prius was easy to park, stingy, and dare I say, a wee-bit peppy.

Our move to Oro – small town Canada – soon made it clear, however, that I faced the risk of ostracism if I continued to drive such a subversive vehicle. Jeff warned me: “You’re not going to make a great first impression driving that thing up Horseshoe Valley Road. You’re not even gonna’ make it up the hill.”

My new neighbours greeted my hybrid with deep suspicion. When I asked my trusted local mechanic to certify the car, he admitted he had heard of such vehicles, had never actually seen one, and wondered out loud if I wasn’t a communist.

One’s choice of automobile says a lot about who we are – or so marketers would have us believe. Advertisers have been getting into our heads about the cars we should be driving for more than a century.

In case you haven’t seen one, television ads for the Prius are, I admit, a little freaky: Rolling green hills, butterflies, sunflowers and talking animals. Perhaps a little too much “Animal Farm” for my grease monkey.

In 1898, the Winton Motor Carriage Company was the earliest known advertiser for an automobile. Their call to action was simple and compelling: “Dispense With A Horse.” The return-on-investment, when no longer saddled (pun intended) with the “expense and anxiety” of keeping your old mare, highlighted the small print.

Since those days, we have seen advertisers take their research and their message to both highs and lows.

Volkswagen raised the bar with startling candour in its 1959 “Think Small” campaign that featured a mostly white page and a compact, economical image of the humble Beetle. It stood in stark contrast to the majority of contemporary car ads that hyped such attributes as power, size and manliness.

In efforts to move an inventory of pre-owned vehicles, BMW altogether dropped the bar with its 2008 Playboyesque image of a seductive woman, and the not-so-subtle copy, “You know you’re not the first, but do you really care?” (Kind of makes you want to spray the seats with Luminol before any test drive.)

Under pressure to make a jalopy switch, and at the mercy of those automobile marketers and their subliminal ways, I was bombarded by multimedia messages in my car-shopping journey.

Following a couple of innocent Google searches on different models, I was creepily followed around the Internet for weeks with display ads matching my exact syntax. (GO AWAY!)

And that TV spot of Matthew McConaughey’s mumbled, drug-addled, midnight existential rant from behind the wheel of a Lincoln scared the shit out of me.

It was finally a line from my local Ford dealer as I gazed upon a pickup that lured me in. He took a glance at my Prius and his wisdom was incontrovertible. “Fuel economy without power is like fishing without bait.” (From an actual 2013 Ford print ad!)

I pulled my new, black F150 4X4 Lariat into the driveway. Sue swooned. Jeff asked if it came with a penis. Then he bought my Prius.