Corky Simpson: PT Cruiser is a classic, not a clunker

The next time I see a photograph or video footage showing a Chrysler PT Cruiser accompanying a story on the “Cash for Clunkers” program, I may blow a gasket.

Or throw a rod. Something.

The Cruiser is not a clunker. It’s simply too beautiful to be tarred with that brush.

Don’t ask me about the engine, the steering — the mechanical stuff — or the gas mileage, because I don’t have a clue.

I’ve never owned a Chrysler of any kind, or seriously considered owning one.

But the PT Cruiser is a work of art, the most graceful, aesthetic set of wheels since the 1953 Studebaker Champion. The Cruiser is above being lumped in with the rustbuckets used in these generous government trade-in deals.

This is no knock at the Cash for Clunkers program. All I know about that scheme is, I hope it works.

But who in their right mind would throw away a Norman Rockwell original, a Winslow Homer or a Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson)? Who would just pitch a masterpiece into the trash?

OK, I know. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe the way I feel about the PT Cruiser is the way you feel about the Gremlin or the Plymouth Horizon, the Mercury Monarch or that ... uh ... interesting Pontiac Aztek.

To some of us, though, the Cruiser is as easy on the eyes as the old — and new — Chevrolet Camaro, the Ford Mustang and Thunderbird.

I cringe at the thought of any of these classics being crushed and chewed up into metallic confetti. Ouch.

Somewhere I read that the PT Cruiser was inspired by the panel vans of the 1930s. I’ve seen it listed as a “wagon,” as in station wagon. But I never thought of it in that sense; I mean, who ever heard of a convertible station wagon? Or panel truck?

No matter.

It is a beautiful, elegant “retro,” a car that brings to mind the magnificent buggies of the 1920s and ’30s.

The Cruiser came out somewhere around 2000. I’ll never forget the first one I saw. It was at the Tucson Open Golf Tournament and the Chrysler people had somehow mounted a Cruiser on some sort of platform in the middle of a pond at Tucson National.

It looked as though the shiny new model was sitting on water and, truth be told, that’s the mental picture that stuck with me. If Lute Olson, the University of Arizona’s beloved basketball coach at the time, could walk on water (as far as local fans were concerned), that gorgeous little automobile might as well drive on top of a water hazard.

And what a buzz it created. I was told the backlog of orders for the Cruiser was such that it would take you a year to get one.

If I’m not mistaken, my old friend Jim Click, the automobile dealer, told me his wife, Vicki, drove a PT Cruiser. I know that Pete Likins, the former University of Arizona president drove one — turbo charged, I believe.

My buddy and colleague at the now defunct Tucson Citizen, editorial page editor Mark Kimble, still drives a Cruiser. Several years ago, Mark took me for my first and only ride in one. I was impressed.

But I repeat: I do not own a PT Cruiser now, never have and do not plan to own one. So this is not a commercial announcement.

I simply cannot bring myself to think of such a masterpiece of automotive design as a “clunker.”

Maybe in the mechanical sense it would qualify. Maybe they made some of them with square wheels. I don’t know.

It doesn’t seem right, though, to publish a story in a newspaper or magazine, or broadcast one on television about the government plan for folks to turn in clunkers at an overblown trading value, while illustrating the story with a car as attractive as the PT Cruiser.

Twenty or 30 years from now, the Cruiser will be a bona fide classic. Right there with the niftiest Mustangs and Camaros, T-birds and Corvettes and what-have-you.

Who could stand to watch such works of art mashed up like a paper cup and thrown away?

Not me.

Corky Simpson is a former Tucson Citizen columnist who writes a weekly column for the Green Valley News.