How Boca Sees America — And It’s Not in a Chevrolet
By
William A. Gralnick
When we first moved to Boca, my youngest son, who has a unique ability to synthesize his thoughts, looked around out the car window and said, “It’s not hard to remember where you live in this place.” Ba da boom. Boca has many peculiarities, one of which is being known by half its name. Another is someone suing a developer because his Boca Raton subdivision had a Delray Beach zip code. Boca has “a season,” which isn’t a match for any of those we know as seasons. During that season, it expands like a balloon into which one pumps water. The population goes up 30%+. Many of those folks haven’t figured out where they are going until they leave at the end of “the season.”
Style and fashion change quickly here. One category of change is cars. The average American keeps a car for seven years. Not here. Cars go in and out of fashion in no more than two “seasons.” The Lexus had a pretty fair run. It had many models and is a good car with excellent service behind it; when you owned a Lexus, you felt a cut above (above those who didn’t). At some point, Boca became lousy with Lexi, and the Lexus became known as the Boca Chevy. It isn’t that people stopped buying them, not by any means, but the cut above became not high enough.
Then it seemed the Porche, which I always thought was an Italian car, seemed to grow in numbers. First, there were more Porche Box cars. Then the Porche came out with the four-seater Panamera. There was a rush for those when the SUV became popular, which began a rush for the Cayenne. Then get out of my way, Cayenne, here comes the BMW. The Beemer was always popular. There were lots of 300 series on the road, but BMW busted out with the 500 series and then the 7. They were so electronically complicated that people were intrigued by the complexity. My perception is that most hadn’t figured it out until they sold it. If it started and stopped and the radio sounded wonderful, that was enough. Now BMW has a sports car that is a real showstopper. They are growing in number.
Speaking of showstoppers, here’s a list of SUV’s and sports cars I’ve seen about town, or I’m sure will see shortly, and their price tags:
First, a few random notes. Each of these cars comes with a hefty destination charge that can add thousands more to the price. The insurance is staggering. All require specialty care…
