Proudly posing with your shiny new car

Every now and then on Facebook, a relative of mine posts a photo of himself or herself standing next to their new BMW or Mercedes or a bright red Hummer.

Showing it off is a matter of pride – a way to tell the family and the world that I have arrived, that I have the means to buy a $40,000 or $50,000 car. It is also a way to evoke envy in those family members who could barely afford a Ford Focus.

I’ve always wanted a BMW but was too cheap to pay the hefty price for the 5 Series. So, I settled for a nice mid-priced car that got me to where I wanted to go. Now that desire for luxury has subsided (except for the Audi). Even if I had bought that Beemer, I never would have posed with it.

Cars are like members of the family: We wash them when they’re dirty (or not), feed them when their fuel is low, and sometimes we won’t even let people eat or drink in them (or smoke, when that was commonplace).

They take us on long vacation trips; whisk us away after marriage vows; drive us to appointments, the grocery store and parties, and just keep us safe from the idiot who’s driving like a maniac. Parting with them after they’re no longer reliable or we’re ready for something new is like breaking up with our last great love.

I suspect that folks have been photographing their cars since Henry Ford made his Model T affordable for the middle class in the early part of the 20th century. With the new Kodak Brownie camera, I can imagine them taking a snapshot of the car itself and also the family in it or standing next to it.

When I interviewed an uncle for a video on his 80^th birthday a few years ago, his wife produced a photo of him with her and her parents standing next to his 1967 Buick Wildcat. His 1957 Ford was the one that had caught her eye years earlier. I also recall a photo of another uncle standing next to his new Pontiac Grand Am, which was his favorite make and model of car, in the 1970s.

At auction recently, I was thumbing through an old scrapbook that someone had tossed and came across similar photos of another family. Interestingly, most of the posers were women. Several stood beside what I determined was a Graham Blue Streak, a car that set trends in the 1930s but apparently was not very popular. The barebones 1932 Graham Blue Streak four-door sedan sold for $995. The other cars in the photos also appeared to have been made by the Graham-Paige company.

The Blue Streak bore a New York license plate from the 1930s when fewer people had cars and owning a new car was something to be acknowledged. Men bought most of the cars, and car manufacturers marketed to them, although women in some households did participate in the choice of car. By the 1920s and 1930s, the major car companies began advertising to women.

At one auction, I came across a woman’s driver’s license that spanned 34 years, from 1926 to 1960. She got that first license at a time when women were considered too frail and weak to handle a big bad automobile. She renewed it every year and kept all her licenses.

At another auction, I found a small packet of Prince Matchabelli’s Wind Song perfume that Chevrolet distributed to women to advertise its 1955 Chevys. Starting in 1956, the company sponsored the “The Dinah Shore Chevy Show.” Dodge in 1955 offered a pink car called La Femme.

Several years ago at an auction, I found an early real postcard of a woman sitting inside her automobile from a very early period.

Here are some of the photos from the scrapbook. Several appear to be the same Graham Blue Streak car: