More than 50 years ago the late Jim Kenney, a Westinghouse engineer, drove to his Havertown, Pa., home in a new 1960 DeSoto.

The tail fins seemingly soared from yesterday to tomorrow and his family was ecstatic about the new family car. One of the boys in the family, Tom, had recently acquired a license to drive. That fact meant nothing to his father.

The teenager washed and waxed that DeSoto for a chance to drive the car. Even then his grades in school were considered. “If I was good,” Kenney reports, “I got to take the DeSoto out on the weekends.”

It was about ten years ago, Pete Sanders recalls, when he and his wife Sharon were strolling through an antique automobile show when one the the displayed cars arrested her attention.

The car that set her pulse racing was a 1936 Ford DeLuxe Phaeton. Sanders agreed with his wife that the lines of the car were fetching but the couple was not in the buying mode that day and besides the car was not for sale. Since that day Sanders has not been actively searching for a 1936 Ford DeLuxe Phaeton but he has not forgotten about it either.

The summer of 2011 was almost gone when Sanders saw the Ford of his wife's dreams for sale on the internet. A broker of antique cars in Westport, Conn., had the car and he gave Sanders all the details he had which led Sanders to think it was a sound vehicle.

As I recall it was the dead of winter 1981, and it was the first time I saw and got to drive an all-wheel drive Subaru. It was a modest station wagon, and it was “cheap” as we used to say about low-priced basic vehicles. But, this little bulldog was not basic and having an all-wheel drive in a sedan back then was almost unknown. While the rest of us at the office struggled to get our big rear-wheel-drive Plymouths and Oldsmobiles through the deep snow, the fellow with the Subaru was already there and had the coffee pot ready.

He drove that Subaru for what seemed like two decades.

Most of us will never buy a truck, but every one of us will wish we had access to one at times. I have noted that folks who have bought a pickup for the second time will possibly keep buying a new one as time passes.  Also, truck buyers are possibly the most loyal of all vehicles buyers. Getting a customer out of his Ford or Chevrolet is not an easy assignment for a salesperson.  Getting a trucker into a Toyota Tundra full size pickup is the first challenge. Once in there it may become actually possible it may be bought. Toyota has ground away at the rock solid Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge ownership.

There is a lot to like in a 19-foot, 2.75-inch-long 1974 Cadillac Sedan deVille four-door hardtop. At least that is what Tom McQueen has discovered. He recalls, “My late mother drove Cadillacs for years, so I had grown up with 'The Standard of the World' in the garage.”

A few years ago McQueen travelled to old car Mecca in Carlisle, Pa., in search of an interesting older Cadillac that would be suitable for touring, preferably an Eldorado, Coupe deVille or a convertible. “I was not looking for a show car or trailer queen,” he says, “just a nice running and driving Cadillac.”

After walking through 99.9 percent of the car corral where nothing caught his eye, he came to the third car from the end in the back row of the hundreds of cars for sale.

Introduced as a 2007 model, the Mazda CX-9 has only seen styling and feature upgrades since. So why review it? Well, what is remarkable about this vehicle is that five years later it is still, in my judgment, the best full size crossover utility vehicle.

Admittedly, I’m a sucker for versatility. I like it in people, pets and vehicles, and the three-row, seven-seat CX-9 has it in spades. Okay, so do a lot of competing three-row crossovers and SUVs that can be reconfigured to serve multiple purposes. But none have the combination of comfort, utility and driving pleasure of this Mazda. It really is a fun-to-drive family/commuter machine with a noticeable advantage in agile handling and overall response.

Much credit goes to firm suspension tuning – MacPherson struts up front, multilink system in the rear and hefty stabilizer bars at both ends – that minimizes the roly-poly body movement common in this vehicle class. More CX-9 handling goodness comes from rigid chassis construction, precise steering feedback and standard stability and traction control that allow you to actually bite into curves quickly and, if necessary, make sharp accident avoidance maneuvers safely – all without sacrificing ride quality.