Look, Ma, No Hands

Letting go is difficult, especially letting go of the steering wheel. I'm not accustomed to it. I don't like it. I didn't want to do it. But I did, thanks to Toyota Motor Corp.'s advanced parking guidance system.

I felt I was being conned, and I was. When it comes to marketing, nobody beats Toyota. And the fancy automatic parking system, a $700 option installed in one of its luxury Lexus cars, is a work of marketing genius.

Let me be blunt: The automatic parking system in the 2007 Lexus LS 460 L sedan is completely unnecessary. I do not make that claim as a Luddite. I love technology. But this self-parking system is an automotive bauble if ever there was one.

Anyone who drives tens of thousands of miles annually and who parks odd cars in weird places all over the world, which is what I do, does not need a self-parking system. My assistant, Ria Manglapus, did not need it. It took the LS 460 L nearly 60 seconds to park itself. Ria did it in 40 seconds.

But there's the rub, the consumer trap, the tangible example of Toyota's indisputable marketing savvy.

When the company sent several of its agents to teach me how to use the self-parking system, I was nervous, totally antsy, suspicious. I thought of that old joke, the one where a man dangling from the ledge of a tall building is told to "let go and let God."

The dangling fellow shouts, "No!"

I was more polite. I simply looked at the Toyota agents and asked them if they were insane. But I took the leap, so to speak.

"Take your hands off the steering wheel," one of the agents directed me. I paused. "Go on," he said, the system won't work with your hands on the steering wheel. "Remove your hands."

I obeyed. Now what? I had already lined up the Lexus with the "target" car in front of me. I had pressed all of the requisite buttons on the car's video screen instrument panel. I'd seen the green, safe-parking outline on the screen and pressed the "OK" button.

"Just apply gentle pressure to the brakes," my instructor said. "Do not exceed 2.5 miles per hour."

Right. After all of my years of driving, this seemed silly. But, again, I obeyed. The car parallel parked perfectly. I was giddy with a sense of accomplishment. "Look at me! Look at me!" I thought to myself.