Beneath the Surface, It Works Like a Truck

2008 Jeep Liberty Limited SUV

Texas Truck Mama smiled as she pulled into the driveway in her little Mini Cooper. Parked in front of her was a considerably different vehicle, a 2008 Jeep Liberty Limited sport-utility vehicle. It was twice the length of her Mini Cooper, several inches taller and nearly 900 pounds heavier.

The four-wheel-drive Jeep Liberty, of course, had a bigger engine -- a 3.7-liter, 210-horsepower V-6, compared with the 1.6-liter, 118-horepower in-line four-cylinder engine in her front-wheel-drive Mini.

The Jeep Liberty, wearing all-new sheet metal for 2008, looking rugged the way a Jeep should look, barely got 21 miles per gallon on the highway, drinking regular unleaded gasoline. Texas Truck Mama's Mini got 36 mpg on the highway. And with her behind the wheel, driving like the mild-mannered elementary school teacher she normally is, squeezing 37 or 38 mpg out of her Mini was not uncommon, although she frequently complained about the Mini's requirement for premium unleaded fuel.

I mention these things in solicitation of help in figuring out the woman to whom I've been married for nearly 40 years.

She's a little thing, barely standing five feet tall. She's painfully sensible. Had it not been for her, we could've been a part of the mortgage mess that's sinking the U.S. economy. She was an environmentalist before environmentalism was cool. And she's so cheap she has an almost religious compulsion to return an item to a store if she discovers that she could have gotten the same thing from somewhere else for 10 cents less.

But when it comes to trucks in general and Jeeps in particular, the woman is insane. Fuel economy doesn't matter. Her usual preference for small cars disappears. Bigger becomes better. Her mild demeanor is supplanted by a lust for power. Mary Anne -- the sweetly smiling schoolteacher and gentle, churchgoing wife from Marshall, Tex. -- becomes Texas Truck Mama.

"It's a Jeep! A Jeep!" she exclaimed as she pulled into the driveway.

Then, for a moment, she returned to sobriety. She thought about Ria Manglapus, my associate in vehicle evaluations.

"What's Ria driving?" Mary Anne asked.

Like, what, am I stupid?

"Ria's running the Infiniti M45X," I said, thankful that the Infiniti had come a few hours before the Jeep Liberty arrived.

"Oh, well, that's good," Mary Anne said. She backed her Mini out of the driveway and parked it on the street. "Where's the Jeep key?" she asked. I gave it to her. She came inside, dropped her school bags on a living room couch . . . and left.