Gulfshore Drives

JUST DON'T CALL ME A TROPHY WIFE, PLEASE

Some nights, as you lie awake late with excitement-induced insomnia, you can almost hear Mama's tired voice speaking to you in the darkness. She's gone, of course, worn out early from rearing seven children and performing more daily housework than a team of Best Western maids.

"It's just as easy," she would tell you repeatedly as you grew toward womanhood, "to love a rich man as a poor man."

Mama was right.

If only she could ride with you today, cruising Fifth Avenue South, reflecting in the patterned panes of McCabe's Irish Pub, turning heads with your Jaguar XK-8. Or, if the weather turns nasty, you'll opt for your all-wheel-drive Audi TT.

For black-tie galas or the Phil, though, you'll take the Jaguar XK-8, perhaps the perfect car for Miss Most Likely to Succeed in yesteryear's yearbook. You don't worry about fuel efficiency from the V-8 Jaguar engine; and you take comfort in knowing that Ford has really, really boosted the British maker's reliability scores since purchasing Jaguar a decade ago. Jaguars today are good.

One suggestion: To personalize your XK-8, to make it instantly recognizable as Cindy's car, put wire wheels on it. They look terrific and you'll stand apart even from other Jaguars. Buy them.

If the streets turn slick, however, you want the added security of the Audi's all-wheel-drive. Only a few manufacturers offer all-wheel-drive cars-Subaru, a few from Volvo, but mostly Audis. Audis are just excellent-the entire model lineup. But they top the competition with their Quattro drive system that sends power to all four wheels.

What this system does is optimize traction. Coupled with anti-lock brakes, all-wheel-drive means you can be confident while accelerating or stopping on rain-slick streets (or snow-covered Aspen roads during ski season).

Not only will you have all-wheel-drive, you'll have one of the most striking cars on the planet. The Audi TT is drop-dead gorgeous (like you), with a shiny aluminum skin and baseball-stitched leather upholstery. It's powerful, with its turbo charged four-cylinder power plant, but not difficult to drive, as some sports cars are. The TT will coddle you, forgive your driving errors, and put that Mona Lisa smile on your lovely face. This is a red-dress car in a sea of black-dress transport mobiles.

Hip, Hot Restaurateur

Hard to believe, isn't it, that if someone eats in your new Bonita Springs restaurant just one night each week, they'll drop more than enough money each month to make the payment on your Infiniti Q45.

But that's a fact. You're hip and you're hot and your restaurant attracts a clientele that doesn't pull out a tip card to determine what they'll leave behind.

With your choice of vehicle, you want something that is top-of-the-line but not over-the-top. You want to appear successful, yes, but never to outclass those whose cars your valets park out front. You want something like your restaurant-a solid performer with unexpected rewards.

Enter the new Infiniti Q45, just about as fine a car as money can buy. And seriously underrated.

First off, you need to know this: Infiniti is the luxury division of Nissan, and few companies have put more effort into racing, and reaped more racing-derived benefits for street vehicles, than Nissan. Nissan, to those in the know, means fast.

The Q is that. Zero to 60 miles per hour in 5.8 seconds! It's a smooth fast, but a kind of fast very few tire-spinners can match. Press the accelerator on the big, powerful Q and you are gone. Passing power is immediate and immense. But the Q45 is so very much more. It has become a benchmark car. It is a technological leader.

It's the first car to offer a rear-view, televised, live image whenever the gear selector goes into reverse. Under the trunk, in back, is a small, built-in lipstick video camera. It sees a wide area behind the car and shows the driver what's behind on the Q45's navigation screen. In color. It's a marvelous safety device that will soon be standard on all luxury vehicles.

But there's more that should appeal to you. If you have someone drive you periodically, you'll really appreciate the back seats. You can journey over to South Beach, clandestinely pocket a rival's menu and read it as you travel back to your restaurant. Get this: the Q45's rear seats recline. At the press of a button, the seat base slides forward and the seating angle is changed. The rear seats are also heated, for those rare chilly Florida days. You are thus supremely comfortable as you chuckle over the new menu additions you'll match by this evening.

Every safety feature imaginable is included in the Q45, and it possesses the finest headlights in all autodom. These seven-projector, Gatling-gun units light every square inch of road and side area with daylight-quality blue-white light. They have no equal.

And, check this, Mr. Restaurateur, you can voice-command almost every feature of the Q45. Change radio stations. Change air conditioning settings. Change navigation screen map display. Just press a button on the steering wheel and speak your command. A nice female voice I have dubbed Buffy will execute the command and verify it.

The interior is rich with leather and real wood, quietly distinguished. For fun, you can move the shifter for the automatic transmission to one side and manually change gears.

There is nothing this Q45 doesn't do well. At its $60,000 price, the only real competition is the Lexus LS430. Take the Q. Like you, it's hip.

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THE SNOWBIRD FROM MICHIGAN

This may come as a shock, but not everyone comes here by private jet. Some ... no, most ... drove here. I know, I know. Why would anyone do that? But they do. They drive a thousand miles or more just to wear golfing shorts in winter sun.

Listen, you think it's easy driving down I-75 from somewhere in Michigan? You think our tropical shirt-wearing snowbirds didn't pull into rest stops, exit their vehicles and grab their lower backs every hour? You think it was all Cracker Barrels and Residence Inns?

Wrong. For many a tourist, getting to our paradise meant going through hell. Blame a bad vehicle. For those back-grabbers, we have a suitable vehicle now: the Cadillac Deville DTS.

Few cars try as hard to please. I mean, just look at this technological wonder. It has every gizmo GM's Detroit dreamers could conceive. And many of those gizmos are aimed at comfort, that all-important factor for the long journey South.

Begin with the one feature our back-grabber will like best. The Deville DTS has programmable front seats that can massage your back every 10 minutes. At preset regular intervals, you feel the seat start to move up and down your spine. Sure, it's alarming at first, having a seat play touchy-feely with such an intimate area as your lower back. But then you settle in and enjoy it.

Naturally, the seats can recline. They're also heated, just in case it's snowy as one departs Michigan. They are full leather, adjust 12 ways, and move out of the way on entry or exit, returning to a preset position as the key is inserted. The rear bench seat is large enough for your kids' spring break party.

Speed is set by cruise control, the headlights magically come on at dusk, the windshield wipers spring to life if a drop of water hits the glass, and a Night Vision system sees that cow in the middle of I-75 long before the Xenon headlights pick it up. The cow is displayed in a black-and-white image projected onto the windshield in front of our driver.

When our snowbirds put the car in reverse (not to return to Michigan, but just to back up), a rear bumper-mounted ultrasonic system will measure the distance to any object behind the car and beep just before they strike or run over that object.

The Northstar drivetrain, with a 300-horsepower V8 engine and four-speed automatic transmission, is a world-class combination. But just in case there is trouble of any kind, the Deville DTS has the OnStar system, where a touch of a button brings a real human on the other end of a communications connection, willing to give directions, make reservations or read e-mail.

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RICH REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER

The Gold Rush heydays of displacing alligators in the Everglades may be over, but the new Florida land rush has been good to you. Waterfront condos and gated communities from Cape Coral to Marco Island testify to your vision-and growing net worth.

Now you need to define your success with your vehicle choice. What kind of developer would drive a Ford Focus, a Toyota Corolla, a Chevy Impala? Please. You need to look as splendidly successful as you are, so you must drive a vehicle suited to your bold and adventuresome spirit.

You need to go North. North to the Yukon.

Only a few years ago, I hated this vehicle. It was truck-like, which meant it brutalized anyone unlucky enough to be inside while traveling over all but the smoothest pavement. Then General Motors finally got around to civilizing its truck fleet, and the Yukon benefited from improvements made to the Silverado series. Benefited? The Yukon became a luxury vehicle.