Who wants to have a gas-guzzling dinosaur in his garage?
His Rambler was small, but that didn’t keep Romney from sleeping in it some nights during the 70,000 miles he traveled in 1958 to preach its wonders. It was a hit and a pop-culture sensation, the subject of a million-selling ditty about the “Little Nash Rambler” that bagged a Cadillac on the road without shifting out of second gear. Pundits swooned; “George Wilcken Romney, at 51, is a broad-shoulder, Bible-quoting brother of a man who burns brightly with the fire of missionary zeal,” Time’s profile began. A political career soon followed. But an unconventional one. Michigan was holding a new convention to replace its inadequate Constitution and needed a reconciling figure to manage the task. Romney was chosen — and before the convention had hardly begun, he was being talked up as a presidential contender. He was Michigan’s James Madison. By the time the new Constitution passed in 1963, he was the state’s governor — a Republican in a Democratic state where the United Auto Workers was
