I almost forgot what it was like to be in a car. That’s how things have changed.

When I began writing this column in 1984, I reviewed cars every week. Trucks seldom made an appearance. Few people bought or cared about trucks. They could be ignored.

Today, trucks and their variants, such as car-truck hybrids, make up half of new-vehicle sales in the United States.

But 50 percent isn’t 100 percent, though I was beginning to confuse the two after eight weeks in trucks. I needed to regain perspective. I needed a car. I chose the 2001 Pontiac Grand Am SE1 coupe.

The Grand Am came with a standard 150-horsepower, four-cylinder engine and a five-speed manual transmission. Cloth covered the seats. Vinyl covered the dashboard and instrument panel. It had 15-inch wheels, four-wheel anti-lock brakes, and a stereo sound system that handled Handel and jazz with equal aplomb.

The SE1 version had other standard goodies, such as power windows and locks. But mostly it was just an ordinary compact car. What a relief! I could drive it anywhere in the city or park in any urban garage without worrying about fitting in.

Expletive-free commutes are more enjoyable than trips filled with cursing and digital salutes. It’s one of the benefits of not taking up twice the road space of your fellow motorist.

Pontiac tried to turn the Grand Am into a hot ride by giving it a rear-deck wing, ribbed lower-body cladding and round “cornering lights” at the lower extremities of its rear bumpers. But those cosmetic touches did little to affect the Grand Am’s essential anonymity. It remains a mass-market car, a four-wheeled commodity that has all the distinction of an orange at a fruit stand.

That’s not all bad, either. Anonymity has real-world advantages. People usually don’t attack what they can easily ignore.

I say this because of a series of suspicious scratches accumulated on some of the test trucks. Those scratches might have been accidental. They all occurred in shopping-center parking lots. But several of them were long and continuous, as if someone deliberately “keyed” the sides of the trucks.

It’s hard to figure. I just know that I got no scratches on the Grand Am, even though I parked in the same places.

But the Grand Am SE1 drew unwelcome attention in another area. Its suspension system was soft and squishy. The car bottomed out while rolling over modest dips and bumps at speeds of about 15 mph. It behaved quite well on smooth straightaways, but there was some discernible body sway in sharp turns. The Grand Am SE1 is best enjoyed with moderation.

A better suspension package can be found in the GT and GT1 versions of the Grand Am, which also are available with 16-inch wheels, automatic transmission and a 170-horsepower V-6 engine.

Still, I was happy with the Grand Am SE1. It offered more performance and product value than I expected, though it was just a step above the base SE model. It lacked the power, high driving position and intimidation factor of big trucks. But I missed none of that. It was fun driving around without worrying about getting in anyone’s way.