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I Hate Automobiles
By Bill Zahren
(Posted 03/15/01)
You know those arty ads for the latest
car models? The ones where the car is sliding gracefully through
water, or hugging a curving road through mountains? Or the
ones featuring chemically happy families sporting around in
pristine minivans, having a gay old time on their great American
adventure?
Car makers want you to think of the elan
of their products. The chic-ness of their latest must-have
“sports coupe.” The elegant styling of the tweaked-up XLSZ
model. The family safety of the Armored Personnel Minivan.
When I see any new car ad, I see one thing:
my money swirling down a huge drain.
Cars are cash vampires, money leeches, slowly
draining my bank account with designs on the college fund.
To me, automobiles are 90% expense, 5% necessity and 2.5%
fun and 2.5% prostate-exam-level discomfort.
Yeah, yeah, freedom to roam this great country.
You have to have a car to exist in America. Independence.
Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. To me cars are just an endless
series of various forms of payment. And I shouldn’t even be
complaining, since my father made his livelihood as an auto
mechanic. By taking their vehicles to G&S Garage, the good
people of Lake Park, Iowa, clothed, housed and fed me to a
plump state for my first 18 years. And, I can tell you from
extremely close range, knowing a good mechanic ranks up there
with knowing a good doctor or dentist.
When I was in high school, I approached
my father, the oracle of all car wisdom in my eyes. There
he was, perched on top of the engine of a 1978 GMC gravel
truck. Grease on his arms, dark-gray work sleeves rolled up,
bulletproof, black Mason low-top work shoes getting traction
on the fender, sweat balls dripping off his nose -- striking.
And I said, “Father, tell me the secret
of having a car last forever.”
He stopped heaving on (and swearing at)
a nut and became strangely placid. “Easy, my son,” he said,
as the radiance of auto knowledge shone around him. “Don’t
drive it.”
And just yesterday, the now-retired auto
mechanic Buddha e-mailed me in response to my most recent
fit of auto rage: “Don't make much difference used or new,
it costs so much a mile to ride. Pay me now or pay me later.”
Thus spaketh the Master of the Impact Wrench. Ommmmmm.
I was pissed after paying enough to buy
gas for a B-2 bomber to repair my 1992 Ford Aerostar family
truckster van. The morning after, I can see the words of Buddha
ring true. For the first four years I owned the Aerostar it
cost me virtually nothing in repairs. Now that the thing has
120,000 miles on it, I’ve paid for a blown head gasket (four
figures in front of the decimal point in that one) last year
and another four-figures yesterday, all in an effort to stave
off the van reaper for another year.
But as bad as it is to fork over large money
for car repairs, I’d rather do that than go through buying
a different vehicle. That’s why, faced with a repair bill
that was almost half the value of the van, I paid the repair
bill. Better to feed the mechanics than endure the pain of
acquiring something different.
Because like 89% of America, I’d choose
getting teeth filled to buying a different vehicle. Elective
surgery looks good to me compared to buying a vehicle. Why?
Because both sides are trying to screw each other, with the
buyer pretty sure he’s going to be the one ending up meeting
the pickle train, if you get my drift.
Buying cars is like buying something from
a street merchant in Mexico. The real “price” is a big secret.
The sticker price is just the starting point. Everyone agrees
that anyone who pays sticker price for a new car is an idiot.
I hate to haggle. Next time I buy a car,
I’m taking my media buyer friend Jen or maybe Logo Design
Stallion John with me to be my spokesperson. Media buyers
are shark-like negotiators. Union bosses got nothing on media
buyers, who have to negotiate the cost of running ads with
various media outlets And John claims to enjoy the process.
I think he’s been huffing aerosol spray mount.
Maybe it’s an introvert thing, but I don’t
like lying to the car seller about how much you really want
to pay, having them lie to you about what they’ll really take,
walking out in a huff, coming back, lying some more. Too much
human interaction for me. So the next time I buy a car, I
might get bids online. There are Internet services that let
you take bids on your business from a pool of dealers. So
they have incentive to be real with me in the first place.
I love the Web.
But, since I couldn’t find the energy to
go through the acquisition process, I paid the tuition-sized
repair bill, and scurried back home to lick my fiscal wounds.
And maybe it's fortunate I grew up around
an auto repair shop. Seeing cars disassembled into many little,
greasy pieces does a lot to remove any kind of romantic notion
of what they are and are not. Once you've seen under their
pretty skins, you realize autos are machines, no more and
no less, and machines with billions of moving parts. And the
more moving parts on something, the more prone it is to breakdown.
Here’s hoping the Aerostar family truckster
lasts another year. Maybe then I’ll have the courage to buy
something different. Right after I get my teeth filled.
© 2001 Bill Zahren
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