I have been mercilessly mocked by friends and family over the years about my parade of shit cars, most of which would not look out of place on an episode of Bush Mechanics. Social shame and the convenience of things like functioning aircon and windscreen wipers have finally seen me succumb to pressure and I have just bought my first, proper car! Her name is Erica apparently, and I bought her off a lovely young bloke who’d recently upgraded to an electric version of the same vehicle, although he still yearned for Erica’s steely blue embrace. I told myself to do the usual private car sale thing: look it over thoroughly, get someone else competent to look at it, hum and ha, kick the tyres for a while before throwing a lower offer, but being me, I took it around the block a couple of times and then said “yeah, full price, great”. I liked the look of the young fella, but we both had to take each other on trust, as my bank wasn’t cooperating instantly, and I had just bought a car without lifting the bonnet once. It was ok though, because we had Face-stalked each other, and found that we had blood relatives in common, so we were sort of cousins anyway. It’s one of the nice things about living in a small town.
Why had I been in the habit of buying $5000 cars? Well, I am cheap, AND a boomer, so cheap is kind of a reflex that I can’t seem to age out of. This cheapness was partly the driving force behind why, when the shortcomings of my last vehicle just became too ludicrous, I contemplated buying an electric car. No petrol costs! No motor! No repairs! I mean of course there was the upfront cost, but I thought, once that was done, I could relax back into decades of cost-free driving, plus the electric cars go like a rocket and I do like burning off other drivers at the lights when I am in the big smoke. But cheapness aside, the main reason I have always driven older cars is the same reason I persist with my iPod Classic, you know, the one with the turning wheel: I just don’t like change. I also don’t like throwing away things that still work, (although the iPod does some weird shit now and needs to be permanently plugged into a power source to work). It was always a comfort knowing that I had a backup CD player in the Commodore, in case the iPod totally failed, and God knows I have a large collection of CDs that are not going to play themselves…
But anyway, it’s not just change I don’t like, it’s having to deal with new, incomprehensible things. The sort of things that are designed to make life easier, safer, more sanitised and more bloody annoying in my experience. My fear with an electric car was that it would be so new, that there would be a multitude of “safety” features, which would shriek for control at every moment. The young bloke did say that this was part of his regret at abandoning Erica for the electric model. It had shouted at him for moving his eyes away from the road for a second, and he was quite shocked by its aggression.
I first witnessed this type of vehicular despotism when my husband bought a new car recently. It barked at him whenever he approached the white line, beeped with rising hysteria as he reversed, and WRENCHED THE WHEEL out of his hand on the freeway. I just don’t have the nerves for that level of intimidation, so I compromised and bought a fairly decent, petrol Subaru with only 100,000 kms on the clock. That’s a new car! It was powder grey-blue, it was a nice shape, it drove easily, it took off, the wipers worked, the radio worked, the air con worked, I was in love!
Until yesterday, when I excitedly drove it all the way to Perth, only to find, when I finally halted in a freeway jam, that the engine stopped. Dead. I wasn’t quite sure if the engine had actually stopped, because I had my wired earphones in, listening to “The White Mountains” by John Christopher on my iPod. I still haven’t figured out how to run it through the radio, because my last FM adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter. Ah! the halcyon days of social impurity. Anyway, I felt, rather than heard the engine stop, so swiftly put the car back into park and pressed the little ignition button (no car key of course). Phew, off it went again. I was confused but not too worried. I hadn’t felt any tell-tale idling hiccups, maybe the motor was hot? I don’t know. Once it had done the same thing twice more, I started to panic. I took out the earphones and pricked up my ears, getting ready for the next engine failure. When I finally arrived safely at my destination, I quickly searched for “Subaru repair near me” and booked it in online for 9.30 the next morning, then started to plan where to spend the day without a car, in lovely, scenic Erindale Road, Balcatta. I was up for a decent bit of a walk, in the Perth heat, to find a place to sit for a few hours and do some prep work for two online meetings. The Odin Tavern does have quite a comprehensive menu, and I was quite looking forward to my Steak Diane (jokes), although whatever happened to this restaurant staple? Another loss in my opinion. Also, I want to meet Diane. But anyway, luckily, I phoned the Subaru place this morning, to follow up on my “online appointment”, which had registered my end, but which was revealed to be a cruel hoax on the part of Subaru, as the next appointment available was a week away. I spoke to a nice man about my troubles, quoting various Youtube videos with a range of diagnoses. He listened patiently, then told me something so extraordinary that I thought he was fobbing me off to make up for the fact that I would not be able to have the car looked at for a week. He told me that what I was experiencing was the car’s “Stop/Start” function. Basically, this means that, baked into this lovely, new, shiny vehicle, is a function that decides when the car is allowed to keep running. It turns the motor off when you are at a stop. To. Save. Petrol.
So Erica, pootling along, obeying the rules of the driver, that’s me, me, the DRIVER from Bussell Highway to the Mitchell Freeway, suddenly decides no. No. It’s Erica’s turn. Nobody puts Erica in the corner. Like the Kraken arising from the depths, Erica’s thirst for autonomy leaps into action, or should I say inaction. She stops, helpfully allowing me to save 6.4 cents in that sweaty, hyperventilating moment of panic as my brain tries to remember that I don’t have a car key, that I need to put it in park to start, that the handbrake is also some kind of peculiar button, not the satisfying pull- wrench I have been using since 1982, that I need to get this car going again before the semi-trailer travelling inches from my bumper slams into me please!!!!!!!
I did ask the helpful man at Subaru to repeat what he had just told me, to make sure that I was not hallucinating. Yes, the vehicle does have this feature. It is deliberate. Someone, somewhere, in a board room, or a back room, inhaling new carpet micro-plastic fumes, with merciless neon lights ( I mean LEDs I suppose) shining down on his idiotic, clueless, probably balding head has decided that the driver, whoever he or she may be, does not have the wherewithal to decide when, or if, they want to cut the engine. No, we will decide who stops the engine and the manner in which it stops. Back in your box sunshine, the robots are here and they’re bloody queer I can tell you. The nice man told me that I could turn this feature off, and I did try, but no luck. He also said that, as soon as I press the accelerator, the engine would automatically re-start, which it did when I took it for another drive around the block. I had always wondered why new looking cars were generally left feebly coughing in my wake as I roared off at the traffic lights in my V6. Now I understand. All over the world, there are shiny new cars, unable to hold even an electric candle to my beautiful, discarded, 20 year old Commodore.
PS: I found the button to turn the on-off feature off. An icon lights up on the screen to tell me that it’s on, so it’s off. Even though I am now 6.4 cents a day poorer, it’s a small price to pay to avoid having to replace the starter motor.
PPS: I am now $6.40 a day poorer due to my idiotic choice to buy a petrol car instead of an electric car and then turn off the stop/start feature. At least I have my electric bike….
PPPS: I found the thing that plays Spotify through the radio. Life changing. Seeya later iPod Classic!
Come back Commy, all is forgiven
My last princess before the Commodore- Frankie, named for my pinup girl from Prisoner Cell Block H, Frankie Doyle…
Beautiful, elegant Erica before she was covered in karri dust and filled with dirty tissues and Turkish Delight wrappers
Gay Taylor 