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December 14, 2005 |
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The book begging to be
written. Sadly I didn’t think of it and, even if I had, Richard Porter beat
me there. His recently published, Crap Cars, hits home on a subject where, modesty aside, I’m an expert. Porter’s tome details the usual suspects, a Ford Pinto, the Chevy Vega, plus his choice of the ultimate crap car, the AMC/ Renault Alliance. My personal history of cars from hell is altogether different. Starting with a Volvo station wagon. A Volvo? One never meets a Volvo owner, their name usually ends in son or quist, who doesn’t worship what they feel is the ultimate in Swedish engineering. A decade or three ago Volvo’s safety spiels persuaded us it was the perfect car for a family with young daughters. The average Volvo, ads of the early seventies continually explained, lasted well over one hundred thousand miles. No argument there. Our Volvo should have run forever since it was repaired almost weekly. That Volvo was a part of our Minneapolis life, Scandahoovian car heaven. Every other Twin-Cities block seemed to be home to a shade tree mechanic named Lars, Olaf or Sven. They always owned a business named some variation on Swedish Auto Repair. Each and every mechanic wore wooden clogs, said “yah sure” a lot and had recently immigrated to the Great White North to be a Volvo and Saab wrench. It was easy to see why. Using us as an example, within two years of opening the doors the Swede mechanics most likely had saved enough money to return home and purchase Gotteborg, Ornskoldsvik and half of Stockholm. Among its many ailments our Volvo featured an air-conditioner that continually dumped water on the feet of the poor schlub, usually my wife, sitting in the front passenger seat. Not to overstate the case but after spending what seemed to be at least a million dollars on just a/c repairs, we waved the flag of surrender and traded for an American wagon. On the way to pick up our new car the Volvo yakked four times on Jan’s feet. Our Volvo induced such a Pavlovian response that for almost the next decade whenever we turned a corner at more than 15 miles per hour, she instinctively raised her feet until we were once again driving straight ahead. Six months after giving up on the Volvo, we happened to meet the new owners, their name was Svenson, at a cocktail party. They raved about the car wondering what would possess us to sell such a perfectly running vehicle. We were tempted to try and sue a Swede station wagon for ethnic discrimination. I’m lucky Jan ever consented to be my wife after a crap car courtship in a ’48 Mercury. Right out of college I wrote copy for Sioux Falls TV station. The wage was a princely $325 a month. Not being able to afford squat for wheels I picked up the Mercury for fifty bucks. The guy gouged me. The vision was James Dean’s Lincoln in Rebel Without a Cause. I purchased Ice Age. Despite constant garage visits the heater never worked. It’s difficult to keep the fires of love burning when the object of your affection is constantly pre-occupied with the fear of freezing to death. One would imagine Mr. Porter could have a continuing series of bad product books. Houses from hell, boats that spend more time in dry dock than on the water or bad home appliances, the world is full of sad stories about stuff that doesn’t work as advertised. I could do 250 pages on just Crap Lawn Mowers. |
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