Your car is your baby — be a good parent

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DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour    

I think it’s safe to say most people like their cars. It’s probably just as safe to assume most selected them personally. Completing the “hat trick” it’s probably just as realistic to assume purchasing a vehicle is not only a huge financial commitment but the purchaser is probably — at best — hurting for money.

Makes sense that under those circumstances a major expenditure would be treated with kid gloves, wouldn’t it? Guess again, Mr. Wizard. To see the way people (don’t) take care of their cars is the reason junkyards have flourished for well over three-fourths of a century. When it comes to the thoughts that a person will take care of a car like it was a member of the family I’m reminded of the old adage, “The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” In most cases there must be a freeway off-ramp in front of people’s homes.

I’ve seen cars in such need of a bath that a Category 5 hurricane wouldn’t make a whit in blowing dirt off. I’ve also seen interiors that are so trashed I wouldn’t sit in them unless I’d just left a hospital where I was pumped full of antibiotics and had a tetanus booster. So when I witness something like I did this morning it tends to restore my faith that some people actually do give two hoots in hell for their belongings.

I took my wife’s car to the Pennzoil Oil Depot for an oil change. I parked behind a yellow 2008 Nissan 350Z. Even though it was an overcast day the vehicle shone like a bright sun and had it been sunny, the spotless chrom
e wheels would probably have blinded me. The interior was factory-clean as well.

I noticed a young guy — probably in his early-30s — standing by the door and asked if the Z was his. He proudly claimed it was and I commented how nice-looking it was. He beamed and said he spends the warmer months in Michigan and the winter months in Texas, where he has friends from his four years in the Army. I noticed he kept looking at his car like it was his child who just won a four-year scholarship to an Ivy League University.

I mentioned this to him and he thanked me and said that he is entirely too busy to have a lasting relationship or marriage because of the demands of his construction business and as a result would probably never have kids, so the Z was as close as he’d probably get to being a father.

I’m a father and as much as I love my kids I don’t rem
ember having the look of absolute pride this young man showed his Nissan. He said he only uses synthetic oil, garage-keeps it and does not drive it when roads are slick. He loves to drive it back and forth to Texas because it’s just him, his “son” and the road.” Furthermore, he only had 32,000 miles on it. I was surprised because as pristine as it was I’d have guessed something closer to 10,000 miles.

The purpose of all this rambling is to show that there are still those out there who treat a major purchase as important as a member of the family, worthy of the time, expense and effort to keep it as “healthy” as possible. This kind of vehicular pride is really a dying art.

When I was a teenager and I, and my colleagues were not only getting our first cars but trying to stay alive while out-running sabre-toothed tigers, no matter how decrepit our cars were we saved up money to buy a can of Cadillac Blue Coral, Simonize or even Turtle Wax and spent hours waxing and re-waxing our beloved vehicles. We damned near licked our whitewalls clean. You could eat off the floors of our cars (and most of us did at one time or another – for a variety of reasons).

But anymore it seems that just because a car has perma-coat paint and according to the manufacturers, doesn’t require waxing, people tend to think this means that their cars only require to be left out in the rain and when the clouds go away their vehicles will sparkle like one of Elizabeth Taylor’s diamonds.

 The bottom line is this. Cars are like infants…they can’t feed themselves, they can’t speak for themselves and they sure as hell can’t keep themselves clean and healthy. That requires an adult – most likely a parent. You tell me, Rupert, other than not getting a chapped ass, what’s the difference in caring for a baby and caring for your car? You may be hard-shelled enough to walk outside and face that poor four-wheeled infant in the eyes and not care what happens to it but the rest of us can’t. Does that make us better parents?

To quote the late soul singer Isaac Hayes…”You damn right!”