"Martin Edgington" (medgingt)
12/16/2015 at 09:13 • Filed to: None
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"Martin Edgington" (medgingt)
12/16/2015 at 09:13 • Filed to: None | 8
| 6 |
I’m sure there are many among us, but I seriously love a good beater. I’ve been wanting to write more, so I wrote this short piece about loving cars that are almost scrap, and what it means to give up this indulgence.
A Porsche 924 Turbo that was well past its prime, but still had it where it counts
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The Dilemma of the Tool Box
A great dilemma befalls those familiar with the innards of a tool box. The ability to fix things almost instantaneously becomes a necessity to. We are the kind of people who never buy a new car. A new car seems like a luxury item on par with gated driveways and servant quarters, even when prices start at a reasonable 20k. We choose instead to drive used cars. Using our knowledge of cars and their underpinnings we sometimes pick out great buys, pay a decent but greatly depreciated price, and have a very good car for a fraction of the MSRP. I said sometimes, but what I meant was almost never. What we do instead is fill search engine inquiry boxes as if we just rose from a 50-year coma in which someone had whispered in our ear what a search engine is, but failed to mention that phones now cost what cars used to. “$4000 for a used VW? That’s what new Jaguars cost! I’ve got $350!”
And so for not very good reasons we drag home these hapless heaps that we drive using all sorts of peculiar processes and liberal application of bailing wire and silicone sealant. Sure we save some money; albeit seemingly not that much. But there’s something else that draws us back each time. Every time we have to pull over and crawl under these beasts of burden we curse and swear never again— but there is always an again. There is something very satisfying about being able to use something that cost such a fraction of everyone else’s with no sacrifice simply because you have a bit of knowledge and a bit of stupidity and the gumption to get your hands dirty. The roadside repair is a quickly dying art. It’s the application of the perfect ratio of hackery and technical knowledge. It’s knowing precisely where and how hard to hit something with a hammer. It reminds us that there was a time where your phone couldn’t give you every answer, and that people made stuff work with what they had. They got by. They survived.
Also, we just sort of like the misery. It adds so much drama to an otherwise mundane event such as driving to work. Or an interview that you really can’t be late to...again. When someone asks you about the drive, you have something actually interesting to talk about where most people just have the traffic as fodder. Which is not interesting. Ever. Unless you’re the one that caused it, when it became abundantly clear your low oil pressure was not a misbehaving gauge.
Now this brings me to the problem with all of this. These magic cars sometimes do need real work done to them. The kind where you remove the duct taped hoses and fix them for real with shiny, new hoses. And then spend your weekend replacing the headgasket that the duct taped hoses ruined. Now, you might be thinking “what’s so wrong with that? I thought you loved doing this kind of stuff, isn’t that just a fun weekend for you lot?” And yes, you would be right. Except we don’t want to be doing it to this car. And we might not want to be doing it this particular weekend. You see, we typically have what is called a “project car”— this is the car we want to be working on. This is the car where we show off our superhuman wrenching skills like a peacock its feathers. If you’re paying attention, this is also where all the money we save on our normal car ends up (Secret: we’re broke because this stuff is like crack to us). Because on this car, we do the fun stuff. We make it faster, or we make it look just like it did 40 years ago, or we make it useless. But either way, it’s FUN. And if we just want to come home Friday and watch Netflix while we get into the stupid half of 6 pack, we can! Because the project car doesn’t need to be finished by Monday morning. That’s the beauty of it. It’s rewarding leisure. It’s the difference between reading a book you really want to read, and having to read Nathaniel Hawthorne for homework.
So that’s the struggle. As much as you love those crapboxes, you eventually want your weekends back and to be able to arrive places on time and clean, like an adult. So you sell it for barely above scrap and try not to think of the horrors that might be in its future. You then take this small change pile, along with some of the money you had set aside for the project car, and buy a “real” car. And that’s how you find yourself stuck in traffic sometime down the road, in your own sterile environment, peering out the window at the derelict heap that caused this back up. “Damn,” you think to yourself, “that guy is going to have a way more interesting night than me.”
I’ll only be able to talk about the traffic.
Patrick Nichols
> Martin Edgington
12/16/2015 at 09:28 |
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Welcome Marty! Stay out of the basement...
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Patrick Nichols
> Martin Edgington
12/16/2015 at 09:28 |
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mmmmm naca duct....
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Martin Edgington
> Patrick Nichols
12/16/2015 at 10:45 |
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The NACA duct may or may not have influenced the entire purchase.
DrJohannVegas
> Martin Edgington
12/16/2015 at 11:02 |
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(In a group monotone) Hiiiiii Maarrrrty. (Hugs)
Chasaboo
> Martin Edgington
12/16/2015 at 14:01 |
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Dude, awesome post. I live in an apartment and own 5 cars I park on the street. Because of parking bans for street cleaning I have to map and move them accordingly each day. Yes, I have a problem.
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Martin Edgington
> Chasaboo
12/16/2015 at 21:20 |
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Thanks! I only have 2 street parked so my sweet sweeping dance is a little easier, I commend your effort.