BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Conversation >

My automobile is a little red spaceship and very girly and I'm okay with that

  
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
15:46 / 01.12.04
Just about every car I've ever called "mine" has been handed down by either a sibling or a dead grandmother, so I've never had much choice about what I drive. Which is okay, really. It seemed like a waste of money to buy a car when there were others around for the taking.

My current automobile is a maroon 2001 Mercury Cougar, handed down (or is it "up"?) from my little sister. She recieved my mother's old Volvo when my mother upgraded. Many people ask me, "Johnny, as the older child, why didn't YOU get the Volvo, which is sweet as hell?". Because I would have undoubtably filled it with trash and dirt, as I have the Cougar, which again shows that my family has much better foresight than I give them credit for.

The Cougar is (for those of you unfamiliar with American cars) basically a remodeled Ford Probe, a small sporty thing. Same engine (fuel injected V6), very similar frame, same stats. Two doors, kinda quick once it gets going, perfectly acceptable stock CD player, sun roof.

I (and many others) call it a girl's car because all the people I see driving them are young, mostly high-school age women (like my sister, when it was given to her by my parents). I've seen one or two other guys driving this model of Cougar, and they looked ashamed. Embarrassed to be driving a highschool girl's car.

Bah! Fuck 'em. I was a little cautious at first too, mostly because the thing smelled like young women and had a dolphin hanging from the rearview mirror. But I swallowed my pride and you know what? I like my girly little car. It looks like a spaceship. All the gauges are circular and look like dial readouts you would find in a cockpit. Everything is electric, so there's lots of switches and buttons and levers and shit to press or pull or flip. Very space-age. And it goes from 50 to 120 mph much faster and smoother than anyone would think just by looking at it. So what if the blind spot is a mile wide and the ass is so big it tends to swing a bit when it rains. That's character, that is.

So maybe I do drive a girl's car, and that's okay. I didn't have to buy the thing, and the only thing I miss about my last car (a giant SUV) is driving over stuff like traffic cones and those orange barrles with the blinking lights on top. That was a lot of fun. But the cougar is much faster, so I'm not losing much in the visceral pleasure part.
 
 
ibis the being
15:59 / 01.12.04
Well, I drive a man's car. A poverty-stricken man. My "car" is a 14-year-old white Chevy Astrovan, formerly an Adelphia cable truck, now my work truck. I bought it for $700 but it is surely worth less than that.

All of the door handles are in bad shape, but after I lent it to my bf one day, he brought it back with NO passenger door handle. The back door handles came broken, and must be opened from the inside by pulling hard & downward on a clump of wire. Opening the side sliding door is a two-handed affair, pulling on the handle with your right and pulling the back or top of the door with your left.

It has a bench seat that doesn't come out or even fold down. It has an odd pop-up sunroofish thing that never fully shuts. Recently I discovered that because it won't seal, in cold weather a whole mess of condensation collects on the metal roof over the back of the van.

That doesn't happen in the cab area because the roof is CARPETED! Ooh la la! I have a red switch on the dash that seems to do nothing, but may be related to the switch on the pop-up which creates a DEAFENING chainsaw sound that I think is a fan of some sort. The left blinker doesn't go off after you turn, but must be wrenched back. I have a factory AM/FM radio with four whole preset station buttons!

The whole van used to shake over 35 mph until I got the U-joint fixed. Now it just vibrates a little over 45 mph. Also, I think the brakes might be going. One of the nice features of the Astrovan model, you'd like to know, is that the engine is recessed, so that any repair under the hood requires removing the whole center console inside the cab.

On the outside, it's simply lovely. The roof sports some large patches of rust. It doesn't go more than 10 inches at a stretch without some kind of scratch or dent.

Now THAT's character, I tell ya.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:09 / 01.12.04
Mmmm. Makes me miss my first automobile, a ford Aerostar. Big tan family van! Complete with steering wheel that got sticky whenever the sun hit it. Felt like you were going sixty at 30 mph.
 
 
charrellz
16:11 / 01.12.04
After my Ford Ranger was brutally murdered by a Ford Excursion, I ended up with my mom's Explorer when she got a new car. It has had several names over the year or so I've had it, beginning with The PlumMobile, because, well, it's plum (not purple, because fruit names make it less gay, right?). Then the inside handles on both backdoors broke at about the same time as some rope, duct tape, jumper cables, and gloves showed up in the back end, so it was soon renamed The RapeMobile. Eventually the two were combined to The Plum Rapist.

I think the trick really is to embrace the girly-ness of your vehicle, and deny it whole-heartedly at the same time. Mostly it's just fun to drive a soccer mom type car like a drunk bat-outta-hell, particularly when the damn thing can barely do 75mph on a good day.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:28 / 01.12.04
Embrace the girly-ness I SHALL! Deny it I SHAN'T! Hell, I get mistaken for a woman fairly often anyway. I had to grow a beard to cut down on the "Ma'am, I was wondering if...oh shit, sorry dude". It's the long hair and pretty face, I'm sure.
 
 
Sekhmet
16:54 / 01.12.04
My car is a cute, older model ('89) convertible Toyota Celica, white with black ragtop. It gets great gas mileage and is lots of fun to drive. Its name is Selina.

However, Selina is about to be towed away to Goodwill for a tax writeoff. Selina has had a big hole in her roof and a busted back window for many years now, courtesy of some Halloween prankster with a pocketknife and a bottle bomb. Replacing the roof would cost more than the car is worth, and it has electrical problems because of getting rained in, and now her brakes have gone out. (The A/C doesn't work either, but that generally wasn't an issue since I kept the top down.)

Fixing all the problems would cost about five times what I'm willing and able to pay, and since I ride the bus to work there's really no reason to keep her anyway. She's a spare car who has outlived her usefulness, sad to say.

I'll miss her. She was a good little car.

(*salutes*)
 
 
Cheap. Easy. Cruel.
18:49 / 01.12.04
I have driven one of those Cougars, they are fun little cars. I would drive one proudly and anyone who says it is girly can be damned. I had one of the previous body style Cougars, back when they were still rear-wheel drive. It was a beast of a car, but very fun. Big car ride, yet still sporty.

After my Cougar met an ignominous end at the bottom of a 20ft drop-off, I bought the Ranger I drive now. It could use repainting, has a few dents and dings, but overall is great transportation. It has hauled everything I have ever needed to, and is incredibly reliable. So in that respect, I would say it is just like me.

I am considering getting an early 90's BMW 5-series that a friend of mine has for sale as a primary driver and leaving the truck for weekend projects. I am just a bit worried about the cost of parts should the Beamer break down.
 
 
Olulabelle
22:37 / 01.12.04
My car is a silver new VW Beetle and I own it only because I was left some money in my Father's will. It's very fast and has all sorts of cool things like a 5 CD changer, and a sun roof and alloy wheels. It makes me happy because I drive up and down the country lots at the moment so at least I get to arrive at the place I am going to fairly quickly, and can listen to good music as I drive. Also, up until I bought it I only really had had beat up old cars with a tendency to break down in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, so I love the feeling of security it gives me.

What fucks me off royally, however, is the fact that people make snide comments about it. Like this:

People at work in the car park in the morning: "Oh, they're obviously paying you far too much."

Me: "No, they're not actually. They pay me fuck all since my wages are charity funded. This car is entirely the result of my father dying. Is your father dead? No? Lucky you."

At which point I storm off muttering, "Daddy or car? Daddy or car?"*

But how annoying is that? I mean I might just be a super good saver. Or something.

*This is a joke which only the British will understand, based on an advert where a little girl has to chose between 'Daddy' or 'Chips.' I believe we've talked about it before somewhere.
 
 
Grey Area
09:22 / 02.12.04
I drive a silver Toyota Yaris, which I call The Anonymobile due to it's ability to hide amongst the thousands of other Toyota Yaris' (Yarii?) that fill the carparks here. The designers must have watched a lot of Dr. Who, because the thing's a tardis on wheels. Looks dinky from the outside, turns into a cavern on the inside. It gets 45mpg on a motorway, nearly 60mpg in town, and has a devil-duck hanging from the rear-view mirror. How do I relate to my car? I feed it and brush it and buy it new chew toys every now and then (wipers, tires, clutches...it's just gotten some new shocks to play fetch with too). In exchange it gets me from A to B with a minimum of fuss. It's like a puppy. A two-ton, metallic silver puppy with a 998cc engine.
 
  
Add Your Reply