Barbelith Underground > Conversation > What car do you drive?

Getting rid of my car about 6 years ago was the best thing I ever did, and was made possible by my living in the city. I love not having to worry about whether it will start in the morning or whether it will shit itself on the motorway or whether I will have an accident and get involved in some insurance fiasco. Of course this is because I have only owned old cars. And I must admit I have had some good times cruising along in my car with the sun shining and the stereo blaring (when it wasn’t chewing my tapes).

Cars have only ever been a mode of transport to me; I've never been "into" cars. What I miss about cars is that I would often like to drive off to the countryside to go walking in the mountains and I wish I had a car to be able to do so. And for the occasional trip to Ikea or wherever. But I much prefer hopping on a bus with a book then sitting in traffic. Plus I never looked after them, as the stories of my two cars will attest.

I washed them once a year max which in hindsight wasn't the best idea since the acid from lumps of bird shit ate away the paint and I ended up with big shrivelled spots all over the bonnet. I wasn't too bad with topping up oil and water because I had to be with such old shitboxes, and I changed the odd part when things fell off. Fortunately my dad was quite handy with such things (having fully restored a vintage car from a pile of rust in a paddock to a beautiful driveable saloon), so he helped me change some bits and save lots of money on services, etc. Without that help I would have no doubt chucked wads of cash down the drain which isn't so good when you're a penniless student.

My first car was a Mazda 929 which was about twenty years old. Worked fine on the whole and was dead cheap. And it was a sexy light brown colour, which became two tone when I had to replace a rusty door with a dark brown one I got from a scrap dealer. Sold that after a couple of years for the same price I bought it for. Result!

My second car was an Audi 100, which was more than twenty years old, thus was very cheap, but still running pretty well. It had a dodgy wheel joint that clunked every time I turned a corner but I still waited over a year to replace that. I went through a stage of many months where the thermostat didn't work so every time I got in and out of the car I had to open the bonnet and manually turn the engine fan on and off. I also had a long stint with a dodgy battery that had to be regularly jumpstarted and fiddled with. Problem being that in Audis the battery is under the back seat. Friends would be amused when they came to get a lift in my car only to find that the back seat was in pieces because I had got tired of putting it back together.

I persevered with this car for about 4-5 year and drove it into the ground. It suffered a great deal at my hands I'm afraid. One day when accosted by a giant spider while driving, I pulled over and proceeded to rip all the interior off the driver's door looking for the bugger. These bits went in the boot with other assorted flotsam.

I don't know how I kept passing rego but I did it somehow with the help of an eccentric mechanic who used to race cars in Britain. One day he asked me about uni and when I told him I was doing a class on ethics, he questioned the point of that. He then gestured to his dog in the corner and said: “If I want to fuck my dog and he appears to like it, who’s to say it’s right or wrong?”

I eventually got rid of this car at the age of about 24-5, and haven’t looked back. The fortune I save in registration and insurance can pay for plenty of taxis and hire cars when necessary.