Wheels

[prawnwarp]

I'm shopping around for a new car. My current car is twenty this year, so "new" to me means something made this century. It's probably going to be a secondhand fleet sales Corolla with a year left on the warranty: something smallish but with a little room for expansion, since I want it to last till the girls are all in their teens

Comments

[ataxi]

I don't like cars much. Like computers, they're such jury-rigged, patched devices even when new. Useful things though.

I also detest Jeremy Clarkson - but for some reason Top Gear exerts a strange attraction on me. It's a bit like reading The Australian - I get a little shudder of revulsion every time he has a crack at environmentalists.

I find it humourously contradictory that you hate cars but have such affection for freeways. But then it occurs that empty freeways are a soothing vision.

[prawnwarp]

It's not cars per se that get me going. They are very useful, especially when trying to shift three kids around, and my shared custody arrangements would be a lot more clunky without a car.

And driving on freeways is a lot of fun; even driving around the city has its satisfactions. I'm actually really looking forward for ditching my old banger for something more comfortable and reliable.

It's the culture surrounding them that gets me riled. Next to houses, cars are about the most expensive things most people purchase - yet the media surrounding them seems to base its judgements on the attitude of a 16 year old idiot. I find this especially vexing in its bourgeois forms, like Fairfax's Drive, which feels to me like a perpetual mid-life crisis, always going on about values ("sportiness" and "performance") which most people, let's face it, can't afford to care about.

I can even understand the appeal of Top Gear; it's a form of fantasy and probably acts as a release valve of some kind. My distaste for it is visceral - I've never

[ataxi]

Fair enough on the distinction between cars and "car culture".

My coping mechanism when it comes to Australian car culture is to mutter obscenities under my breath every time someone guns it past me in what I refer to as a "penis ute", especially if lives are endangered in the process.

Top Gear's not a great show by any means, nor politically sound, but it doesn't evoke a neurotoxin-ish response in me (and there's plenty of TV around that does - sitcoms, commercial current affairs, lifestyle shows, etcetera).

[frogworth]

and I'm gradually accepting the fact that I'm the only male human being on the planet who feels this way.

Hello! *waves* Me over here!
(Actually, I've never seen it, because basically TV culture makes me cringe in general, although last year with Timmy from the Chaser on it, Big Brother exuded a kind of fascinated dread that I sortof enjoyed... But I can imagine I would feel the same way as you do about Top Gear.
In 2004 when I went on an overseas trip, I was utterly horrified when we entered the USA and go on our American airline (not sure which one) to cross the continent, and every fucking free magazine in the pocket in front of me (and there were a few!) was basically automobile porn. It's absolutely disgraceful.)

[prawnwarp]

Good to hear.

What I found jarring was the number of people I have known for years, decent men whose opinions and values I respect and share, who when I complained about Top Gear went "oh really? I think it's really funny" and then explained some segment which they found to be full of wit and humour.

I'm consoling myself by imagining that this is a baroque and decadent final flowering of car culture before it all gets washed away by peak oil and the greenhouse effect. Those grotesquely chunky modern 4WDs, Hummers, Top Gear and even the Pixar film Cars are for the car what the court of Louis XIV was to the French monarchy.

[frogworth]

Yeah, let them eat cake!
(er... I think I stretched your analogy till it broke, but anyway...)

[prawnwarp]

Après moi, le deluge!