Behind The Wheel

Mrs. Wandering Gentile and I went car shopping a few weeks ago. I am growing despondent over the Pornstar's mediocre economy at US$1 per liter, or $3.789 per gallon, and we don't need to drag three extra seats over to Sonic when the hijastras (stepdaughters)and I get the urge for chili cheese tater tots.

Mrs. Wandering Gentile suggested that we purchase an SUV, until my face turned the color of a Coca-Cola can, and the vein on my forehead grew to the size of a normal python. I managed to avoid recreating the premise of the film Scanners, but barely. It is my fervent belief that most SUVs be delivered with a snarky letter from Osama Bin Laden, thanking the purchaser for supporting Al Qaeda, particularly for drivers who ride alone for twenty or thirty thousand miles per year.

SUVs have their purpose, particularly for large families and in harsh climates, or some combination of the two. The Wandering Gentile Household numbers four, with a missing man formation for Junior, who is being held in foreign exile by his mother. I am the only one over five feet (150cm) tall. We live in Atlanta, where if the weather justifies four-wheel-drive, it is sure indication that Apocalypse is nigh. I do not hunt, fish, or camp...my career requires regular exposure to the elements. When I recreate, I want cable, hot showers, and sheets that will not be laundered by me, my wife, or the hijastras.

An SUV that meets my standards for consumption would be akin to a Festiva wearing grips on its twelve-inch rims.

I offered the suggestion that my old Festiva, a/k/a the Mighty Matchbox Car, be returned to service in our household. Being that all of Mrs. Wandering Gentile's predecessors had ridden in that particular automobile, I learned that there are quite a few Spanish-language pejoratives regarding personal hygiene that I had heretofore not been aware of. Mrs. Wandering Gentile's estimation of the condition of the passenger seat proves to be a deal-breaker.

Now that I consider it, a 20-year-old hatchback, motivated (as much as can be divined) by a 58 horsepower engine, is a certain candidate for becoming a stain on Atlanta's anarchic expressway system. Mighty Matchbox Car or not, it makes me think of those pictures of multiple members of an Indian family headed to Mumbai on a 125cc scooter. It will make a good car for me to make my periodic trips between the house and the truck yard. I wouldn't risk the girls riding in it.

So we have dropped into the realm of a modest compact car, and, frankly, I want something new. I have driven used cars since 1982, and the idea of being the first person to make an impolite sound in the car does carry some enchantment.

Buy our car! Zero dollars down! Zero dollars a month! Everybody Rides! If you have a pulse we can get you financed! We'll give you ten thousand dollars in trade for your Pinto! Jack Schmitt Motors will go Lewinski on your dog! If we can't make a deal, you must be dead! No documentation of residence, employment, or assets required!

One cannot turn on a radio in Atlanta without being subjected to this happy (lower posterior orifice) in half a dozen languages, at a volume designed to provoke envy in lesser heavy metal bands. Hyundai, Kia, Suzuki, Ford, and Chevrolet dealers tend to be the worst offenders. The reality of this donkey show is that the purchaser is one of the stars, and the purchaser would be happier being an ass.

Of these, the actual car is at best a happy compromise of archaic technology, questionable build quality, and a dealership where service is second to digging out the Chinese socket set and performing the task in a car wash bay. The only acceptable product in the bunch is a Cobalt, and good luck finding a four-door stick shift. Hellooooo, MARTA, Atlanta's spectacularly inadequate public transit system, where one finds the other donkey show participants when they are unable to make the US$28,000 balloon payment at the end of zero dollars down, zero dollars a month.

Mitsubishi is ruled out for two reasons. One, I haven't forgiven them for manufacturing the Zero, the planes used to attack Pearl Harbor, 25 years before I was born. Two, at about 80,000 miles, Mitsubishi engines turn into the Marlboro Man, to wit, they have one horse and smoke.

Nothing says "I couldn't get financed on a Toyota," like a Nissan.

Speaking of Toyotas, I discovered that becoming a Corolla owner would require my head to ride in a box on the passenger seat, and one should keep their suggestions of double-entendre private. There was not a Toyota product that comfortably accomodated my nearly six-foot (181cm) body. This is due to the fact that I am built like a human Dachshund, therefore I am all torso and not much leg.

Hondas hate me, and the sentiment has become mutual. I spent six years running an emission station (Smog Check for our West Coast Reader), and it got so bad that my assistant used to warn Honda owners. "Do not let him touch your car. It will die. He has a bad mojo." I am a 50-50 chance of survival with an Accord, certain death to a Civic. Guess which one comes closest to my idea of my needs. That and the fact that the Civic's dash seems to be modeled on a design for the Enterprise's helm that Paramount rejected as "totally bizarre," in 1966.

Volkswagen Rabbits are neat little cars, but every VW I have ever owned has been posessed by the decrepit spirit of an infernal Nazi for whom I could never have sufficient foreskin.

So we arrive at the runner-up, the Mazda 3. It rides on the same chassis as the European Ford Focus and the little bitty Volvo. The engine is good, and the resale is terrific. I actually went to the Mazda dealer first, because there is a compelling argument for this choice, and it serves as a lesson that the agency's treatment of me as a potential customer has moved this totally worthy car to second place.

I asked for literature on the 3, and Mrs. Wandering Gentile immediately spied their small SUV. If I could tolerate any SUV, that one would be a top finisher, despite its resemblance to a '71 Torino wagon in my eyes. It is unavailable with a manual transmission, which is the first drawback, and it was about US$11,000 more than the base Mazda sedan I was interested in.

The salesman took his merry time in finding literature, all the while telling me how well I seemed suited to the SUV. I felt like I was being offered a leather boy outfit and purple sequined pumps to wear to Mass. Note to all Mazda Dealers: if someone asks you for a catalogue on the Mazda 3, and asks about a stickshift specifically, you stand approximately zero chance of pushing the guy into an SUV without freaking asking him if he likes SUVs, first.

I sent him on a wild goose chase to find a stckshift on the back lot, got in the Pornstar, and found my other candidate for purchase. Mrs Wandering Gentile, the hijastras and I went to the Saturn dealership around the corner, and it will be a blizzard in Miami before I return to that Mazda dealer.

The Saturn Astra turned up on my radar when the plan to import it was announced. This goes to a loyalty to marque held for forty years; we were an Opel family. Dad owned three, and I have owned five. Dad abandoned GM for Ford when the Opel 1900 was dropped in 1975, and the Opel Isuzu replaced it. From 1966 to 1975, we primarily owned Opels.

When I bought my first car, it was a 1966 Opel, and they were the great beaters of all time. GM treated their European division like an illegitimate, red-headed, biracial step-child in the south during Jim Crow. The sad part was that Opels were and are neat little cars, sort of a Sam's Choice German Car. They worked well, but parts were scarce and service nonexistent. Hence a Mazda seeming to be a good idea.

I drove it and discovered that I would have known what kind of car it was blindfolded. I fit. The back seat looked like it came out of an Impala. And it drove like a generic German car. The dealership was courteous, even when I tried to check how well I fit in the Sky roadster, and it took three service technicians, 22 pounds (10 kg) of Crisco, and a Shaquille O'Neal edition shoe horn to get me back out.

It appears that there is an Astra in my future, and I can even get it with a stick shift.

My ride is here.