I drove a 4 year old Prius in Texas, and it fitted my needs for an economical reliable car which didn’t look out of place in our neighborhood. It was surprisingly well balanced and handled well if slowly in the corners, of which there were few nearby. The monotonous grid layout of streets only gave way once to a roundabout, and that was so poorly understood by general road users that going around it at the edge of your car’s grip was generally a bad idea. Well, a worse idea than normal.
Driving a hybrid did allow me into the smug owners club – the people who are saving the planet despite erroneous claims that the lifetime environmental impact of a Prius was larger than buying and operating a Hummer – thoughtfully debunked here. After happily leaving the smug owners club and moving to England, I was looking for a car, and a car fast. Not a fast car.
I enjoy studying and buying cars advertised on the internet. Buying from auctions. Getting the car I think I want at the time, until the weather or my whims change. Or from a private seller. For a good price. But there was no time for that, so I started to survey dealers for a cheap “gap” car – one that would allow me to drive to get a proper car later. It turns out that if you want to spend less than £1000 on a car, the dealer inventory is shockingly poor. I guess they have to build in some profit, so you’re buying a clapped out car they took in part exchange for a less knackered auto, maybe paying £4-500 for. They then put a price tag in the window park it out front and possibly clean up the dog puke inside and the monkey butt smears from the windshield when the last family were subject to a dirty protest at Woburn Safari Park.
Needless to say, the local inventory was disappointing. My uncle generously drove me around all of the discount used car places, and I began to despair. I was trying to strike a balance between “cheap”,”available” and “not too terrible”, and could only really satisfy the middle one. And the cars weren’t that cheap. I don’t mind spending a bit more money on something if it’s going to be decent, but even then it has to be “decent and something I will enjoy” and most importantly “reasonable value”. Value for money is something of a hang up for me – and it’s not something that they have in spades at car dealers. Even the ones who weren’t physically at their dealerships and that you had to call and wait for 20 minutes while they drove over there from their day jobs.
My uncle was a shrewd and patient observer of my reactions and finally realized that my value-seeking missile was getting put off by the rusty chaff thrown up around it. So we went to scrap yards, donned safety vests and asked if any of the scrapped vehicles would make a good runaround. And that’s where we found it. No tax. No MOT (the vehicle inspection in the UK) and no stories about careful lady owners from a thieving used car salesman. “Starts, runs” were scrawled on the windshield along with £475. We walked around it. A diesel Ford Focus Ghia with a tow bar that had driven enough miles on the odometer to indicate that it had been driven around the equator six times. Oceans and all judging by the rust on the door sills.
Still, we got to go into a cabin and buy the car from a middle aged man and his very senior and delightful mother for £459. I don’t know why it was less than the sticker price as it never occurred to me to haggle. I drove it around inside the scrap yard to prove that at least two forward gears and one reverse gear worked, and away it went to get a vehicle inspection and all the remedial work to allow it to pass said inspection.
A 1999 silver Ford Focus Ghia TD DI 1753 cc is now mine, and it has less power than my last motorbike.
I enjoy driving it as its cheap. It represents the epitome of value. I’m so green that I recycled a goddamn car. It’s not fast, but it starts and stops and goes around corners. And after it was cleaned and the excess farmyard was removed from the interior, it became quite pleasant. I removed the “Focus” badge, and put in on the mirror next to my computer, where it is constantly blurred and at the periphery of my vision. Because that kind of thing amuses me. (Not having a mirror by my monitor -that’s just a weird office situation.)
You know that half bald, chain-smoking psychotic toothless munter that you once dated after you broke up with someone you quite liked? That you suddenly wake up and think, “You’re not the partner I want to be with.” But then you don’t want to tell them or the world, as it shows how shallow and mean-spirited you are? My silver Ford Focus is like that. But even after all that, I still fall asleep watching YouTube videos of people replacing CV Axles on the Ford, dreaming about how I can cheaply make the car a better runner. Which, when you break it down doesn’t really translate to the rebound girlfriend idea. Maybe more like a faithful farting cat that I can’t have put down.