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Old 06-15-2004, 10:58 AM
Carrameow Carrameow is offline
Coming back from burnout
 
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: in the Pacific Northwest
Posts: 2,274
Face it, its Dumb to love a Car..

Or is it?
A car is just another consumer appliance, a box with 5 chairs and four round things, a distant cousin to other things we urgently need in everyday life, like a water heater, washing machine, lawnmower, television or microwave oven. Try going through life without a gas furnace or a coffee machine. I would rather take a warm shower and I need my Java and use public transportation or a taxi (uhh, just kidding.... )
There are billions of these things called cars out there on the highways, all doing the same boring things, going to the supermarket, sitting in a traffic jam at rush hour, (Ever see a Corvette sitting in a traffic jam? Don’t you love it?) or waiting in the drive-through at McDonalds. At the end of its lifespan, a car ends up just as ingloriously as a refrigerator—sitting at the curb with its parts stripped.
Wait a minute! Its not Dumb to Love a Car.This is the truth!
I. The Car as our Horse. Last autumn I took a two-week trip from New Jersey to Canada in my trusty 240D with the engine and transmission I rebuilt. The 240D faithfully carried me through windstorm and hailstorm and even snowstorm, its toasty heater filling my heart with warm cheer and the feeling of safety in the freezing Canadian autumn. I slept in the Car at rest stops, keeping the motor running for heat, and charged my cell phone, electric shaver and Laptop from its power supply. The radio sent me everything from the news, to adrenaline pounding rock and roll, to spirit lifting pop when I felt lonely. It kept my coffee warm. The Diesel never missed a tick, its every revolution as vital to my Life as my heart. At the end of that trip I knew why a Cowboy loved his Horse. I felt closer to my Car than a lot of my coworkers, and I certainly trust it a lot more (which is understandable).
II. Mercedes Craftsmanship. A Mercedes isn’t a car. It’s Grand Piano with an engine, a terrific piece of engineering that has the share the roads with bean shaped econo-boxes and vulgar Lexii. It’s a Rolex, or a Hoover Dam, a true engineering symphony that happens to share the asphalt with common cars. One month I sheepishly calculated I spent more hours on my car, tweaking this, adjusting that, than I spent with my daughter. I washed it twice a week and waxed it. Every time I look at that Diesel, I think more in terms of a Spitfire airplane than a common car engine. My Mercedes makes me fee like Phineas Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or Doctor Porsche, not the guy who sits in one of the billion cubicles of the world..
III. Fantasy Machine. My Mercedes has taken me (albeit slowly) from Times Square to San Francisco. Most likely it will take me to the supermarket or Walmart, but nevertheless, the possibility exists that on the next trip to Home Depot, the mood will strike and I will take a different exit on the turnpike and head straight to Alaska, take the ferry across the Bering Straits, and head from Russia to China to Paris. Or perhaps to Mexico right down to Argentina. And only my Mercedes Diesel could survive such a trip. I know where every bolt and wire and rubber line leads and what its doing on a particular engine revolution.
IV. Sentimental memories: This was the car my 10 year daughter old snuck out and drove five nights in a row, parking it 180 degrees about face each time, before I caught on. This is the car I met my wife in. Its the car I drove when I landed my present job..The list goes on and on..

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