On the way home from work this evening, I was listening to an episode of 'This American Life', a truly excellent podcast from the Public Broadcast System in Chicago which, each week, features stories from people centred on a particular topic. The subject of this podcast was cars.
The first short section began with a phone call that was recorded on a voicemail or answerphone. The message was something like "Hi. I'm calling you from my car. I am upside-down in a ditch and unable to release my seatbelt, so I guess I'll just have to wait for help to arrive. I have called 911 so the police should be here soon." The caller suddenly stopped detailing their predicament to announce, totally out of the blue, "I love my car." before resuming the previous narrative.
Afterwards, there followed an interview with the woman who had left the message. After a couple of other questions, the interviewer got around to addressing the question that anyone listening to the tape would have asked: why did you suddenly announce "I love my car"? The woman answered as if it was absolutely self-evident: she was, in effect, apologising to the car for putting it in this undignified position - upside-down in a ditch. She said that it had been the perfect car - never let her down, was exactly what she wanted in a car - and she realised at that moment that she would never again drive it.
Now, some listeners might have been thinking scornfully at this point "But it's just a car...". I, on the other hand, was reminded that I too have a strange emotional response to these mere pieces of machinery. Although it does not apply to every car I have owned, I have actually felt guilty when I part-exchanged or sold one or two of the cars I have owned. Definitely the Jaguar and the MGs (F and ZT) and possibly, although less strongly, some of the other cars I have had. I can still think of them and feel genuine regret that someone else is enjoying their company now. In fact, about a year ago, I was visiting a local hospital as part of my job and there, in the car park, about three spaces from where I had parked sat my old MG ZT. She looked exactly as she had done when I last saw her, around four or five years before. Again, there was that feeling of regret, but followed by a warm burst of happiness because she still looked good. It was like meeting an old friend or former lover and having memories and associated emotions avalanche down on you.
And that's the moral of the tale: most cars are just cars - things that take you from A to B with varying degrees of efficiency. They are merely acquaintances. But some cars - ah! - some cars are more than that. Some cars are soulmates, friends, lovers, the stuff of dreams or just so deeply embedded in our lives that they have become 'family'. Right now, I have a perfectly good, reliable and frugal car that makes the journey from A to B happen in reasonable comfort at a reasonably low cost. But - the big 'but' - perhaps I want unreasonable? Give me a car that guzzles the gas and doesn't give a damn. The car that costs £300 to fix a 25p bulb. The car that stirs the imagination a bit. In short, a car I can fall in love with.
