I often wonder whether younger drivers today will ever discover the joy of owning a troublesome old car.
Something that needs a punch to the dash to start, like an old Land Rover I used to own.
It’s more than an appliance.
Having a car that has problems gives it a human characteristic that allows people to see them like a person.
A computer that never breaks is hardly viewed with a personality because of its perfection in design, but when you’ve got to ‘talk’ to your car, spend time with it and look after it, you we develop a relationship with it.
We see them as an extension of our personality.
“Hey, can I borrow your car?”
“Sure, if I can borrow your wife.”
It’s almost as if car guys sometimes wait for their cars to go wrong in anticipation of the exciting hours spent in the garage and away from the kids, for example.
I know most younger drivers today have no clue what they’re looking at if they open the bonnet of their car and, to an extent, I don’t blame them as manufacturers of modern cars deliberately make them difficult to get into and work on.
Instead of an engine, one sees a sealed unit, often with a large black ‘cover’ to hide any unsightly pulleys, pumps or pipes.
I remember having a 1972 Ford F100 which had an engine bay so large, I could actually stand inside it while working on its inline, six-cylinder, 4.1 litre engine.
Sure, I didn’t have any luxuries like an air-conditioner or power steering, and there certainly wasn’t a gauge telling me the temperature outside or what song was playing.
Instead, I had a massive dial against the horizontally sliding speedo telling me the oil pressure.
While most modern cars are built to a superior level of quality, you have probably noticed that yours might not even have a water temperature gauge.
Instead, a light might come on telling you the engine is getting too hot, but the trouble is that while you didn’t know the temperature was rising in the first place, internal engine components have already been damaged.
It is a bit like when people say that you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated.
The problem that faces young drivers today is that we treat cars like appliances: paying the earth for them, being unable to repair them when they do go wrong, and we simply trade them in or buy a new one.
I am sure we could save a lot of environmental pressure by simply keeping our old cars going, but the consumerism that fuels the modern car industry deliberately shuts us out.
I pity the generation of new car owners.
But then again, modern cars don’t have mood swings like old cars do.
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