[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img] My car is a middle-aged seven. While repairs don’t yet exceed my former car payments, the costs are creeping up. A thousand here for tires and brakes, several hundred times four to fix failing window motors . . .
Yes, I’m ready for a new car.
I'll even admit that I've been dazzled by cars that start with the keys in your pocket and full color navigation systems, not to mention being able to plug my mp3 player into the sound system.
One car I have seen even has a hard drive where I could upload permanent content. A hard drive in your car. Now that’s the best of both worlds.
The test drives have been fun, tooling down broad Los Angeles boulevards in a vehicle reeking of that new car smell.
Look What I Am Building
My new part-time hobby is building cars online, vowing to get all the bells and whistles I could never afford in the past. With a few clicks, I can have colored leather, motorized seats and elaborate computer systems that measure every conceivable input and output.
For many weekends, I’ve stood in new car lots peering into car windows, wishing and wanting. But each and every time, one thing stops me. Sticker shock. But it’s not the price. It’s the gas mileage.
I’ve had only three cars in my life, two hand-me-downs and my current car, the first I ever purchased. Each car has had worse gas mileage than the last.
My first car, a super compact 1982 Japanese sedan, averaged about 30 miles to the gallon. That worked out great because I never had any money for gas even when it was less than a dollar a gallon. The car did the job. Though I will admit its small one-point-five liter engine struggled over the New England and upstate New York hills in college and graduate school.
Another Step…Down?
My next car, a bigger Japanese sedan, averaged about 25 miles per gallon. It was less than my first, but on the whole not bad. It had a bigger engine, and I was able to merge into traffic with a zip-zip rather than a putt- putt.
Although I like to think I have environmental leanings, (I do recycle everything I can't compost, and I conserve water zealously), good gas mileage was not the first thought on my mind when I bought my car seven years ago.
I had just moved to California, the land where car is king, and safety was foremost on my mind.
I needed strong armor to battle six-lane freeways and tank-sized sport utility vehicles. My old standby – the Japanese sedan – wouldn't do.
Safety, it seemed, was not their number one concern. Could I have anti-lock brakes or stability control? No and no, the dealers, told me over and over.
So off to the German car dealer I went.
Look at That Average
Did I get good brakes and a strong frame? Yes. But it came at a price: fifteen point three. That's how many miles per gallon my car averages between fill ups. I have a large six-cylinder engine and bad gas mileage.
I imagined I would get better mileage if I could drive more than 20 or 30 miles an hour on the freeway, but at rush hour on the Hollywood or Santa Monica freeways, it rarely happens. The rest of the time, I drive on the streets, stopping frequently, and patiently waiting for Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa's promised signal- light synchronization.
In the last few years, car engines have become even larger, and good gas mileage is in the toilet. I had resigned myself in the last few months to the fact that safety and fuel economy do not go hand in hand, and then came my last trip to Europe.
What a Difference
For the first time, while sightseeing, I also paid attention to the cars.
What kind of cars did people drive who pay upwards of ten dollars a gallon? The answer: fuel-efficient ones, for the most part. I saw tiny Mercedes, Fiats, Citroens, and BMWs. Little Volkswagens danced before my eyes.
I filled up my rental car once in three weeks of traversing an entire country. (I know, European countries are small, but this was at least the size of Indiana.)
When I landed home, before I even unpacked, I ran to my computer and perused manufacturers’ websites to find the cars I’d seen. And there they were, in blazing color. I could spin them 360 degrees and customize them to my hearts content. I just couldn’t buy them.
So Much for Capitalism
In article after article, manufacturer after manufacturer said the same thing. These cars weren’t marketable in the United States. They have concluded, in a snub to true capitalism, that we Americans like our big gas-guzzlers, period, end of story.
No point to letting the free market allow us marry our desires with the available goods.
Okay, I thought, frustrated, but resigned, maybe I can buy a hybrid of one of the models I’d test driven months ago.
My conclusion . . . maybe.
Hybrids of these cars might be built somewhere between 2010 and never, depending on which car you like.
Age has taught me that wanting and having are two completely different things. I may never be able to have everything I want in a car, bells, whistles, safety and fuel economy. For now, I’ll keep my car until I have a repair bill that boggles the mind and the wallet.
I’m hoping in the near future, I can have everything I want and not have to compromise one for the other, but I doubt it.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
