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Jewish World Review August 26, 2005 / 21 Av, 5765 Million mile drive By Gene Weingarten
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I am test-driving a used car on a suburban Virginia road so choked with chain stores they seem to smoosh together: BurgerLube, Next Day Chicken, TGIFried Depot, Taco Discounters.
The car is an ordinary two-door 1994 Honda Accord EX. Its color is so cheerless and nondescript.
I cannot actually think of an adjective to describe it. Call it bleen — a grumpy blue-green. If there were a guy named Gloomy Gus and he were pushing an old stick in the mud while wearing a wet blanket, the blanket would be the color of this car.
In short, I should be bored. But I am not. I am scared — terrified of damaging an irreplaceable object. I am moving up through the gears gingerly, with tentative little underpowered girly shifts, worried that this car might at any minute simply liquefy, oozing into the pavement like a scoop of Jell-O plopped onto a hot skillet.
The odometer says 687,179.
Can this possibly be right? No, says Buck, it isn't. Buck Howard, who is sitting beside me, is a salesman from Hendrick Honda in Woodbridge, which recently bought the car from its previous owner and plans to display it. The odometer is all wrong, Buck says, and I should pay it no mind.
Whew.
This is the car's second odometer, Buck explains. The first one pooped out at 394,203 miles, and had to be replaced. In total, this car has been driven 1,081,382 miles.
I take the next corner at the speed of continental drift.
Calling this car "used" is an inexcusable understatement, like calling the Third Reich "rude." Other cars — several Mercedeses and at least one Volvo — have achieved a million miles, but it is unlikely that any car, anywhere, has ever done it so fast.
I've always been fascinated by really old things that still work. I repair antique clocks. I bought a 120-year-old home. I love my wife. (Just kidding, doll. Hahahaha. Ow.)
The fact is, while others read the car pages to fantasize about owning the new Jaguar XK8, I am squinting through the classifieds to see how cheaply one might obtain a 1986 Tercel that "runs good." To me, age confers both dignity and eccentricity, and I value both.
So I had high hopes for my test drive. I figured it would be a ride through picturesque countryside in a vehicle made all the more charming by quirky habits and ghostly rumbles. Instead I get this blandly competent car, performing perfectly nicely with nary a shimmy or shudder, as we drive past Linens n' Brew.
I figured maybe the colorful story is in the car's maintenance. I asked Craig King, the mechanic from Hendrick Honda who held this thing together, to disclose the secret of its longevity.
Craig spoke for a while and said a lot of technical things, but it seems to boil down to this: To keep a car running forever, you have to keep it running, forever. Constant driving, said Craig, "keeps the contaminants in solution." The million-mile Honda is still on its first muffler. It has averaged 130,000 miles a year.
Who drove this thing — the national Slurpee tester for 7-Eleven?
If only the truth were that scintillating.
David Witte, of Timonium, is a self-employed "route mapper." His job is to plot time, cost and distance estimates for road routes to be taken by couriers and delivery persons employed by large corporations. Yes, you can make a living at it. Yes, it means driving all the time.
"I lived in the car," Witte told me. "I ate in the car. I took naps in the car."
Anything quirky or interesting happen during all those miles?
"Not really."
Does he have any special secrets to pass on to the car-buying world?
"Castrol Syntec." This is apparently an engine oil. It's good?
"If you're always driving, it keeps your gaskets supple."
Noted.
Is he proud of his accomplishment? He said yes, but there was a moment's hesitation. Witte stressed that he's going to college now to get into a new career: "Driving around in a car all day doesn't gain you a whole lot of respect."
I know what he means. My test-drive was an anticlimax, too. If there is a lesson here, it may be this: In cars as well as life, perfection comes at a cost. Who wants to live forever? If you live forever, you don't fear death. If you don't fear death, you can't love life.
Hey, I'm no philosopher. I'm just a guy who likes old things and hates uniformity. I returned the world's most perfect car to its showroom and headed on home, a little sadder but a little wiser, past Mattress, Pets n' Beyond.
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