The Car is Dead/Long Live the (Next) Car

You work (or worked) a line? Cool ... I love stuff like that.

Between journalism and academia, I was a tool-and-die maker (had done it in my grandfather’s/father’s small shop growing up). There’s a shop just up the way, I’ve often thought about going in there and saying, “I want to work here part time. You can pay me (relatively small amount) an hour, I just want to do this a little bit to bring back some old memories.”

 

Honda CRV. Tons of used ones, circa 2009-11, available. We bought my son one with 165K miles on it in 2014. Still going great, with regular maintenance, almost to 200,000.

 

I hope your autobiography will be called No Bells And Whistles: The @SpeedTchr Story.

 

I should have recorded the donnybrook I had with the last salesman about wanting roll-down windows instead of electric. Fuckers didn't offer them, and I almost walked. But, I had already given away my previous vehicle to someone needy, and I wasn't about to start walking places.

 

No, you should have stomped out on those fuckers. Because 1962.

 

I totally agree with you on this. The only advantage of power windows is that you can open windows other than your own from your seat. But to me, it's just one more thing that can go wrong. I like a stripped-down vehicle, like the one Steve Martin describes in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: four fucking wheels and a seat.

 

We have one car with a power back window we had to basically seal shut because the repair is too expensive for a window we rarely use.

We have another car with a power front window that you have to almost break your finger pulling back on the switch before it engages to raise the window.

Wish I could snap my fingers and just make them both the roll-down kind.

 

Plus you can get out if you go off a bridge.

 

I'd be interested in seeing a comparison in the failure rates for each.

Have to say that way back when, crank windows broke pretty frequently. Mostly by coming off the track. The fix was likely cheaper, but not necessarily simpler.

And the inconvenience was identical.

 

Funny you mention this, because it is kind of the reason I want roll-down windows. Years ago in one of my former areas of residence, a grocery executive took a wrong turn in the dark and drove his luxury car (with electric windows, before they were common), with family inside, down a boat ramp and into the lake. None of them made it out.