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The Zombie Car Phenomenon
Several years ago, while I waited on the curb at the San Diego airport watching traffic flow by, I noticed something about the cars. They were different from the local vehicles in Northwest Montana, and although I’d lived in San Diego for 20 years, I had never made the connection. It wasn’t just the obvious preference for SUV’s and Subarus in the rugged north—no, it was something else, too. The city vehicles were shiny and updated. Many of them looked high-end. I thought of the beaters I often spotted in my Montana town—the ’80s sedans, the classic trucks, and the boxy early style of Subaru—and it made me realize the degree to which residents of my town make do with what they have. I was proud to be one of them.
In recent months, this trend toward junky vehicles seems to have gotten worse—or better, however you choose to look at it. Before I explain, however, I have to admit that my own little red car has its own issues. I will remove the log from my own eye first. This is a beloved vehicle that won’t quit, even though we’re at 198,000 miles. Each blemish tells a story. The longish dent on the driver’s side—that was a tangle with a tall stand of bamboo at the side of our driveway when we were in San Diego. My husband could not understand how I did that, as I had backed down our long, steep driveway a couple thousand times by then. I could understand, because I had backed down that impossible driveway two thousand times without incident, and it was only a matter of time before it got me, especially now that there was a giant, unforgiving stand of bamboo to complicate things.
Similarly, the dust-up with the deer happened because it had to, because a decade had gone by with no incidents in a landscape dense with these thick creatures (or thick with these dense creatures, if you prefer). My daughter and I were deep in an interesting discussion when she said, “Mom, deer!” By the time my brain processed the emergency, it was too late to stop. I had, however, slowed down enough to give a witless, fleeing animal a good bump with the front of the car and a quick but frenzied backward sprint when she got caught on my side mirror for a few moments. To my relief, she and her compatriots then dashed off into the woods and there was no need to bring anyone back to the site with a gun. The encounter had left a visible dent, however. Later, a friend helpfully brought attention to it by inscribing “Bambi” in the layer of dust coating my car.
Even with its dents, dimples, and rusted out spots, my vehicle does not yet resemble what I would call a “zombie car.” Zombie cars are vehicles still in service that are so badly damaged they look uncannily like animated car corpses. An obviously totaled vehicle will swing by in the turn lane, with damage so telling that one could do an accurate play-by-play of the accident, and the visceral reaction is “Whoa!”
I understand not taking one’s car to the body shop after being creamed in an intersection. One, it’s expensive. It makes more sense financially to just drive your older car into the ground. Not only are your insurance rates stable, but your permanent registration is still working for you. Two, body shops are pricey. No matter what the problem is, no matter how subtle the damage, the employees always announce that they have to order the whole piece from the manufacturer, and that item always costs healthy percentage of the car’s current value. (I’ve experienced when they opted to not order the piece, when a teenager hit our parked car and was liable. I learned that it’s best to believe what they say and let them order away. In this case, someone at the body shop had whaled away on our panel with a hammer and then painted over that, leaving a mass of stipples. It gave me the heebie-jeebies.) Three, it costs a lot to have your car fixed, and it’s not a sensible expense given how brutal this area is on vehicles—potholes, dirt roads, salt, filthy slush, and impatient drivers at intersections all take their toll. It’s better to pay the rent than maintain a sleek, gleaming car.
Other mutilations I’ve noted lately: gaping, sightless holes where headlights should be, missing back windows crisscrossed with duct tape, a hood (and possibly the whole left front of the vehicle) secured with a rope. Cars go nonchalantly by with driver-side doors caved in, whole sections hideously ripped off, mangled bumpers. Rope, tape, tarp, and other materials at hand are pressed into service to make the thing driveable as soon as possible. My favorite fix is on a small, grey car that just happens to be in our church parking lot every day. Apparently, the front and back bumpers were having a problem severe enough to necessitate the use of black zip-ties as stitches. There are small series of them, front and back, in a careful ‘X’-shaped pattern. One can’t help but appreciate the resourcefulness of whoever saw fit to do this. And he did a nice job.*
I know our area has come a long way since the ’80s, when more families subsisted on venison, and residents had to drive all the way to Missoula for Easter dresses. That’s what I’ve heard from native Montanans, anyway. Now our town offers Costco, Target, REI, many grocery stores, chic shops, a grand movie theater, chain restaurants, quiet planned neighborhoods, multi-million-dollar estates, Internet everywhere—almost anything you could get in urban California. But the sordid state of our region’s vehicles show that perhaps Montanans haven’t changed all that much. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
* Not to be sexist, but of course it was a “he.”
Published in Humor
“Although deer have phenomenal sense of hearing, their sense of sight isn’t the best. To put it bluntly, if they were humans, they would need to wear glasses.”
This entire discussion reminds me of the collection of beaters they always have on the Red Green show.
Are there no prisons? Are there no inspection stations?
This is what Ricochet needs, more posts about cars. Well done, Sawatdeeka.
Okay, I was driving a red car at the time, not the T-Bird. If they can’t see red very well, once the car stopped moving, the doe may not have seen it.
I did get nervous once when we stopped for dinner while traveling, and as I got out of our car noticed that the car a couple of spaces down had multiple bullet holes in it. What kind of neighborhood were we in?
The one I lived in for several years in Pittsburgh?
Montana sounds a lot like Alaska, including the permanent registration (provided you live in the right borough). I noticed the difference in vehicles when I was in Seattle last year, the first time I had been down to the lower 48 in many years. No deer here though, but I did have a moose run into my car this winter. Fortunately no damage to either.
How can a moose run into your car without causing damage, while the whitetail deer around here cause thousands of dollars worth of damage with the slightest touch?
Damage is in the eye of the beholder?
A cow moose with a calf ran across the road in front of me. I braked hard and missed the cow but the calf following ran into the rear quarter panel. It made a horrible sound but the calf ran off and when I checked my car the only evidence of the encounter was a smudge in the road grime. So chalk it up to the fact that it was a smaller moose and I was almost stopped.
I once hit a deer with no detectable damage to the car, only to notice the dent a few months later. It was a black car and the indentation didn’t have any rough edges. Also, I am not the kind of person who stops each speck of dust before it touches my car.
So, I’ve recently come to believe that the American political class did not survive the 2016 election, not really. I can’t think of a single member of said class who could challenge Trump in 2020, and I think we’re going to see more turnover in Congress too. I doubt the major think tanks will survive in their present form; (though many will survive), nor will the media. First Amendment protections be damned; if the government doesn’t regulate the media I suspect the wealthy will (as has happened in some Eastern European countries) by buying up media companies Rupert Murdoch and Carlos Slim style.
[edit: and I’m all for letting the wealthy regulate the media; the First Amendment has manifestly failed, but we’re stuck with it and that means the only group with enough power and a legal mechanism (physically buying companies) to regulate the media are the wealthy].
True, but what about your car?
Fwiw, where I work in built up NJ, there are at least 12 deer that are often visible in broad daylight.
In my high school we had a priest who was medically retired from the Army because he was seriously wounded while serving in WW II as a chaplain in an airborne unit. As expected, the bulk of his retirement pay was turned over to his order, but he retained a portion and treated himself to the purchase of a brand new Porsche 912.
Huh. I consider myself a sports car buff, but I had never heard of the 912 before. I looked it up and it turns out that for a few years Porsche made a cut-rate, slower version of the 911 called the 912.
Yeek I think I commented on the wrong post.
The Cadillac Cimarron of Porsches.
Could have been worse. Could have been a 914.
I had a friend with a Porsche 914. His very conservative insurance company wouldn’t insure it. He said, “But it’s really just a Volkswagen with a Porsche badge.” The insurance company responded, “It’s that Porsche badge that causes its drivers to behave badly.”
Who can understand the formulas auto insurance companies use? I’m sure the prices are mostly based on solid data but sometimes you see price disparities that make you wonder if there isn’t a spin of a roulette wheel involved.
I saw this happen once at Stage West in Springfield. My wife, oldest daughter and I were attending Late Night Catechism, a one-woman show with a lot of improv and audience give and take. A very funny show. A lady walked in alone and as she sought her seat, began to be heckled by the actress on stage for her lateness. The lady found her seat, someone was sitting there and as she began to negotiate with the seated patron, under the withering comedic assault of the actress on stage, called out “I’m in the wrong theater!”. She wanted On Golden Pond in the other auditorium. Funniest moment of the day.