Instead of straining for the unrealistic and unsafe at enormous prices, why don’t we just drive the great automotive achievements of the past?  Instead of spending a great deal on an unsatisfactory new car with higher gas mileage, let’s save twenty or thirty thousand (or more!) by buying a superb used car that offers everything we want.  Truly great automobiles never go out of style and they last for decades.  We’re not talking about a ’91 Plymouth, here!  I want to see you in BMW, Mercedes, and Jaguar.

I posit that the cars of your future should be whatever you, personally, prefer in vehicles, and that the time to buy is now.  Prices are down all across the board and there are many fine old cars for sale ludicrously inexpensively.  Unless you, too, are brainwashed with dread over “carbon footprints,” get whatever older model has all of the features you want that gets your idea of adequate gas mileage.

A true luxury car isn’t even considered broken in well until about 113,000 miles.   Your dream car from bygone times will be good for at least a hundred thousand miles and you can drive happily in safety and comfort. Unlike union-built Detroit Iron, they’re built to last.  You don’t ever plan to trade them in.  You may want to buy more, mind, but you plan on loving and driving one for twenty or thirty years.  A check-up every fifteen thousand miles and a thorough going over every seventy-five thousand–yes, that’s “75,000″–and you aren’t likely to see the mechanic frequently.  “Fix it before it breaks” prevents further damage, and when a car is checked every fifteen thousand miles you aren’t likely to have unpleasant surprises.  Insurance on such cars is considerably less than on a new vehicle, particularly one without a real frame made out of metal so thin it will never protect you in a crash.

Your first purchase should be a Mercedes.  The right one will cost you between two and five thousand and it will be your road car (fast, powerful, comfortable) and your head-turning “night on the town” car.  It will always be a Mercedes, whereas a five-year-old Ford is an old car.  In particular, you want one that runs on diesel–that’s right, just like big trucks do, because diesel has 30% more octane than gasoline, has an almost indefinite shelf-life, requires a bigger engine (because it has higher compression, hence, more power), and that engine will come wrapped in genuine steel not metal you can crush like an empty Coke can.  As though that weren’t enough to fulfill just about everything on our wish list, one a quarter of a century old will still have at least a hundred and fifty thousand miles left in her (and that’s if you don’t find one with less than 150,000; Mr. Benz’ cars have been known to go half a million.) and it won’t be full of quirky computerized electronics that go on the fritz frequently.  Imagine how smug you would feel with a few drums of diesel in your garage (if you don’t have room for a big tank) and were not inconvenienced by long lines, high prices, or ration coupons.

Your Mercedes will have a heavier engine (and body), be safer to handle, have a compression ratio in the range of 14-16 instead of 8.5, and use fuel that is less volatile (viz., likely to explode) while providing more energy.  And it will always be a Mercedes.  We had our choice of four beautifully-maintained big diesel Mercedes Benzes today between $3500 and $4500, not one of them needing a thing other than handing over cash and signing the title.

Life is too short to drink bad wine, eat plastic food, or drive undistinguished, underpowered little cars you peer at uncertainly in parking lots because you can’t tell yours from anyone else’s.   Could your wife like the idea of a luxury sedan with a Leaper on the hood?  I think so!  We Jag-u-ar aficionados wouldn’t dream of driving one of Mr. Ford’s cheap knock-offs.  The older our Cats are the better we like ‘em.  There are glorious older Jaguars to be found easily ranging from a couple of thousand to about ten.  Luxury European cars are almost always maintained scrupulously.  For well under the price of most used cars you could get a Six you put into tip-top condition and plan on her driving it happily forever, and several other elegant, reliable vehicles and a good supply of diesel for your Mercedes.

You want the most for your money and you want to solve the problem completely.  You need enough reliable cars to get your family where everyone needs to go, at rock bottom prices, with the peace that comes from knowing you can rely on them and love them so you aren’t going to get a “new car itch.” Somewhere out there are cars that will sing to you, cars that will be safe, efficient, comfortable, luxurious, and soul-satisfying, and there is no reason whatsoever to be badgered by what is available from Gov Mot.

Go find yourself something wonderful that reminds you of the joy you knew when you got your first car, one that fits you, that is sheer pleasure to drive, that gets you out of expensive loan payments, and that will keep you safe.  All new cars look alike, flimsy bread boxes and shoe boxes.  “Individuality” is fancy lights.  Find out, you younger ones, what it is like to drive a car that is distinctive, one you can find in a parking lot easily.  Find one that feels custom made, where your hands fall naturally on the controls and the seat cradles you just right.  Get an extremely tight steering ratio, superb braking, and plenty of get up and scat, and find out just how much fun it is to drive something you truly love and can afford.  So many of you who have never driven cars with individuality and zest.  All many of you have had is dull, expensive transportation.  Somewhere out there is a dream you can afford.  Go buy it, fix it up if it needs it, be happy, and we’ll give the Nanny State a real lesson in not messing with our passion.

Eventually a lot of people will be unable to run cars–but it doesn’t have to happen to us.  A big part of life is avoiding honestly and imaginatively restrictions we dislike.  I have no concern about the rest of the world when it comes to my beloved wheels and I imagine few of you do, either.

Keep America Beautiful.  Buy a car with a hood ornament!

Regards,
Linda Brady Traynham

June 19, 2009

P.S.: Have I no social conscience?  No.  I have no interest in sacrificing myself on the altar of the putative public good.  Those who have no better choices can eat cake but I’m going to keep on driving what I like.

Have I not hung on James Howard Kunstler’s every word?  Yes.  Certainly I agree that much of JHK’s grim vision will come true, but I do not see why I should allow it to impinge upon my life.  I have no masochistic tendencies at all and I’ll go back to a horse and buggy before I will be stuffed into a wretchedly uncomfortable, seriously unsafe, ugly, bitty Greenie Mobile.  I have had marvelous cars for over fifty years and I intend to drive them so long as my eyesight and reflexes hold out or until the new Oliver Cromwell forces me to flee his fiefdom.  I’m a Cavalier, nothing will make me recant, and I expect a rousing “Huzzah!” from the rest of you who feel that way and are tired of Roundheads.

What Should the Car of the Future Be? was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

If there is one thing Americans will fight to the last ditch over it is our beloved automobiles.  Most of us won’t use mass transit, we won’t carpool, we won’t walk, and we won’t ride bicycles.

The new ukase that DC throw away our debilitating tax dollars to attempt to bribe people via vouchers to buy hybrids they can’t afford and will hate in return for allowing their trade-ins to be scrunched into scrap has me close to foaming at the mouth.  Where in the Constitution does it say such loony legislation is legal?   Where does it say the Washington can dictate our choices, gas mileage, and harming our possessions to suit their ideologies?

This is an offshoot of a dictatorial California (where else?) scheme forbidding registration of older cars.  By outlawing perfectly good vehicles, which the drivers pay the penalty of lower gas mileage for, the Greens are destroying wealth and continuing to back us into corners we aren’t going to like a bit–all for their crazy junk science.

Other ideas that have been floated are import duties similar to those in the Netherlands and elsewhere: a 100% import duty on foreign automobiles, a suggestion sure to find favor with Japan, India, Korea, and the EU who would like to keep selling their products to us.  We’re already having grim rumblings about “protectionistic” legislation.  In Egypt a foreign car runs about three times new car value, whatever its age.  “Class” in Holland is an old black Ford sedan!  California already offers a bounty in some instances and has banned other cars from the road.  Still another proposal is demanding that cars past a certain age be destroyed–did those people ever hear of the “takings” clause?  If I cannot drive a vehicle on public roads and/or if I cannot register it and/or if the government demands said car be destroyed, I will be impoverished without compensation.

Yes, we need to heed warnings that the USA has to cut back consumption and wasteful habits–but urging people to buy new cars is not a good way to go about it, nor is destroying perfectly usable machinery.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” the old Yankee doggerel goes, and we really should pay attention to it, so long as we leave our neighbors alone and do not become joyless Scrooges.  That does NOT mean that we have to do without what we really want, merely that we need to be creative and check our priorities and goals more carefully.

The three biggest purchases most people make in their lifetimes are houses, college educations, and automobiles.  Gary has my article on how to solve the college problem and it will appear in time.

The revolution starts right here, dear bar patrons, because I am going to tell you how to have what we want legally and economically.  My contribution to the war effort where our treasured transportation is concerned will be showing you how you can all drive exactly what you want affordably and a pox on anyone who doesn’t like it.  My family has been doing it for over sixty years and I guarantee that it works.

Life is about using our intelligence, our assets, and our character to get what we want, and no one I know wants to ride around in a motorized dog crate that has to be plugged in every night while the electric meter whirls as though powered by a demented squirrel.  Imagine going to visit friends fifty miles away and having to ask if you can plug your car in during the evening so that you can make it back home!

Think of the danger of frail car substitutes.  A fellow car-lover said that every time he takes his Miata convertible out he gets very nervous finding himself eyeball to hubcap with eighteen-wheelers.  He is the second-best driver I know and his gaudy little roller skate has plenty of power to get him out of trouble.  The same can scarcely be said for ultra-lightweight plastic baby bathtubs with bitty three-banger motors.  Or worse.

This bears directly on the idiotic idea that we crush useful vehicles and send them to China as scrap–well, what did you think the government was going to do with the ones turned in?  Give ‘em to Mr. Goodwrench to put on the lot at GovMot?!  Destruction of wealth, the lordly “WE know better than you do,” and totalitarianism is what  the left wing does professionally.  Scrap value is bound to be part of phoney bologna “pay as you go.”  Our steel industry is in trouble, too, so better we don’t sell metal of any sort we need to foreigners, even if we don’t get it back as tanks or 105 shells as happened during WWII.  The casings of large caliber shells–such as a 105–are certainly made of brass, but the payload is steel, with a rotating brass ring that engages with the rifling and a secondary explosive burst that turns that steel into multitudinous shards named after Colonel Shrapnel.  Give me any nonsense and I’ll tell you about anti-tank rounds with sabots on them and kinetic energy.

It is insanity to sacrifice perfectly good parts and cars with a great deal of useful life left in them on the sacred altar of Liberal theology.

One of our great problems as a nation is the “use it once and throw it away” mentality which has turned into machinery which cannot even be repaired for less than a new computer, for example, would cost.  Ask to have a VCR repaired and the man will laugh.  If I needed a new washer I would never think of buying precisely that; I would go find a sturdy older machine that was made out of genuine metal instead of plastic.  Parts are still available, and for far less cost I would have a machine that would work another fifteen years, instead of Sears wanting me to buy an extended warranty for years two through four.  I expect the things I purchase to be good for many years.  I don’t buy junk, and I don’t buy fads.

Part of the answer on “What should the car of the future be?” (coming in the next segment) has to do with how long you expect it to last and how little you anticipate having to put into repairs.  The rest is comfort, safety, sensible but not ludicrous gas mileage, affordability, and vehicles you expect to drive long term.

Having argued the case for diesel fuel and motors, based on lower price, higher mileage, greater availability in times of rationing/long lines/higher prices (diesel is more likely to be available than gas since the trucks must roll or most of us will starve), and the ability to store it for future need, unlike gasoline which is now useless as a means of running motors after six months, let’s go on to the more interesting part of how to choose perfect vehicles.

The first question is how many vehicles do you need?  Almost certainly at least one more than you have!  The classic Cavalry rule is 1.3 mounts per man, rounding up always since one cannot ride a third of a horse or drive a fraction of a car.  Two people need three cars (since one always seems to be in the shop, or having the oil changed, or is the wrong size for the job.)  Three people need four cars.  And good driving records/grades, with the current price of insurance.  Not to worry, since part of the solution is being certain that the guidelines I am going to promulgate ensure that we can both afford and enjoy our vehicles.

What sort and how many cars would it take to make your family blissfully happy?  What would you love to drive and own?  How about a luxurious sedan as a road car and for evenings out, a station wagon or pick up, a car for your teenaged daughter, and something that will get pretty good mileage if you insist?  That’s a nice collection even if it is difficult to park in suburbia.

Could you get all of those and afford to run them?  Of course you can!  The solution is the very cars that the government proposes to destroy.  You know what new cars cost even with desperate dealers offering all sorts of incentives, but with sensible shopping you could have all four for less than the cost of a Hyundai.  Think about how much gas you could buy if you didn’t spend the money on a Honda Accord!   Remember how much better things were constructed twenty or more years ago.

The newest car I own is a ’95 and I’ll match my collection against an oil sheik’s.  Other than being diamond-studded.  I wouldn’t take a 2009 car (well, less than a Ferrari) if you gave it to me on the condition that I had to drive it.

Next time I will make specific recommendations on how to reduce car purchases to a proposition as simple as orthodontia:  when you need it, you need it.  Once you’ve had it, you don’t expect to need it again.  Once you have sorted out the perfect fleet and freed yourself from five-year car notes and safety and repair concerns, you can finish accumulating the 30% of your portfolio which should be in metal and get on to sorting out the various interesting propositions our friends at Agora sends us.

Rebelliously yours,
Linda Brady Traynham

June 18, 2009

Leave Our Cars Alone was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.