The Consumable Car

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Michael Smith starts out a recent posting with the statement, "A car is
a consumable device."  In 1999, he's absolutely correct.

But it was not always so.  One of the more endearing features of the
older cars that I've enjoyed for the past ten years or so was the degree
to which the cars were designed so that the consumable portions could be
easily removed, renewed or replaced, and the car continue operating.

In many cases, it was because the cars were built in countries where the
automobile was something less than a luxury but more than a convenience,
a costly item that would be expected to provide value for money for
years, if not decades, in the service of a family.  Our 1963 Volvo 122S
exhibits this trait in the extreme, to the extent that even the voltage
regulator (a similar unit, BTW, is used in Sixties-era Alfa 105s) has
instructions on how to adjust it for wear.  Both my Alfas exhibit this
trait, the 1967 GT Junior and the 1974 Spider -- they're what I
sometimes think of as permanent cars, because the consumables are meant
to be consumed and renewed.

Parts wear out, are removed, freshened up if they can be or exchanged
for new if they can't.  Rubber seals in the hydraulics eventually cease
to seal, pieces that continually rub on one another eventually wear each
other down, finally the more difficult pieces to reach -- rings,
bearings, valves, lobes, lifters -- tire to the point that they can no
longer be adjusted and must be removed and replaced.

Only in extreme situations -- massive, catastrophic damage to the car's
structural integrity -- does such a vehicle need to be consigned to the
no-longer-repairable heap.  (We'll overlook economic considerations for
a moment.)  And even then, many of the car's bits and pieces can be
removed and reused in another of the same model -- just ask Godfrey
diGiorgi (there, got it right that time... it's because I'm besotted
with the designs of Sig. Giugiaro, I'm sure :-).

Now, there are problems with this strategy, from a corporate standpoint:
it means that the turnover time on your product is too long, because
people who hold onto cars for years also hold onto their money for
years, instead of giving it to you.  Which means you can do one of two
things: seduce people with annual styling changes, or make the cars
consumable in their entirety.  Many expensive homes in Grosse Pointe
have been paid for by the planned obsolescence of early styling changes,
and much expensive Tokyo real estate has been paid for by legislated
consumability.  So the trend among modern cars is to make them
consumable objects in their entirety, rather than a structure to which a
collection of consumable objects are bolted for easy removal.  

Which leads, not coincidentally, to my cut on when it's time to give up
on a car.  

I only give up on a car when I decide it isn't what I want any more. 
There are many reasons for that -- when I sold my MGB a year and a half
ago, it was because I finally realized I'd tried to make it into
something it wasn't and never could be, and I knew then I'd never be
happy with it.  So it went to someone who *would* be happy with it,
because permanent cars deserve to be in the hands of people who are
happy with them.

Of course, I also don't buy cars as a balance-sheet proposition.  Sure,
I only buy what I can afford, but I don't go out thinking that I have X
to spend, let's see what I can get with the lowest miles and the most
features.  The Spider that I drove just before buying my '74 had half
the miles, was 14 years newer, and probably had a lot more features than
the one I ended up with.  So why did I buy the '74?  Because it was the
car I couldn't leave without buying.

And since Howard's original question -- when to give up -- I've thought
a lot about the cars I've given up on, and the cars I haven't.  When
I've sold a car, it's only been because there was no way to make it into
what I wanted it to be.  I remember clearly one afternoon in about 1993
when I was enjoying our 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Super Sport --
the 283 and Quadrajet making that lovely vintage burble through the
two-speed PowerGlide automatic -- and I had been thinking about how few
things really needed to be done to make that car perfect, a fun, fast
car that we could all four (at the time) ride in.

And it struck me that as cool as it was, no matter what I did it
wouldn't be an Alfa Romeo GT from the 1960s. 

The next car I bought was my '67 GT Junior.  It's not running now, it's
in the garage gathering dust.  The Junior of course will never be a
convertible, which is why there's a '74 Spider parked outside.  But I
still want the Junior, so the next huge pile of unwanted money I have
will go to have an exquisite engine built for it.

And of course, now there are five of us, which I suppose is why I need
two Alfas. 

- --Scott Fisher

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