Driven to Distraction

Driven to Distraction
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday June 7, 2014

My first car was a 1976 custard-coloured Datsun 200B. I bought it from my Uncle Andy for $800. Aged 19, I was now free to explore my Perth universe.

My car had no air-conditioning, no wing mirrors and often no petrol. After a week of crunching the gears to locate reverse, I snapped off the gearstick knob into my hand.  “Knobs don’t like rough treatment,” Mum sighed. I rammed a squash ball onto the gearstick and drove it like that for the next four years.

My Datsun boasted six ashtrays – we teenagers didn’t let driving inconvenience our smoking. The flip-down trays in each door panel blew ash in our faces as soon as we wound down a window. Two larger ashtrays slid side by side out of the dashboard, side by side, in case driver and passenger didn’t want to share.

After another month of rough treatment, my driver’s side window jammed down inside the door. On frosty mornings, I’d arrive at work numb with cold. Parked at the beach in February, however, my car would be roasting. The vinyl seats heated up like a George Foreman grill and seared the backs of my thighs. I’d leap out of the car and throw my towel over the seat only to have the steering wheel scorch my palms. Wrapping the towel around my legs, I steered with my knees until I could grip the wheel.

The cassette player slyly chewed up my favourite tapes. The eject button seldom did what it promised. Instead I would prise loose my beloved John Farnham from the slot, only to discover he’d been disemboweled. I’d gather up the intestinal tangle of tape and reach for the Bic Biro I kept in the glove box for emergency repairs. That biro gripped the cogs of the cassette perfectly, so I could wind back the messy entrails. But John Farnham, with his innards wrinkled and flabby, never sounded the same.

My Datsun was no looker. But my neighbour had a canary yellow Datsun Stanza – how I envied its sporty brown stripe! Datsun also had models called Sunny, Cherry, Fair Lady and Bluebird. (The Bluebird-U series launched in 1971 using the short-lived slogan: Bluebird U- Up You!)

My girlfriends acquired their first cars in various states of dilapidation. Stephanie’s Honda Civic was a rusty shade of burnt-orange. We named it The Baked Bean. It shook violently if asked to go faster than 60kph. When Steph’s mum gave her some chocolate-brown seat covers for Christmas, we re-named it The Jaffa.

Another bestie had a Ford Laser Ghia. A pale blue one. Three out of four door handles had broken off. To get out of it, we wound down the windows and flipped up the handles from the outside. We called it The Man Trap.

I had friends with cars named Black Beauty, Bertha, the Red Rocket and Mertle (yes, with two “e’s”). Mertle was a Morris Minor with a tartan interior, whose driver’s door would fly open if she was forced to take a right hand turn in third. She’d happily take a fast turn left.

I can’t remember the last time I drove a car with gears. But I can recall my fear of the dreaded hill-start. I panicked if the cars in front and behind were parked dangerously close, because my clutch-riding abilities were dangerously unpredictable.

I jammed the clutch to the floor and roared the accelerator. Then I snapped off the handbrake and let the car lurch forward. Slamming on the brakes, I stalled the engine. Humiliated and defeated, I abandoned the car and caught the bus home.

Mum decided I should do a car maintenance course. If I got into trouble, at least I’d know how to check the dipstick or change a tyre.

But no-one told me what a flat feels like. Driving on the left rear rim, I thought the road was uneven. At the lights, a nice lady shouted through her window “Flat tyre!” I gave her a wave and pulled over halfway down a hill.

Fresh from car maintenance 101, I prized the jack free and wedged it under the rear axle. I began cranking the lever and was surprised to see how easily the car lifted off the ground. A truck grated to a halt behind me.

“Stop!” yelled the driver, jumping down from his cab and waving his arms.

“You can’t jack up your car here! It’ll roll down the hill! He snatched two bricks from his tray and shoved them under the front wheels.

“For pete’s sake, where’s your chocks?!”

“What’s a chock?” I asked.

Twenty years later, my live-in grease monkey says I still don’t know the difference between a sump and a hump. But I know a car with character when I see one. New cars don’t have personalities. They have names like Spark and Volt. Cars with grunt. No Datsun Fair Lady driver would climb daintily into one of those.