Courting Tin Lizzie

Used cars fill the want ads like hookers on the Vegas strip.
"Take me," they cajole, strutting their finest features, hiding their worst flaws and all but bragging of the sweet deal to be had if a customer's only willing.

I feel dirty just perusing this section of the paper.
But I need a car. And I've only so much in my pockets. And I'm not taking out a loan. It's cash on the barrel head, and that means compromises.

To some perhaps, these classified ads appear as shelves in a candy store, but I see nothing but a mine field. Many of these vehicles are ready to implode--a tranny set to blow here, a rod waiting to be thrown there. At the very least, they're a bullet in a chamber in the spinning cylinder of a .38.

And it's my turn at the trigger.

This pessimism is hard earned. I've been burned and burned again. Used cars in my life have come with a swagger, and left with a limp, more times that I care to count. But what is one to do, buy new? The average price of a new car today is the same as the average price of a new house in 1976. I'm not mortgaging my future on a glorified point A to point B rickshaw. I don't want to live in the thing, I just want a ride to work.

Here's an offer: 1989 Chevy Silverado, 160,000 miles, needs starter. Good runner. Rusty quarter panels, little TLC and she's good to go. $1800.

They didn't have room in the ad for "leaks oil" and "jams in second gear." I'll learn that the hard way, when I drive it home.

The American love affair with the automobile is only a love affair in the media. In the garages and driveways of average citizens, it's a tryst, and a dysfunctional one at that. If it's a marriage it's Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. It's a torrid one-nighter followed by miserable stretches of boredom and frustration. It's chasing a fantasy born on Sunday afternoons, during breaks in NFL games. On the screen we see ourselves, as strong and sleek as those shiny roadsters hugging the turns on the California coast line. As brawny and fearless as those off-road behemoths rumbling across the rocky terrain of the American Southwest.

But those of us leaning more toward the sad relics of yesteryear have to switch channels to find ourselves. We're not featured in prime time. We're lucky to make late night cable. For us there is no freshly airbrushed machine darting in and out of the sunlight on a wooded New England back road. There's just Chuck in his weedy backyard, standing next to his dented 4x4, saying, "I don't know, it ran good for me."

But we buy anyway because we have to. And we drive off telling ourselves this one will be different. And we see Chuck in the rear view mirror walking back through the broken screen door of his mud porch, holding our cash, and we know there's no getting that back. Meanwhile, Chuck has never felt such relief. It's our ball and chain now until the day we either run it into the ground, or grow so despondent we too put it up for sale, with an ad, suspect and seductive, luring the customer with a little leg, varicose veins and all.