Cars and the Repair Shop Oracle

I don’t know why we take the car to be fixed if it’s always broken anyway. It obviously doesn’t work: It doesn’t fly, it doesn’t float, and rolling is a simple thing that troglodyte cars did many centuries ago. There is no remarkable advance that the automobile has brought, beyond speeding tickets and the possibility of moving from one place to another in a reasonably shorter time than a horse does. But this is precisely where the speeding ticket issue comes in again. In the car, as in communism, almost everything that is not forbidden is compulsory. Driving ceased being fun when we ceased to be able to do it with our asses hanging out the window, sipping from a bottle of whiskey held in the hand that is not busy changing songs. (READ MORE: Dear Elon Musk, Cybertrucks Are Ugly)

For some time now, I have driven more miles than the Rolling Stones’ road manager. I go back and forth and watch the people pass by, the daily rush and those huge trucks, so Spielberg-esque in Duel, having fun overtaking each other on two-lane roads. Breakdowns are directly proportional to the number of trips you make per week. So every three days a different emergency light comes on and I’ve been having nightmares about the designer of those luminous icons ever since. I understand that it is complicated to warn of a breakdown with the text “check the pressure of the right front tire” tucked into a small drawing encased in a tiny little button. However, I just know that they’re having a laugh at us with their little hieroglyphics. When it flashes at you mid-journey, you never know if the breakdown is serious or if it’s just another one of those repairs that can wait a lifetime, like the ones you get at every medical checkup.

Different Kinds Of Breakdowns

Cars have several kinds of breakdowns. The definitive ones, like when the driver’s door falls off a cliff while you are holding on to it, the very urgent ones, usually involving a fire, and the ones that nobody bothers to repair, like anything involving car parts you never even knew existed. The important thing is to identify the unavoidable breakdowns, which is not difficult because you can usually tell instantly. A blown tire leaves no room for doubt, even for a layman like me. And, as a rule, all the things that prevent the car from moving without human effort require intervention from one of those guys dressed in overalls covered in grease who knows everything about cars and anything else. (READ MORE: Another Hurdle for the Electric Vehicle)

They turn up and, before they even get down from the tow truck, glancing furtively towards your vehicle, they are already emitting guttural sounds of disapproval and manifest pessimism. If doctors did the same, most patients would throw themselves down the hospital elevator shaft. For some strange reason, we don’t give up on repairing our car, even if the mechanic turns green and his pulse trembles before giving us his magic wrench’s terrifying verdict. By the way, what are mechanics’ and plumbers’ wrenches made of, that with a single tap on the allegedly damaged part, they can diagnose everything that has happened in a tenth of a second? I could use something like that for my liver.

I Still Prefer Cars to EVs any Day

We all wonder why our car can’t simply be OK or be broken, and why it needs all those additional comments from mechanics, which only make us insecure. A couple of weeks ago, at the garage, I had two wheels replaced — on the car, mine work fine. When handing over the keys, the mechanic pointed out that they had taken advantage of routinely checking the engine, brakes, and other vital parts of the vehicle. He told me that for the moment “everything was fine”, but that “in a few days” the oil should be changed, that the steering was starting to be as misaligned as Joe Biden’s plane of flotation, that the car’s cigarette lighter was shorted, that a mouse was gnawing on the last thread of the drive belt, that I shouldn’t panic if when braking the car went up on two wheels because one of the brake pads was wearing out, that the exhaust emissions would make a Volkswagen manager blush, that the battery was running out of juice, and that the clutch, although it was in perfect condition today, tomorrow could start to burn, explode, and calcinate me, all the occupants of the car, and start a wildfire several hectares wide causing death and destruction to all mankind. (READ MORE from Itxu: Woke? Nope. Back to Sleep.)

Since then, I have developed the habit of scrutinizing the clutch and everything else. Every time I reach my destination safe and sound, I take a deep breath, park, run through the garage with my arms in the air, and addressing the ramps, I take off my shirt and throw it into the crowd, just before doing a somersault and kissing the camera. Come to think of it, this is all just extra fun that my old diesel vehicle offers me and that no boring electric car would ever give me with its two states: Good or on fire.

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