A few weekends ago we swapped cars with T’s brother. We were driving a fair distance up north and our car, while it’s the nicest we’ve ever owned, isn’t in the best shape – and he figured if we could avoid putting it through the stress of a long journey, why not?
Now, he whinges and moans a lot about the state of our car. It’s always had a wee bit of an issue (we don’t know exactly what it is, and mechanics haven’t had any luck definitively pinning it down) that has to do with the steering or the wheel alignment. It drives fine, but not perfectly. And that really gets to him. He loves driving, and he has a long commute. He’s the one who spends the most time in the car. I get that. But I’ve always thought he’s overblown things. Our car gets us from A to B. It starts when we turn the key. The seatbelts work. Ya know? So it’s a little vibraty when we get on the motorway. No biggie. It’s more than 10 years old.
But for some reason he has it in his head that our car should drive perfectly. Immaculately. I do not know where he got this notion. Like I say, our 1998 Mazda is the best car we’ve ever owned. Our friends drive equally old, if not older, cars, by and large. My parents drive cars that are nearly as old as me. His family, well, don’t even have cars. We do not know anyone who owns one of these mythical vehicles that feels flawless to drive.
But as soon we exchanged keys, got into his brother’s Honda and drove off, he frowned. We weren’t even down the road when he declared it a piece of crap that drove even worse than ours. All the way through the high speed curves up out of Auckland he griped about the poor handling and what a terrible car it was to steer.
The grass is always greener.
(I think now he just might shut up about our car, at least for a few weeks.)
Do you care if your car drives perfectly? Do you expect it to? (More interested to hear from owners of older cars, obviously.)
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