to morocco

January 24, 2008 6:00 PM

One Last Journey. "Cars these days, they're like washing machines." (Not Clarkson...)
posted by parmanparman (13 comments total)

That was good.
posted by killdevil at 6:13 PM on January 24, 2008

I threw away my last car, after it got nicked and then found. The towing, plus the repairs to the now-buggered ignition, were more than the car was worth. The car in question was a 20 year old shitbox, but I was gutted by the feeling of waste. I dunno, maybe the engine had crapped out while I didn't have it, but I doubt it.

Having said that, why doesn't this wrecker work on some of these cars he's so annoyed about cubing?
posted by pompomtom at 6:20 PM on January 24, 2008

I felt that this movie "my mini" on the same site summed up the same attitude about cars.
posted by niccolo at 6:36 PM on January 24, 2008

I think the reason why people dump their cars for a newer one, instead of working on the one they have, is all the fancy gizmos they stick in these suckers now-a-days. Hell, my '07 Altima has the same features a BMW or Mercedez would've had at twice the price but 5-6 years ago. Once you throw in GPS nav screen, bluetooth phone capabilities, steering wheel controls, higher horsepower, better fuel economy, powered friggin' everything - that's pretty much a luxury car. Now, of course, that can be had around $20k.

Sure, it's also why our citizens are so deeply in debt, but.. ya know, it's a pretty tempting apple on the tree.

side-note : I kinda thought this would be a full documentary. Seemed more like an extended trailer. Did I mess up somewhere?
posted by revmitcz at 6:48 PM on January 24, 2008

When I was in my late teens, my mom gave me her Triumph Acclaim. Not a sexy car, but it had always done me good, and it was comfy, and when you wound it up you could really throw it around. Anyway, it finally reached a stage where it wasn't going to pass its MOT, so I took it out for one last blast through the country lanes. I drove the shite out of it, culminating in one final blast down a straight to a T-junction in Winkfield. What I hadn't counted on, was the fact the breaks were not up to the punishment, and I as I leisurely approached the T-junction, the brakes failed and I came to a leisurely stop well past where I should have halted and counted every lucky star that as I checked the lanes left and right with which I sat in, that there was bizarrely nothing about to T-bone me.

With my tail between my legs, I limped to the local fire-station, where the family car was handed over to have its roof sheared off by practicing cadets.

Good times.
posted by Frasermoo at 6:54 PM on January 24, 2008

"Cars these days, they're like washing machines."

I'm getting this urge to go to the dump, rescue an old Sears or Hotpoint top-loader, maybe replace the brushes, clean off the detergent and lime marks, and run a couple of loads of sexy lingerie. On 'Warm'. And the 'Delicate' cycle. And maybe take it to Morocco and make a short film about it.

"Washing machines these days, they're like socks," I would say.

And now I'm getting this urge to rescue an old pair of Hanes tube socks from the trash...
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:10 PM on January 24, 2008

"Socks these days, they're like toes," I'd say.

Then I'd rescue some toes from the morgue...
posted by Dipsomaniac at 7:12 PM on January 24, 2008

My first car was an '89 Chevy Corsica that had never been a particularly great car, even when it was my parents'. By the time I was in college in '99, it was stalling out whenever it slowed down, leaking a variety of fluids, and speaking to me on behalf of Gozer. Naturally, I spontaneously decided to drive it to Santa Clara, CA from Hays, KS one day. And then back again. Without telling anyone.

My parents were displeased.

It (and I) survived the journey only by the grace of God, but that car was still passed on to a friend of my father's, who managed to make it go again.
posted by katillathehun at 7:15 PM on January 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

One thing that was really noticable to me going back and forth from the UK to the US (West Coast) was that all the cars in the UK looked new, by US standards. I don't know if it had to do with their inspections being more strict or the fact that a large subset of USians take a strange pride in driving a cheap car for as long as humanly possible. I live on a street of $500K houses and I don't think there's a new car on it. Several are 1950s vintage daily drivers, and my 14 year old Jetta is certainly not the junkiest of the rest.

Maybe it's because we can't afford car payments? :)
posted by fshgrl at 8:06 PM on January 24, 2008

Felt like there could've been far more to the film than there was in the end. Three minutes? Take an old car, fix it up, drive it to Morocco, and we only get three minutes of film?

why doesn't this wrecker work on some of these cars he's so annoyed about cubing?

Probably because it's more profitable to crush the cars and sell them for scrap. Even for him.
posted by chrominance at 8:21 PM on January 24, 2008

This is why we don't buy new cars in my house. Every car and motorcycle we get is used and simple enough for me to fix. But it's not a green thing - I just hate mechanics.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:55 PM on January 24, 2008

I think the reason why people dump their cars for a newer one, instead of working on the one they have, is all the fancy gizmos they stick in these suckers now-a-days.

Not true in our household. We dump our cars for a newer one at the point at which they become unreliable. Cars seem to reach a certain age/mileage when one of two things happens: either they develop an intermittent fault, at which point the cost of continuously taking it to the garage while they repeatedly try and fail to fix a fault they can't identify becomes greater than the value of the car, or you start seeing repeated parts failures and once again, the cost of replacement starts to become greater than the value of the car.

At that point, it makes much more sense to spend a little more money for a much newer car that you'll get another 100,000 miles out of, without having to spend any significant money on the damn thing, shoot for that three or four year old, low mileage sweetspot that maximizes your car for the money, while minimizing your own depreciation.

The last car we got rid of was a Honda Civic that we bought at three years old with 30,000 miles on the clock, and ran up to 190,000 over the next ten years or more without any significant expenditure on. When it started to become unreliable, we tried to give it away but nobody would take it, so we stuck it in Automart and sold it for £500 instead.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:40 AM on January 25, 2008

Three minutes? Take an old car, fix it up, drive it to Morocco, and we only get three minutes of film?

It was made for a documentary series called 3 Minute Wonder (some of the films work brilliantly within the constrained running time, but most are a bit frustrating, like this one).
posted by jack_mo at 8:10 AM on January 25, 2008