Hard to kill

I bought a car yesterday. I like buying cars, particularly with other people's money. If forced to use my own, or my wife's (which I like to pretend is my own), I like picking my moment and swooping on Serious Fuck-Off Bargains. Like, say, a pristine, tight-as-a-drum 2001 Subaru Legacy 250T B-Spec wagon with airbags, ABS and just under 150K on the clock. For five and a half thousand Pacific Pesos. Bargainlicious. TradeMe.co.nz FTW, yet again.

Used cars are fucking cheap in NZ, for the same reason that NZ has no domestic auto industry any more: floods of cheap second-hand Japanese imports, as well as from other RHD south-east Asian markets like Singapore. NZ's roads are full of cheap Jappo dungers, recent-shape BMWs and Audis still smelling vaguely of teriyaki, and Subarus. LOTS of Subarus. Particularly down here in the Deep South where all that lovely all-wheel-drive grip comes in Bloody Handy come shit weather season, for getting up to the slopes, or if you're really unlucky, just for getting down to the shops.


Yup, NZ loves a Subaru. Even if the illiterate fuckers can't pronounce the name properly. They seem to think it should be said with the accent on the second syllable, presumably as it'd be if it was a Maori word - suBAAAru. Either that or it's some sort of self-perpetuating sheep joke.

I love Subarus too. That's my dodgy old Impreza under the mid-June dandruff above. Bought it for fuck-all of nothing as a second car, and have tried everything I knew to kill the thing, to no avail. Even combining my 'enthusiastic' driving style with nasty mud-slush-rock farm tracks out the back of AgResearch Invermay failed to discourage it from trooping onwards and upwards. I've never been able to properly break any Subaru I've owned, which is probably why I like them. Up until the most recent generations (by which I mean the stuff far too new for two underpaid researchers to be able to afford) they're noisy, agricultural, use too much fuel and you can never get the seat as far back as a six-foot pilot would like for really long trips... but they're solid, dependable, usually handle bloody well, and most importantly - and uniquely among Japanese cars - they've got character.

My Subaru thing does go a long way back, admittedly. As a five or six year old they were my dream car. Not a Ferrari, or a Lambo - a Subaru 4WD wagon. Just the simple combination of a normal car that you could take off-road and go anywhere in. I don't even remember if anyone we knew had one, or whether I'd just seen them at the Alstonville Motor Show. Eventually the Ferraris and Lambos won out, but the spark never quite went away. Between DMDY and myself this is our fourth, spanning a '92 Liberty sedan, a '96 Legacy 250T wagon (in every country bar Australia the medium-sized Subie is called the Legacy, but was renamed Liberty for Oz out of respect for the objections of the war widows foundation of the same name who weren't that keen on a car made by a Japanese firm that once used to bolt together fighter planes for Hirohito), my '97 Impreza and the 'new' '01 Legacy 250T B-Spec which effectively replaces it. The latter three were all Japanese imports, hence the unrecognisably stupid names - the 250T is a non-turbo (despite the 'T') 2.5 litre four, B-Spec referring to the upspecced sports version with Bilstein shocks.

In my old lab, the one I did my PhD in, I ended up with a reputation. Not just for sleeping with superhot postdoc chicks either (well it was just the one, to be fair). A reputation for being the go-to dude when it came to helping new lab members - usually from other countries - find wheels. This is harder than it sounds, even if your old man seemingly used to shop for used cars like a hardened TAB punter laying wagers on the trots (count 'em off, across the duration of my 31-plus years: XA Falcon wagon, HT Kingswood 253 ute, HG Kingswood 186 panelvan, '71 ZD Fairlane 351, utter utter shitbox MkI Cortina (nicknamed the Ford Canardly, as it 'canardly' get out of its own way), '82 XE Falcon, '85 VK Commodore, '97 Magna V6 (later to become Elvis), busted arse '99 AU Falcon that'd spent most of its life being flogged down dirt roads in western NSW, ex-copper '04 BAII Falcon that to this day still reeks of donuts and fat sweaty arse - not to mention the '76 Golf which outlasted most of them, racking up some 900,000 km in 21 years, along with three engine rebuilds, eventually ending up on a colostomy bag which collected the oil which was blowing out through the breather pipe and returned it to the motor - and the '97 Starlet and '01 Mazda 2 that eventually replaced it.) Every time I talk with the old man on the phone he's thinking about getting a new car. Usually from ex-government auctions. He doesn't need one, he just likes the process of shopping for one.

So I inherited that talent, for want of a better description, and brought it to the lab with me. Helped DMDY into that Liberty. A Japanese postdoc who hadn't driven a manual in years (THAT was a fun test drive) into a Festiva. A northern Irish postdoc mate into a Saab 900 (the exception that proved the rule about Saab drivers being tossers). A Dutch mate into another Liberty, bought from a Dutch couple up near Sandgate - the finer points of that negotiation taking place in impenetrable Nederlander-schpeek, yessh? Old flatmate the King of Seed into a Camira wagon that he loved to death (its own, inevitably. They were not well put together, even if they did go around corners rather nicely). That two-grand Camira was my only epic assistance fail, not counting my old Sin City flatmate Jase whose $2000 1987 Magna (which I'd tried to disclaim responsibility for supporting his purchase) grenaded itself at pace in peak hour on the Princes Highway not far from St George's Taj Mahal leagues club. Handbrake and swearing, both employed vigorously, were needed to alleviate that particular state of affairs. Perhaps in avoidance of such outcomes, or just to avoid a big bag of smugness on my part - ITWPT fans, think Angus very deliberately scheduling his guitar-buying trip to Brisbane for when self-appointed expert McCarthy couldn't come with - oldest of all old flatmates Craigos conspicuously avoided my input when deciding to buy a student conveyance. He bought an old Daewoo, from a dealer, for thousands more than he ought. Caveat fuckin' emptor kids. It's served him OK though, to be fair. Still shoulda bought Elvis off me though.


The newbie awaits pickup tomorrow evening. I'd love to take it for a run, say up to Queenstown for the conference I'm off to at the end of the week, but dull realities such as the need to have child restraint bolts etc etc etc put into it (as well as not wanting to pay for petrol) will probably mean leaving the new toy behind with DMDY and joining the boss in his Citroen Xsara Picasso diesel for the roadtrip up the range. Rock and/or roll. Is unlikely to feature (Nature podcasts would be at much shorter odds) but we might crash the odd winery on the way for lunch. Another good reason not to drive, I suppose...

The Doctor is OUT.