I sure hope this posting doesn't make me sound like an ingrate or make me sound as if I have been eating sour grapes but.......
This morning I picked up a "free" rental car while my baby, the Volvo, is in for major surgery. In automotive and financial terms, a new radiator and suspension bushings all the way around equate to major surgery on a car. Unfortunately, there is no car-repair health insurance and therefore no deductible. There is no comforting 80/20 payment structure. The owner just gets to feel good about paying the entire amount.
When I was at the car rental, I was in a hurry to get back home and when the rental associate took me to the "small" car that fell into the "free" category from the car repair's list, I noted the make of the car - thought to myself, "This should be interesting." - and proceeded to walk around the car with the associate, looking for dings, dents and other existing blemishes they might want to attribute to me.
The first hint of kinship with a Match Box car came when I got into the vehicle and checked my outer side mirrors, then the rear-view mirror. The glass used on this car has such poor reflective quality that just by looking into the mirrors gives a distorted view of anything, like wearing contacts and then putting on your prescription glasses on top of the contacts. Next, I went to drive the car out of the rental garage and could not budge the automatic shifter out of the neutral position. Later, driving on city streets, moving over man-holes, the car felt as if its suspension is one french fry short of a Happy Meal. Traveling over fifty miles an hour produces a noticeable vibration that reinforces my instinct that this is a car not meant to be used on an interstate highway.
This car is not the Eastern European, central Serbia Yugo, once described as the worst car ever built, and it is not one of two acknowledged "worst cars" ever built, the Russian Lada or the Czech Skoda. Let me just say that the make of this car is best left as one of the best music-teaching programs ever
devised. Sharing the name of the music program with this car is a travesty of the highest order.
And you can quote me on this.
Ancora imparo
