Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga
ANYONE who thinks a wounded lion is the most dangerous living creature on earth has never overtaken a commuter taxi driver. Or an elderly lady, whose licence was issued when the Egyptians still worshipped an insect, hogging the fast lane at five kilometres an hour!
This is part of the incredible experience of driving a car.
I’m sure you remember the first car you ever bought. It was because you needed a contraption that would take you from place to place.
Even the socialists of our time knew the necessity of owning a vehicle.
Former University of Zimbabwe lecturer Professor Shadrack Gutto drove around in a battered VW jalopy. His students asked him why he would stoop so low.
“Comrade, a car is a car. As long as it takes you from Point A to Point B, it’s a car!” Gutto would reply in his thick Kenyan accent.
Being one of his impressionable followers, we took a leaf from Gutto’s manifesto and purchased a second hand Renault, our first family car. The R4 at the time of its production was some feat of engineering.
The car had a funny umbrella gear leaver. The late Douglas Macebo, (I’m sure his soul rests in peace) referred to it as an “instrument.”
“Lenox is driving an instrument!” he would announce as I drove into the Highlanders Clubhouse at the time, much to my chagrin.
It also would take considerable effort to convince our son that we had bought the bargain of the century. At least that is what we thought at the time. It was then that he dropped one of those direct questions that begged an explanation.
“Baba, why don’t we buy a better looking car, like the ones other reasonable fathers drive?”
It was a tough question coming from a four-year-old at the time. What stung me most was the word “reasonable.”
Stung by those pointed comments, we re-sprayed, re-upholstered and serviced, tweaked it, you name it, we did it.
If you asked me it was as good as new. Well almost. We spent a fortune attempting to transform the R4 classic model into a miniature version of the Space Shuttle.
Those of you who remember the French cars of the time will know that they had serious aesthetic issues.
It was downright ugly. So it was like putting lipstick on a frog.
As fate would have it, we soon found ourselves having to sell the family Renault 4.
Confident that we would get a good price for it, we set out to market it first to relatives, then to anyone who cared to listen.
There were several things going for the car besides the touch ups we had tastefully done.
For a start, it could move . . . from Point A to Point B. It was definitely “better than walking.” The fuel economy of these little shopping baskets made it much more valuable in dollar terms.
I can vouch that it used to take us from Luveve to the city centre and back at the slight whiff of petrol.
Our first prospect, an old white lady who wanted a car to “run about with in town” was too punctual for our appointment. She caught me with the gasket in my hands.
She must have been thinking that a black man selling a car must either be desperate or there is something dreadfully wrong with it and is eager to dump it on me!
“So you spent a lot of money on it?” she said with a hint of sarcasm. I did not respond and was glad to see the back of her head as she walked away.
I have to admit that the car looked a bit unkempt. Having just collected it from the spray painters who, by the way were asking for an arm and a leg.
That added to my desperation. They wanted their money like yesterday.
You don’t want to mess around with these backyard panel beaters. They can use their tools on you at the drop of an engine block if you fail to pay up.
I assumed that waving a fistful receipts and job cards from reputable car mechanics at prospective buyers would convince any buyer.
After a run in with several bush mechanics, one learns the hard way the folly of going the cheap route when getting a car fixed.
The cost of going the legitimate mechanic route for repairs can give anyone a heart attack. The price of some of the “genuine” parts they claim to have fitted even stupefied the guys at the local AA (Automobile Association) who do valuation inspections.
It was later that we realised that the bulk of the costs went towards “labour” as if they had done anything fantastic. You see, mechanics prey on your ignorance. The most dreaded sound you won’t want to hear is the sound of a low whistle coming from a mechanic under your car. After such an experience, I was convinced that the breakdown of labour costs were actually as follows:
Opening the car hood, $10; disconnecting the battery, $10; checking the oil, $3; changing oil (excluding cost of oil), $10; cleaning oil (from mechanic’s hands), $5; blowing air filter (using own breath), $25; dipping finger into radiator, $25; getting overalls dirty, $25; consulting manual (ad nauseum), $30; taking a nap under the vehicle, $2; dislodging cockroach from fuse box, $50; risk allowance; $50 . . . and so on.
In my case, the fact that they had to import a number of new parts straight from France did not seem to impress prospective buyers.
What was obvious to me was that our car was an old piece of junk with a couple of new parts thrown in.
Some wished we gave away our car for next to nothing. That is the kind of arrogance we had to contend with, no matter how much of our hard earned cash we spent fixing it up.
In fact one very nasty little old man said that it was a miracle that our car was still moving and that all he wanted to do was to reward us for our act of faith!
I could have throttled him there and then. Then again, one had to look at it from the bright side.
We were selling an antique that could easily fetch a few thousand in France or Europe from classic car enthusiasts! If only we could ship our dear old Renault 4 there.
So we were left with no option but to literally give it away. With the proceeds we bought groceries that lasted a couple of weeks. It was better than turning the car into a hatchery.
The worst part was being downgraded from a driver to a pedestrian, literally from R4 to R2!