Upgrayed - confessions of an IT guy

Farewell my trusty steed

Not long after I started working for the bank, I decided I needed a new car.

My trusty and versatile 1975 Chrysler/Mitsubishi Lancer was getting a bit tired.

It is pictured here close to end of days.

The headlights were covered by tinted Perspex because I’d had a minor bingle and the grill was busted.

It was cheaper to get custom Perspex made than replace the whole grill piece.

It was also completely illegal, even then.

It was a great car and had served my band and other recreational activities quite well.

Being a hatchback, trips to the drive-in movies (Google it kids) afforded a more enjoyable experience by parking backwards to the screen, popping the hatch, sorting out some pillows and blankets, shagging my girlfriend and the watching a movie.

It was like I WAS an American teenage cliché.

I still harbour a small desire to get one of these cars again.

It’s not because I want to relive my teenage years. It is because I reckon the car’s shape is quite reminiscent of a Delorean and I want to make a Lancer Time Machine.

I reckon that would be hilarious. It would annoy and amuse quite a lot of people I think.

The car I really wanted, and had been ogling in car magazines for years, was a Toyota MR2.

But there was no sign of those arriving in Australia anytime soon. So, what I got was the next best thing (for now).

A Toyota Corolla Twin Cam 16 valve hot hatch.

Well, it was a hot hatch for the day. Its spec’s aren’t so exciting these days.

As usual, over time, I dicked around with the aesthetics of the car. I was the kind of prat I hate now.

Naturally, I didn’t have enough money to buy this car outright, so I sought a loan from the bank.

Employees got cheap car loans, so I thought I was set.

Until I mentioned this to my parents who quickly pointed out that I was an idiot.

My dad loved the idea of me getting a new car. He thought that was a good idea. It was the loan bit they both hated.

They offered me an interest free loan from them instead.

Being young, cheap and naïve I said yes.

Little did I know how much the interest really would be.

Fuck me, from the moment the loan was done, and the car arrived I was bombarded by obligations and favours by my mother.

She had me on the hook and she twisted it.

I was still living at home, but I was, and had been, paying board since I started my job.

Sure, it wasn’t much but no-one else I knew was paying board. But it wasn’t like I was at a hotel and being treated like a guest. I still had all my chores and other obligations that I had had all along. I just got lumbered with an ever-growing list of new “interest bearing” tasks designed to exercise control over me.

Try asking kids these days for board. You can’t get them out of the house until they in their 40s and you’re unlikely to hear that many parents get rent from their kids.

I hated this arrangement. I would much rather be paying real, proper interest than getting all this shit from my mother.

I started spending as much time as possible “not at home”.

I was already doing that a lot as a side effect of being young, single and in a band, but I really started getting pro-active about it.

If I poked my head up at home some new piece-of-shit obligation would be thrust upon me, and I was getting angry about it.

At one point I stormed out of the house, into the Corolla and peeled out of the driveway leaving big skid marks all down mum’s precious patterned pavement.

She called my car a “death machine” and whinged about the skid marks for all the years they stayed on the driveway (it was me who eventually removed them several years later – it took 5 minutes).

If she could find a way to make me feel like a piece of shit, she did…and that never stopped until many years later when I put a halt on communications with that miserable, racist control freak.

The Corolla was great, but it was a symbol of oppression and obligation.

I say the Corolla was great, it was quite the piece of crap.

I remember at times I squeezed a drum kit, a bass amplifier stack, my gear and a total of 3 people into that car.

It was also fast and fun to drive…relatively speaking.

I enjoyed it, but I hated it too.

The purchase was a drama with the dealer trying deliver me the car they wanted me to have instead of the car I had ordered.

That ended in shouting and threats. Fortunately for me, my division was the floor below consumer affairs. A quick mention of the ease for which I could complain resulted in some swift re-location of the car I ordered.

During my ownership I logged over 50 faults with it including rust that came from UNDER the paint within the first year.

The handbrake never did work despite being fixed at every service. The handbrake would not keep the car stationery on flat ground. It was only the fact that it was in gear that kept it from rolling away.

That’s what you got back then for buying a Toyota built in Australia.

I’d only just bought it but the Corolla’s days were well and truly numbered.