Sticker Shock
In the old days of yearly auto inspections, the owner drove the car into the garage bay, operated the horn, blinkers, lights, etc., then waited in the car for the emissions test to be completed. No more. Now your vehicle is taken from you and after fifteen minutes, returned with a sticker the color of the month, or bright red, indicating failure.
I assumed the BMW would fail, even after I slathered epoxy over the various holes in the muffler. It starts intermittently, the lights work only when they want to and those tires, if they were jars of jam, would be way past their expiration date.
I intended to wait until Matt returned home from school, and then have it inspected but when he called to say he was going to lift weights for an hour with his buddies, I closed the hood, checked the tail lights one more time and raced out of the driveway. The closest garage is three minutes from our house and I was barely out of my car when the mechanic said, ìWhere is your license plate?î
I jumped back in the car, raced home, drilled out the front bumper for the front plate (In our fair state if you have a white plate with green numbers you only need one plate, if you have a white plate with red numbers you need two plates), found screws to attach it, and again squealed (ah, that new clutch) out of the driveway. I was running out of time if I was going to get this done and present Matt with his stickered car.
At the first bend on Central St., I heard something metallic hit the street. I looked back, saw a hub cap bouncing into the grass, not the license plate, and kept going. I knew how excited Matt would be to drive his friends home, in his car, legally. And a red sticker means you have two months to find a new muffler, replace the tires, whatever.
Taking no chances, I left the car running for the mechanic. I plopped down on the flimsy plastic bench with my Diet Coke and Boston Herald, and waited for the verdict. Ten minutes later – no emissions tests on this antique-the car is backed out of the garage with a new orange sticker.
Is this vehicle safe for your one and only beloved son of your loins to drive in public???????????????????????? Just a thought from a mother.-Jan
Comment by jan Queijo — November 4, 2003 @ 8:36 am
So funny…….. I’m all in touch with Mike’s energy, desire to please Matt, and resultant success, but a woman taps right into the basics of risk and judgement. Thanks, Jan. OTOH, while I know better than to simply trust Mike’s judgement, I DO trust he wouldn’t send Matt out in a deathtrap, that the car is either safer than it sounds, or Mike has every intention of improving it, now that repairs are facilitated by its driveability. After all, he’s risked his own life first in all the short jaunts in it, including these two.
I love the gory little details,which make my above rationalizations sheer blather — no license plate, careening hubcaps……
Was Matt appropriately jazzed?
Comment by y delimited — November 4, 2003 @ 9:12 am
I’m with Jan on this. Whenever our son Patrick has a mechanical problem with his car (a 1989 Tercel), we wonder how he’s going to (a) get home from wherever the breakdown is and (b) whether he’s going to survive when it breaks down in front of an 18-wheeler on the beltway or (c) if his “fix” will really work. Recently, he and a friend replaced the brake pads, and we’re wondering how good the job was. But at least he’s a Mechanical Engineer.
By the time the antique gets fully functional, Matt may be one too.
Comment by rackity ed — November 4, 2003 @ 12:17 pm
Wow, an orange sticker! Same as the one I just got for Linda’s 2000 Explorer! How lucky can you be???
And Matt’s reaction?
To the fraidy-cats: If the car breaks down Matt will leaqrn to deal, like we all did. And if your number is up, its up–and Matt’s isn’t for a l-o-n-g time.
Comment by Dan — November 4, 2003 @ 8:59 pm
I’m with everyone on everything. My hope is that Matt and I will continue to share the pride of restoring a family heirloom, and once we have finished, a classic paint job the exclamation mark, and Matt has sufficiently
impressed both himself and his friends, one of those friends will say, “Hey Matt, how about if I take that beauty off your hands for … .”
Related subjects: Thank god no one holds me to some loft writing standard – otherwise, I’d never get away with that long beast of a sentence.
Dan, it’s nice to have you back. And, comparing the BMW to the Explorer makes me think there is something intrinsically wrong with the inspection process.
Ed has announced that he will soon hide his Beartooth Saga to prevent casual surfers from finding and then exploring, those not quite, but better left as close to as possible, virginal trails.
Comment by Michael — November 5, 2003 @ 6:35 am
As to whether or not matt was sufficiently “jazzed”, I would say that he definitely was. To hear the car sqealing around the corner at five miles an hour in the K-mart parking lot really got me excited. Whoever thought that the car would be running and road driveable… well, legally road drivable. Anywho this is one loving son who thanks his dad for the glue on the muffler… speaking of which, where is the new one?!? Anywho, this should be some interesting repairs that my dad and i will be doing. Considering our combined Mechincal Knowledge was used up on putting the car into first gear.
Comment by loving son — November 6, 2003 @ 9:18 am
EX-cellent!!! Glad you’re excited, and glad the yeoman efforts of your indefatigable old man do not fall on deaf shoulders……. Thanks for dropping in on the blog to say thanks to him. P.S. I think your combined knowledge is rather more extensive than you imply.
That’s one sweet machine, and I can’t wait to see what color you guys pick for it (even if it just remains “classic white”……..).
Comment by flag waver — November 6, 2003 @ 10:37 pm
I am pretty sure that you are giving our combined knowlage of cars a little more credit then you should, although we do have some idea of waht we are doing, im not all that sue of how well we are going to be able to install an alternator. I think we are going to keep it “classic White” just because we dont want to distroy the authenticity of the car.
Comment by carowner — November 7, 2003 @ 9:13 am
Your telling me metalflake hunter green with “Mattman” in (smallish) yellow/orange-fade flame letters from the front quarter panels to midway on the back edge of the doors would in any way not be “classic”………?
Comment by incredulous — November 7, 2003 @ 9:45 am