No job harder than selling a car

Old lady ... Inside a Renault 4

YOU should remember the first car you ever bought. In most cases, it was because you needed a contraption that would take you from place to place. Even the socialists of our day knew the necessity of owning a vehicle.

Former University of Zimbabwe lecturer Professor Shadrack Gutto who drove around in a battered jalopy was once confronted by his students. “A car is a car, comrades,” he shot back in his East African accent. “As long as it takes you from point A to point B, it’s a car!”

Gutto could never explain why so many of the female species are so enamoured by cars to the extent that if one tied a plastic bottle filled with petrol to a wheel barrow, they would hop on! That will remain one of the greatest mysteries of our time.

Being so impressionable, I took a leaf from Gutto’s manifesto and purchased a second hand Renault 4 (R4). You know the one with the funny umbrella gear leaver. A friend who is now late (may the Lord Bless his soul) referred to it as an ‘instrument.’ “Lenox is driving an instrument!” he used to shout to all and sundry, much to my chagrin.

Nomusa and I knew then that it would take considerable effort to convince our intelligent and blatantly blunt first born 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 equally direct answer.

“Dad, why don’t we buy a better looking car, more like the ones reasonable fathers drive?” It was a tough question coming from a four year old. What stung me most was the word ‘reasonable.’ Put anywhere in a sentence directed at me, it really hurt.

After spending a fortune attempting to transform the R4 classic model into a miniature version of the Space Shuttle, we soon found ourselves seeking to obtain a healthy return on our massive investment. We had it 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.

Those of you who remember the French cars of the time will know that they had serious aesthetic issues. Take the Citroen for example. If there was an ugly car, that was definitely one. The Renault wasn’t far behind. But again I was the budding socialist who would trash a Merc with a hammer and sickle at first sight! It was the quintessential symbol of ill-gotten wealth. Today, I can easily kill someone for that German work of mechanical art.

As fate would have it, we soon found ourselves having to sell it, the family Renault 4 I mean. Confident that we would get a good price for it, we set out to market it first to sympathisers, 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 than in dollar terms. I can vouch that it could take us from Luveve to the city centre (12km away) and back at the whiff of petrol from a soaked rag.

Our first prospect, an old white lady who said she wanted a car to “run about with in town” was too punctual at our appointment. She caught me with the gasket down if you know what I mean. I assured her she wouldn’t be disappointed only if she signed along the dotted line.

But then I assumed that she might have been thinking: A black man selling a car must either be desperate or there is something dreadfully wrong with it and is eager to dump it voetstoets on me!

“So you spent a lot of money on it?” she said with sarcasm not at all lost on me. It was a rhetorical kind of question which I chose to answer. It went along the lines of ‘if you don’t want to buy it, just save your breath and hit the road’, though I did not say it in so many words. She never looked back.

I must admit that the car looked a bit unkempt, having just collected it from the spray painters who, by the way, were asking for my arm and 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 expertise on you at the drop of an engine block if you failed to pay up.

Anyway, I assumed that by waving a fistful receipts and job cards from reputable car mechanics at prospective buyers that would convince them of the veracity of my claims. After a run in with several bush mechanics, one learns pretty fast the folly of going the cheap route when getting a car fixed.

While the cost of going the legitimate mechanic route for repairs can give anyone a massive coronary, it was the price of some of the ‘genuine’ parts they fitted that stupefied the guys at the local AA (Automobile Association). 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 don’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 the 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. However, occupational rules dictate that they should not show you this breakdown for obvious reasons.

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. In fact it would take another mechanic to identify the said parts in a car after repairs. What was obvious was that this was an old piece of junk with a couple of new parts thrown in.

The truth be told, under the circumstances, any buyer, real or fake, would wish 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.

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 had the wife not reminded me that my income was still an essential aspect of our marriage contract.

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 enthusiast. The only catch was shipping our dear old Renault 4 there which would require, you guessed right, a few thousand!

So we were left with no option but to literally give it away. At least with the proceeds, we were able to purchase groceries that lasted, eh, a couple of days. It was better that turning the car into a hatchery. The worst part was been downgraded from a driver to a pedestrian, literally from R4 to R Two!

I found myself missing the incredible experiences of driving. Anyone who thinks a wounded lion is the most dangerous living creature on earth has never overtaken a commuter taxi driver, like I was to find out to my near peril.

And what about the car travelling at 5 kilometres per hour hogging the fast lane and driven by an elderly lady whose licence was issued when the Egyptians still worshipped an insect?