My First Car

Every little boy dreams of owning a Ferrari someday. Admit it, when you were young and still drooled a bit, any car that was slightly faster or noisier than another car was instantly better. And your dad was the best in the world if he had a car with a stripe on the bonnet. To your mind, power and speed were everything, and you were determined to get a brash supercar as soon as you possibly could.

But then something happened. You grew older and as you did so, these prospects became increasingly unlikely. Reality began to enter the equation. A thing called "money" suddenly became an issue. It gradually dawned on you that you are not and most likely never will be Mark Webber, and that choices for your first car will be limited by what you can manage to scrape together in the real world.

And thus the so-called "boy-racer" is born. If you've never heard that expression before, it describes a teenage boy overrun by hormones who realises that a brash supercar is clearly not going to work and who then thinks he can make his own for a lot less.

The recipe is basically the same everywhere. Take an old Nineties Japanese bomb, which can be anything from a Nissan Skyline to a Mitsubishi Mirage, and then completely ruin it. Rip out the perfectly good exhaust system and stick a cannon in its place. Lower it until the painted-on tyres scrape on the wheel arches. Replace the front bumper with something that's so flared and low you can crunch it on every gutter. And slap on paint and stickers and air scoops wherever you possibly can't. The final result should be "cool as, bro". "Fully sic" could be another.

As you can probably gather, I can't stand it. Well, half of me can't stand it. The other half reluctantly appreciates the deviant form of love and devotion that these testosterone-driven young people have poured into what was once a car. It's just that most of me knows that mounting an ironing board on the boot doesn't magically transform a sagging and decrepit Subaru Impreza into a glittering Le Mans racer.

Looks good in the dark

Looks good in the dark

This is not to say that I'm a boring wearer of beige cardigans whose only requirement for a car is that it have room in the glove box for a map book. On the contrary, I quite like navy-blue cardigans.

I was also a little boy once upon a time. I liked Ferraris and Lamborghinis and any car that was just generally stupid and useless. And I also grew up, and realised that these cars were going to remain locked away in that archive of the brain labelled "Impossible". But the difference is, I matured.

Well, I like to think I did anyway. I very much wanted to find myself an affordable sports coupe of some sort for my first car, something like a second-hand Nissan Skyline, Mazda MX-5, Toyota 86, even a Peugeot 406 were all on the list at some point. And the Volkswagen Up! for some reason. But no matter what I ended up with, I promised myself that it would be in sound, original condition and not in any way ruined by some yobbo’s attempt at giving the kiss of life to a rapidly crumbling ambition.

And as you can see, I have succeeded. True, it’s not quite a sports car, but on the upside, it didn’t cost me a single cent. And it’s navy blue.

But before you suggest that I must have stumbled across it in some remote barnyard, allow me to explain.

Firstly, the paint work is not ruined. It is, in fact, what is called “naturally distressed”, which, if you are educated in the art of interior decorating, you will realise is very much considered haute couture. And that’s not all. As this special effect was only offered on Australian models that are about ten or more years old, it’s also highly exclusive. Classic car collectors would fall over themselves just to get their bidding hands on this car.

Strangely however, no one else seems to appreciate this aspect of it. Probably because most people are not interior decorators or classic car collectors and therefore know that “naturally distressed” really is just another word for “ruined”.

But I’m fine with that. You’d have more success trying to sell a squashed tomato in a fresh food market, so rather than do that, the former owners decided to give me this car for absolutely nothing. And its insurance value is about $2,000. All of which means I can actually make money by crashing it.

But I wouldn’t want to do a thing like that. Look through the shoddy paint, which is quite easy in some areas, and there’s actually a genuinely good car here.

So what exactly is it? Well, it says on the back that’s it’s a Mitsubishi, but if you consult the logo on the front, it seems to suggest that it’s only two-thirds a Mitsubishi. One of the diamonds is missing. Just something that’s happened – I don’t think we can make any doom and gloom omens about it. Back during the war, Mitsubishis only had to last as long as it took their pilot to find something to crash into, but they’ve come a long way since then.

It’s just that it took them a while. For many years after the war, the only good Mitsubishi was an air conditioning unit or a fridge. As far as their cars were concerned, they were all labelled “Bits-are-missing” and never really taken seriously by any self-respecting person. Especially if they were American.

One day in the late 1980s, however, Mitsubishi came up with a new mid-size sedan called the Magna, and it seems that they thought all their countless reliability and durability issues could be ironed out simply by shipping all the parts over to Australia and having them bolted together there.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. The Magna (also exported as the “Diamante”) smoked a lot, drank a lot, and fell apart a lot, such that it was not hard to find yourself thinking like a kamikaze while driving one.

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Obviously, the only way was up, so slowly but surely, that’s the way the Magna went. In fact, by the time the last-generation model came out in 1996, it had actually brushed up as quite a smart and respectable family car.

This is where mine comes in. Except that mine is not a Magna. It is a 1999 Verada, so it’s even better. The Verada adds double rear lights and cruise control and traction control and wood veneer inside, and I could go on and on. But I won’t. All you need to know is that the Verada was the top-of-the-range luxury model, and as such, came with all sorts of wonderful perks that the plebeians in their Magnas could only dream of.

This specific one is the Ei model, or the bottom-of-the-top-of-the-range, so it misses out on a few of the really nice things, like leather seats, sunroof, and power-adjustable driver’s seat. But I don’t mind. What’s more important is that what is there is still there and still works. Not something that can be taken for granted in a car as old as me. Least of all a Mitsubishi.

Things do not start well if I’m honest. The remote key fob is useless as a means of locking and unlocking the car, which means the actual key must be inserted into the door lock. That might have been alright in the Middle Ages, but it is completely unacceptable now. Like burning people at the stake.

So you’re already in a bad mood when you get into the car and start it up. Perhaps remarkably, it starts without a cough or splutter, but just as you’re about to drive off, a “TCL off” light blinks on in the display, and the engine light follows suit. You weep bitterly.

I’ve been informed by a qualified mechanic that it’s not as serious as might make out. But it does mean that I’m without the traction control and anti-lock braking systems. Which also means I may as well have got myself a Magna.

But I doubt a Magna would have been quite so lovely inside. Given the way things are on the outside, you’d expect it would have all been ruined to match. But it hasn’t. There’s a bit of what I presume is make-up on the steering wheel – which isn’t mine – and the trim around the door handle on the driver’s side occasionally falls off, but apart from that, it could have rolled out the factory just yesterday.

It's also supremely comfortable. The seats may not be leather, but they are upholstered in the sort of soft lounge-chair fabric that Japanese cars from the Nineties often have; none of that horrid, itchy, plasticy stuff they use nowadays. And they’re not black or brown either. Veradas of the past were criticised for their cabins looking and feeling a bit like a London bomb shelter, so for this one, they lightened up and used grey instead. The effect is profound. The Verada is a large car at just under five metres long, but it now feels a lot more than that. It’s all airy and roomy and homely inside. Like being in the arms of an unusually large grandmother. Or something.

It’s much the same to drive too. There’s an automatic transmission because changing gears manually was just going to be too stressful. The steering is light and easy, and as far as I can tell, the suspension is made of old mattresses. You get the idea: all is comfy and relaxed; a bit out of touch and vague perhaps, but that’s how it’s meant to be. It’s a luxury saloon, don’t forget.

What it plainly isn’t, is a boy-racer machine. Which is also why I haven’t mentioned the engine. The engine in a car like this is just something that’s there to move the car along. Like the dishwasher in a restaurant kitchen – it just sits there doing its stuff; you’re not really meant to think about it. The problem with this car is it’s hard not to think about it.

It’s a rattly old 3.5-litre V6 petrol unit that makes 147 kW (197 hp) of power. On paper, that should be enough, and it is. Just. Any less than that and you’d probably be overtaken by just about everything else on the road, leaves included. Any more than that, and the front wheels would shave their tyres off, especially a problem if you don’t have traction control.

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You particularly notice the engine's lethargy in fourth gear when you're doing about 70 km/h and you want to speed up a bit. At a time like this, the accelerator is mainly just something to rest your foot on.

Of course, this would all be tolerable if it returned good economy, but I’m afraid to say it doesn’t do that either. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to make another engine that turns so much fuel into so little anything. How much it drinks is really quite disturbing.

But I must admit that’s about the only major gripe I have with this car. We’ve already established that the paint, or lack of it, isn’t actually as bad as it might initially seem. Apart from that, well, I suppose the TCL and ABS doesn’t work, but you wouldn’t need them anyway if you drove sensibly and weren’t too vigorous with the pedals. Oh, and operating the handbrake requires you to first dislocate you left shoulder. And there’s a bit of wind noise through the left rear window which can get quite annoying. And speaking of which, the electric windows occasionally go all moody and refuse to go up or down. But that’s pretty much all.

It really is quite a good car and I think I might actually like it a lot. It’s not quite as good as the MX-5 or Volkswagen Up! would have been, but given it didn’t cost me a cent, I can’t complain.

In fact, I like it so much I’ve given it a name. It’s called “Matt”. Rather appropriate, don't you think?

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