Prologue
It's been a long week at work, but our hero's still managed to find the time to pore through the classifieds that were printed for Thursday and Friday. Quite a few cars were found that had potential to suit our hero's needs; and quite a few of them sound pretty good.
They're all geographically equidistant from his home. With a particular emphasis on 'distant'. As usual, there's no chance of a collection of luverly vehicles being anywhere near each other; instead they're scattered evenly around the metropolis that our hero lives in. Being enthusiastic, yet knowing the odds, our man decides that he'll devote all of Saturday to the shopping exploit; hey, it's a big purchase, and warrants the investment of time.
On Friday afternoon, just prior to TGIF Drinx, he rings a few sellers and makes appointments for Saturday morning.
And thus has the world been described, within which our story unfolds ...
Brekky
The alarm goes off, and our hero peels himself out of bed. What happened the night before is for another time and another place - one where people are less easily revolted. It's pretty early, but after some serious caffeine therapy, he heads off into the new morning.
First off the blocks is a Stilleto Marauder about 45 minute's drive from his home. The ad reckons it's in original condition; that means it's a showroom car obviously, and the seller certainly agrees. It's a good thing the car's worth looking at, because it's bloody early, and our guy will be pushing it to get to the seller's address on time.
But all is not as it seems. The owner's idea of "original condition" isn't quite the same as the opinion that the rest of civilised society holds - well, those parts of civilised society except for sellers, it would seem (but are sellers civilised?). The garage door goes up ("great, it's been garaged!" thinks our hero), and there sits the Marauder in all its ... glory? The doors are sagging, the clear-coat is peeling off the paint in places, and the interior trim is broken - although clean. The driver's seat rocks and clunks when he sits on it, and starting her up isn't easy ("She always does that when she starts, let her idle for five minutes and she's fine").
Our man drives the Marauder around the block, but is completely turned off. The owner seems to genuinely believe it's a good car, regardless of the paint and the interior and the pig-rooting at low throttle openings. But in the real world where fairies don't dance and sing and play ice-hockey with your dog, it's a dunger. This does not bode well for the rest of the day.
A breakfast at Maccas follows; it's the closest place that offers something loosely termed as food. The 13yo behind the counter sneers at our hero; everyone around here must already know he's rejected one of their own ...
Morning Tea
Over brekky, our chap looks up the location of the next car he's organised. He's also picked up today's paper; and interestingly enough there are a few more cars in the classifieds section. He circles some; there may even be a few that fit into the circuitous route he's following today!
Back on the road, and 20 minutes later he's approaching the home of the next potential heromobile. When he reckons he's about 10 minutes away, he dials up the owner, because he promised to give them a bit of warning before he arrived. He gets an answering machine.
"Hmm, must be in the shower."
So he leaves a message along with his phone number, and continues driving.
Now this car is a Marauder II, and as we know it has a few extra comfort widgets and a more grunty engine. This owner wasn't quite as confident about the condition, but then some people just aren't as positive as others, so our hero figured it was worth a look anyway.
As he pulls up to the house (having tried ringing again and talking to the machine once more), he spots a Marauder II out the front. But hang on, this isn't the car they're selling, surely; it's a pile of elephant excrement. It's got more oxide than metal, half the trim is missing, and there's a thick black smudge of soot all over the rear bumper near the exhaust.
*Shudder*.
And this isn't a parts car, it's got the same rego (and it's the same colour) as the advertised car.
"Bloody lying S.O.B.'s!" ... time to drive on. He gives them a quick call to leave a message that he won't be visiting ...
He parks around the corner, and looks at the paper again. There's a Manx Smurf Turbo not far from here, so he gives them a call. It turns out to be apparently the right colour, the right sort of mileage, and they assure him it's in great condition. No accidents, drives beautifully, never had anything done except standard servicing.
The Smurf Turbo (in a lovely shade of blue; it's the top model, so it has red highlights) turns out to be a real glamour. It's clean as a whistle, and the interior's virtually spotless; for a car that's not far off ten years old, the mileage is really low, and it might as well be new!
Turn her on, and the engine seems as smooth as a Smurf Turbo ever gets. Pop the bonnet, and everything looks clean under there ... but hang on, it's too clean. There's no dropped oil, not even any dust; it's spotless. On closer inspection, that spotless paint is actually a slightly different colour to the outside of the car; in fact, our hero can see the join between the two different colours. He pokes at it with his finger; a tiny bit flakes off. He goes back over the whole car, and it becomes apparent that a quick paint job was done recently; they've done a decent job of masking it up externally, but the prep's poor enough that it peels away around the door edges!
Keeping quiet about this, the test-drive starts. The thing pulls ever so slightly towards the right; although under braking it pulls a bit harder. "Are you aware of any accidents?" he asks, to which the owner (who's had it since new) replies that it's never had any accidents or dings or anything.
"It seems to have some overspray here", he says, pointing to some paint on the scuff-plate as he gets out.
"Oh, I don't know what that could be!" says the owner, as our guy finishes off the pleasantries and quickly slinks away.
There's time to grab a chocolate éclair and a 600ml Vanilla Malt Oak at a cake shop, as he careens towards his next programmed encounter.
Lunch
He tries to give the next seller a call; he thought he'd agreed on a meeting-time of midday last night, but the seller's accent was quite thick and he wasn't totally sure. While he's dialling, the battery-indicator on his phone suddenly drops a couple of notches, the phone starts to bleep, and it just gives up. Of course.
So after a hunt for a pay-phone that actually accepts coinage instead of a phone-card, he rings the seller. Now the seller does seem to be expecting him, although they do warn that there have been a lot of calls today and the car might be sold before our hero gets there. He's about ten minutes away. A small alarm bell faintly tinkles; but he's in the area, and it's not fair to judge a book by some stereotyped cover (you know the stereotyped covers, where the author's name is in big raised letters in metallic paint - boom, boom!).
So he turns up at the seller's house, which is interesting in itself cos it's the only house in a light-industrial street otherwise filled with panel beaters, wreckers, workshops and a funny little nursery run by a dark-haired lady going by the name of Pam. Pam and the seller don't seem to be getting along, as there's a yelling match going on.
Still, the seller invites our hero into his house, because the car is in the back yard. The house smells like it's been deodorised with recycled urinal-lollies, and there are two-hundred-odd pre-teen children running around and staring at our hero as if he's the local circus side-show freak.
The alarm bells are getting louder now, and with good reason. The car itself turns out to be a slightly less popular (read "ugly") colour than that which was advertised, it's a slightly older model, and there's no way "good" and "condition" could go in the same sentence when describing this car (well, not without a "not"). Apparently, "as new" and "never been in an accident" includes a smashed headlight and broken bumper, bald tyres, stained seats, it rattles horribly when it tries to idle, and it turns out that there's a smell worse than the one in the house. And the odometer looks somewhat tampered-with; again, those log books are mysteriously missing.
Meanwhile, Dad is teaching one of the multitude of children all about commerce. He holds their toys from them until they give him some money for them ...
Our chap leaves. Quickly, before the children get angry and eat him.
And that's also finalised a tentative decision for our guy. He's been to this suburb on previous occasions, and hasn't seen anything apart from crap here before. That's the last time he bothers to look at a vehicle here!
After escaping, he spies a bakery. It turns out to be a good bakery, the lunch of steak-and-kidney pie followed by an apricot pie turning out to be rather nice; and they even stock 600ml Oak Chocolate!
Afternoon Tea
A satisfying lunch still sitting comfortably in his stomach, he heads off towards the location where he'd made the 2:30-ish appointment. There are actually a few areas along the way where there are car yards, so he drives along slowly in the left-lane to suss-out whether they've got any of the sort of stuff he's looking for. They generally don't, but there have been occasions on which he's seen something he'd consider buying if it wasn't so overpriced.
But despite a few false-starts - where he parks somewhere slightly illegal and runs back along the main road to check out a possible vehicle-of-interest - our hero doesn't find anything in any of the yards. The sort of thing he's looking for is possibly not "mainstream" enough to be common, particularly as it's not under five years old.
Remembering the missing-vendor charade from this morning, our guy reaches for his mobile phone, remembers it's flat, searches out another pay-phone and rings the 2:30 appointment just to make sure that everything's OK. Apparently it is, he can come on over; he's about 20 minutes away.
So he does, and the car's sitting in the driveway having been cleaned that morning. And it looks really good, and it's in great condition, and the mileage is pretty low, and the price is fair.
And it's just been sold.
It hasn't really been all that long since lunch, so our guy grabs a Mars Bar and a juice at the servo when he buys his petrol. The thought crosses his mind that he's just spent as much money on this minimal arvo snack as he did for the decent-sized lunch, but then servo-price conditioning takes over and he just accepts it.
Dinner
It's getting late, the last of the pre-programmed encounters has been crossed off his list, and he's heading home a wee bit dejectedly. He's seen nothing today that made him think there could be a car out there for him; everything was either neglected, abused, or used to assuage the natural callings of a family of crash-test dummies. So it's time to head home, and try to remember to be more picky next week ... even though we all know that if you're too picky you might just miss a bargain ...
On the way home though, some light appears from behind the dark clouds. There's a perfect example of exactly what he's looking for sitting up the front of a dealership ... and from the road as he drives past it does look to be in good nick. The dealer appears to be going around locking cars up, but there's still time for a last look; so our hero parks the car just a bit down the road, and eagerly runs back.
The thing appears to be in quite passable condition. There's no rust, no apparent panel-beating or overspray, and the paint and interior look to be in good nick. The mileage is a teensy bit high, but as the car does appear to have been looked after, our hero doesn't really care.
The dealer slimes his way over just as our guy finds the faded price tag; it's faded because it's been sitting there for quite a while.
It's a bit late, the dealer probably wants to go home, and our hero has had enough by now. Some of the language used in the argument is rather unwholesome, so we'll just shut our eyes and block our ears for a while. A hero - still bereft of a new car - left shortly thereafter...
A few kilometres down the road, still fuming, our guy drops into a supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. He uses a pay-phone out the front and fails to get onto any of his mates, so he figures he's probably in for a night at home, and goes for the pre-cooked pasta out of the cool-room with Cookies and Cream icecream for dessert.
But it doesn't all turn out to be too depressing. After his solitary dinner at home, he does manage to get onto one of his mates, and he joins them for a movie and coffee afterwards; at least a relaxing end to a long day.
Epilogue
There is a happy ending to the story. Only four weeks later, our hero manages to find a perfect car, at a reasonable price, from a friendly and helpful lady by the name of Irene. Irene now has a company car, and had decided to sell her much-loved one-owner vehicle; she was happy to sell it to our guy 'cos he seemed to be an enthusiast and she figured he'd probably look after it.
Which he did, as well as enjoying many years of fun motoring ...
[The above is based on a true story. Only the names, locations and foods have been changed to protect the innocent and the litigious...]
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