Today it was finally gone. I wish I could say more, but I can’t. When I got home from work, I went down into the garage to check the parking spot in which my 2004 Volvo S60 had been sitting for the past several months gathering dust and leaking…something…and it wasn’t there anymore.
Do I miss it? Am I sitting her reminiscing about all of the good times? Nah. Not at all. I’m just not that sentimental about cars. The only reason it sat there so long was not because I hated to see it go, but because I kept forgetting to junk it. I knew it was over long ago. It needed too much work to bring it back to inspection-ready, and it just wasn’t that important anymore.
If you’ve owned a car in Korea, you know what I’m talking about when I say Korean highway and road infrastructure just isn’t that friendly to cars. It punishes what I call the car’s “TBS” – transmission, brakes, and suspension. They’ve got some great highways and expressways here, but get off of those and it’s brutal. In a three-kilometer stretch between my place and my sister-in-law’s, there are 22 speed bumps. Just imagine what that can do to your TBS.
And I’d already redone the front end on the car once (I’ve already tossed 500 bucks into the suspension of the car I bought as its replacement just two years ago), so I wasn’t ready to do it again only to have the transmission go out.
So it was time to cut my losses, and I don’t mind. My car isn’t my baby – it’s a tool I use to get around (and maybe that explains why it was only the second car I’d owned in the 28-year span between 1990 and 2018). That’s why I thought it a little funny (and somewhat shallow) when an acquaintance tried to use the fact that I drove a Volvo as some kind of dig at me being rich or something. I drove a Volvo because of their reputation as durable and safe cars, plus, buying it on my return to the states from Korea in 2003 I got a great deal, saving several thousand dollars over what it would have cost me in the states.
But other than that, it got me where I wanted to go, and it did it quite reliably – for nearly 170,000 miles actually (I used to say I wanted to drive a light-second with it). And over 100,000 of that in Korea, where like I said, the roads were not friendly and, to tell you the truth, Volvo maintenance doesn’t meet the rigorous standards that it may elsewhere.
Just to prove that point: when my transmission started to go out at about 100,000 miles, Volvo maintenance here asked me when I had my transmission fluid changed and I said, “wait a second, aren’t you guys supposed to be telling me that?” Seriously. In the states, they followed an exact maintenance schedule — even stamped a book for me. Every time I took it in for scheduled service, they were so thorough, I left feeling like I was driving a brand-new car when I left. In Korea, it’s not much more than an oil change unless you tell them specifically what else needed to be done – something I didn’t realize until the transmission incident.
In any case, I learned a few things along the way. I learned that I can indeed change the alternator on a Volvo – it’s not some kind of supercar that needs special attention. I can change the spark plugs and replace a broken engine mount. And the headlights – several times over the years – which were probably more challenging than the alternator.
The car took me from Wisconsin to Texas, and from Georgia to California. But taking me places is all it meant to me. I didn’t deliver a child in the back seat or anything, and the most fun I had in it was challenging myself to drive home from work in San Antonio mid-summer without using the air conditioning. Seriously. I’d take off my BDU top, roll down the windows, then watch the thermometer all the way home to see how far I could go before I gave up. Quite the challenge when the temperature didn’t get below 109. I seldom made it.
So it’s gone. I went to a place Saturday with the registration and import paperwork (from all the way back in 2006), filled out a form, and the guy said “I’ve got this, don’t worry about it.” He called me this morning just before lunch, confirmed a few things, asked if I could go deregister it with him at the DMV (I couldn’t – I was at work) and when I came home, I looked in its spot and it was gone, replaced by someone else’s car.
I thought for a second they should mount a plaque there or something, but in the end I realized this article is all the mention and memory it’ll get.
And do I mind?
Not at all.