THE FINE ART OF THE CHEAP CAR

Well, there it is. My latest acquisition, which should get me 1500km to Broome to meet Kylie. And possibly even back. Two hundred dollars is twice what i paid for my previous car, the legendary Madaz, a sublime machine that rocked a bit of Bertone design. What the Sunny lacks in sophisticated Italian styling it makes up for in reliability. The Datsun 1200cc is of the most reliable engines known to Man. You can run these things for about three days, around the clock, without any oil or water, before they finally seize. Valuable information, which will probably come in handy one day.

People often ask me, Art Director, they ask, where do you find such cheap, superstylin' cars?

It's simple. In the simple world of the Art Director, there are four stages in the acquisition of a fine used automobile.

Stage One: Learn how an automobile works. This stage, which is of course ongoing, will help in Stage Four. Trust me.
Stage Two: Find a car that has done over a million kilometres. If it hasn't, how do you know it is any good?
Stage Three: Make sure the car is broken. Nobody is going to sell you something cheap if it actually works.
Stage Four: Fix it.

See? It's simple. Where a lot of people go wrong is Stage Three. They buy an old car that actually works. Then they watch in abject horror as it breaks down and stops. Clearly, it is much better for your soul to buy a car that is already dead, and watch it come to life under the deft parry and thrust of your screwdriver.

The other stage where people tend to go wrong is Stage Four. They confuse fixing a car with restoring a car. Restoring a car is fine - but it is not cheap. And, of course, by driving a restored car, one sacrifices the innate panache and style that comes with driving a wreck.

There are so many cars on this planet they should all be free, really. While I have been known to pay good money for a car in the past ($2000 for a '65 Phoenix, $1700 for a '63 Spitfire) i object to it in principle. Here we are, with centuries of mechanical knowledge behind us, and the capacity to build a beautiful machine which could last for hundreds of years - and instead we get crappy disposable pieces of junk with names like "Daewoo." I mean, really.

So I place a "Wanted To Buy: licensed bomb" classified ad in the paper. One of the many perks of my job is free classified ads. Woo hoo. A girl rings up and says her boyfriend has left a Sunny in her driveway. She makes it sound like he has left a steaming turd. I say i will pop around with a mate and see what we can do. The rusty, dusty Datsun rests atop its blocks like Gandhi atop a funeral pyre. It has minor crash damage, nothing to stop it running, a rear seat decimated by years of sun, and a dead battery. Two front wheels with bald tyres lie in the grass nearby. Perfect, i think.

I arrange to meet her inconsiderate boyfriend to work out a price. The boyfriend, an alleged mechanic, has gotten halfway through replacing the Datsun's tie rod ends before giving up, buying himself a four-wheel-drive ute like everybody else in town, and leaving the Sunny, immobile, in his girlfriend's driveway.

You'll never get that nut off, the alleged mechanic tells me, shaking his head in sorrow at the offending tie rod end. I've tried everything. The front wheels lie on the ground nearby, their tread worn to the steel belts by the stuffed component. The alleged mechanic has two brand new tie rod ends, all ready to go. Two! That's the way to do it. Homeostasis is what we're after. Balance, coherence, integrity. Plus he has a new slave cylinder, to fix the the leaking brakes. All the gear but no idea, as they say in the classics.

A close examination of the tie rods reveals this alleged mechanic has actually not tried everything to get that lock nut off. I can see where he has rounded a couple of edges of the nut by going hard, but I can also see it is a left-hand thread. His valiant and no doubt strenuous efforts have gone towards tightening the nut, not loosening it. But now is neither the time nor the place for his edification: an apprenticeship must, of necessity, be a long, hard road strewn with pitfalls. But I do quietly point out the rookie error to Mick, who has driven me over to look at the car, lest he assume I have taken leave of my senses. 

How much are you looking at? i ask.
Three hundred, he says.
I've got 170, i say.
I won't take less than two hundred - it's licensed till July.

I turn to Mick, who nods and lends me thirty because he is a CHAMPION..

We put the wheels back on, and temporarily install a good battery out of this alleged mechanic's ute. The Sunny starts first time. When I pull the battery back out, the motor keeps running, which means the alternator must work. This is good. Driving home, the steering shakes like a case of the DTs, but the two replacement tie rods in the glovebox will fix that.

Back at Mick's, I jack the car up and put a shifter on the tie rod locknut, its handle resting on the ground, then lower the jack. The downward leverage cracks the locknut. No knuckle-skinning antics required. I unscrew the old tie rod end, and replace it with a new one. Same on the other side. I swap out the back wheels, which have good tyres, for the front, and do a rough enough wheel alignment by eye. On payday, i spend $80 on a new battery. Voila.

The only problem that remains is the death metal CD stuck in the player.