In 2001, my dad drove his mid-life-crisis-mobile under a truck. It was a wet day, a winding road, and, well, a sporty car that my dad never quite got the hang of driving slowly. The corner of the truck stopped about an inch from my dad's forehead; he was, astonishingly, entirely uninjured, but his precious Eunie was a total write-off. Consequences: my dad barely escaped being charged with negligent driving; his insurance excess went through the roof; he got stern talkings-to from the police, the insurance company, and my mum; and I, indirectly, came into possession of A Set Of Wheels.
It happened like this. In 2001, my family was very reliant on the two cars we owned: my mum's station wagon, and my dad's sports car. My dad was working in the next town over, and needed a car to get to work. My mum was at home, ferrying around four kids and my frail grandmother. Faced with the prospect of a six-month wait for the insurance money to come through, my parents decided that the best course of action would be to invest in a cheap car which my dad could use for work, and which could be passed onto me (seventeen and on my way to a provisional license) when they had the money to buy something better.
We shopped around. My dad was clear about the fact that I wanted a Beetle; rather clearer than I was, in fact. In his own uni days, Dad had driven a blue 1967 Bug around the streets of Fremantle, a car which he still speaks fondly of. His desire to buy a similar car for me was - I think, though he denies it - a reliving of those uni days; even down to encouraging me to repaint my car with house paint, the way he did his. I wasn't convinced. Beetles were kind of daggy; pretty small; pretty ancient. No air conditioning, no stereo, and headlights that rivaled birthday candles for intensity. Sure, I'd wanted one when I was a kid, and again when I was about fifteen, but really, I felt I was a little beyond Beetles (although I might have been convinced faced with a convertible).
Then we met Ethel.
VW, Superbug, 1972. Good cond., papers, $3500. 6257-****.We phoned to ask more about the condition of the car. The seller was a specialist Volkswagen mechanic; the car had belonged to his daughters for the last ten years; as they had grown up and moved on, he was now looking to sell the car. The price was right, and so an hour later, we arrived at A&R Autos to find two Beetles with 'For Sale' signs in their windscreens. One was a standard-issue, sky-blue Bug. The other was heavily modified; lowered, flared wheel-caps, rear spoiler, chrome hubcaps. It had a steering wheel the size of a dinner plate and an incandescent green beetle embedded in resin on the gearstick. It also had a silver badge on the glove-box:
15 millionth Beetle, number 1232. The apprentice came out: 'Yes, the one in the paper is this one. Did he tell you it was pink?'
That was our first introduction to the pink Beetle that would become a part of our family. In many ways, the day we took her home reminded me of the day my baby brother came home from the hospital. Eleven years later, and I was again hopping around like a six-year-old promised a new toy. The main difference was that, in this instance, I was allowed to come in the car to get her, where previously I'd been made to stay at home. My gran was waiting anxiously to be introduced to the new arrival; all but housebound by years of illness, she lived vicariously through her grandkids, and was as thrilled as I was by the prospect of my becoming Mobile. She and I discussed names for the car at length, eventually settling on Ethel. I don't remember who suggested it in the first instance, or why, but I know that the name was decided on after my gran told me about Ethel Petrol (I assume it was Ethyl Petrol in reality) and suggested that we should look out at antique stores for the old petrol-store signs. While that idea never came to fruition, naming Ethel was the first step towards turning her into something more than just a car.
It's difficult not to imbue a distinctive and individual car with personality. Ethel is very much a member of the family. She even got a mention in my grandmother's eulogy two years ago. Boys of a certain age can't be seen with their mothers; my brothers, at that age, could absolutely not be seen in Ethel (then they found out that the girls love Ethel, and now they beg me to take them to school when I'm home). My mum worries about Ethel and I, in the same way that she worries about my younger sister and her series of 'weird and depressing' boyfriends - as if loving Ethel were a phase that she hopes I'll grow out of. It is, she says, only a question of safety: 'I love Ethel, too, Beck, but I wish she had airbags'. I don't envisage myself parting with Ethel in the near future, though I live, now, in a place where I probably don't need a car. I can walk to uni and work; the public transport is good and the traffic is terrible. I rarely drive since I've been in Sydney, but I can't imagine selling Ethel. When my dad advised me against settling overseas, I told - only partly joking - that I was bound to Australia by Ethel. I spent last summer overseas: my traveling partners tell me that I spent more time worrying about my sister driving my car, than about the language course we were taking. I'm emotionally attached to Ethel - it's my catchcry in any conversation about cars with my mum. 'Yes, I know that your car is safer. And cheaper to run. Yes, I know you like having air conditioning, and that the car has a CD player. And yes, I'm sure I would enjoy all those things. But I'm emotionally attached to Ethel!'
My life is deeply involved with Ethel's, intertwined, even. I schedule my trips back to Canberra to coincide with Ethel's need for servicing, so that she can return to the mechanic we bought her from. I put off moving out of my last house for five months or so, despite flatmates that drove me wild, mostly because the place was conveniently close to uni, but also because the house matched Ethel. I felt like a protective mother duck when I saw Japanese tourists taking photos of her outside the house - a little bewildered that it was happening at all, but mostly concerned for Ethel's well-being. I am deeply defensive of my car; I get shrill when my younger sister makes cracks about not liking Ethel (but am secretly relieved when she refuses to drive her). Every year, on Ethel's birthday (or at any rate, the anniversary of the day in 1972 when she was driven out of a Lithgow VW dealership), I hang a big sign in her rear window - 'Happy Birthday dear Ethel' - and trail streamers from her radio antenna. Then we hit the streets.
When I first started to drive Ethel on my own, it was a pleasant novelty to be waved at by other VW drivers. Now, I feel slighted if I pass a Beetle and don't get a wave. Everyone seems to have memories that involve a Volkswagen; I've had long and involved conversations with people from all works of life who have owned, or known someone who owned, or always wanted to own a Beetle. Kim Beazley told me that he once owned a white Beetle, but thought they needed to release a larger model; my mum's cousin, who normally drives a BMW convertible, bought a mint-green Beetle on a whim after being introduced to Ethel (he still drives the BMW). Ethel and I are both on first-name terms with a number of petrol station attendants around the country.
One day, parked in a service station carpark off the Federal Highway, I was startled by a knocking on the window- an older gentleman who owned three Beetles and wanted to be told Ethel's history. He gave ma number of tips about where to find parts; he envied my steering wheel; he was astounded by Ethel's commemorative badge; he was worried about the condition of her upholstery. It all got a little creepy when he flagged me down fifty kilometres further along the highway - not to warn me about a flat tire or flames shooting out of my engine, but to tell me that I could install seats from some make of Nissan car in Ethel. Little girls love Ethel - her primary fan-base is in the five-to-ten years age group - and I will never get tired of hearing people say 'Nice car' when I pass them. (That little kid across the road that yells 'HELLO PINK PUNCHBUGGY WOMAN!!' every time he sees me, though - that's getting old fast.)
After a protracted and somewhat humiliating inspection, Ethel and I were turned down for membership in a Sydney Volkswagen drivers' club because her stereo at the time - installed long before I came into possession of the car, and not even functional - wasn't contemporary to the vehicle. They also think that the paint is the wrong colour (as Beetles, for reasons unknown to me, were not originally produced in attractive candy pink). I think it's splitting hairs, as they told me the stereo was taken from a slightly later model of the same car, but that's elitism for you. However, Ethel and I have one redeeming feature in the VW subculture: she's a special release Beetle, and I have the papers to prove it. In the VW world, as in any other fan community, owning a limited edition Beetle gives me serious cred. There are, of course, degrees of cred in the community: owning a Silver Beetle (10,000 were produced to celebrate the production of the twenty millionth Beetle) or a Last Edition Beetle (the name says it all) is the life aim of some manic Beetle fans I've spoken to.
If Ethel were stolen, or set on fire again (my sister had an 'accident' with the cigarette lighter two years ago), or otherwise rendered irredeemably undriveable, I'm not sure what I'd do. She's ensured only for third-party damage (a considerable motivator for me to drive very carefully), and so there would be financial issues involved with purchasing another car. There are no overwhelming pragmatic reasons for me to have a car in Sydney; indeed, the pragmatic route would probably be to invest the money tied up in my car elsewhere. If I chose to buy a car, it wouldn't necessarily be another Beetle; in fact, it would most likely be a newer car which was cheaper to run. I'm not attached to Ethel because she's a Beetle, I'm attached to her because she's Ethel.
