PLEASURES OF THE ROAD : ENOUGH HIGH TECH! : Art Buchwald doesn’t look kindly on cruise control, digital readouts or disembodied voices that order him about

The first vehicle that humorist Art Buchwald ever drove contained lots of impressive high-technology equipment. As a young Marine fighting on the Marshall Islands in World War II, Buchwald was asked by his sergeant to drive a truck loaded with half a dozen 500-pound bombs to an airstrip.

“I said, ‘But I’ve never driven before.’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s as good a time to learn as any.’

“That was my first experience with driving, and it sort of left a mark on me,” Buchwald recalls.

Now, Buchwald no longer has bombs on board. He has Bella. To be exact, Buchwald’s wife, Ann, has Bella aboard her Nissan, and the two of them transport the anti-auto Buchwald to the far-flung points of the earth that cannot be easily reached by limousine or taxicab. Bella tells the Buchwalds to close their doors, fasten their seat belts and buy gasoline--ideas that might never have occurred to them otherwise.

“Usually when Bella tells me my door is open, I know my door is open,” Buchwald says. “I wish she would tell me what’s playing at the Kennedy Center. I wouldn’t mind hearing about her family if it was interesting. When we first bought the car, she was very friendly about asking us to close the door and put gas in the car. Now she’s shouting at us. I think she’s getting real aggravated. She doesn’t care any more how we feel. Now it’s just, ‘Shut the damn door, dummy!’ Bella had a very unhappy childhood. Her mother was always trying to make her an over-achiever.

“Our dream, and I know it’s just a dream, is to have Vanna in our Nissan.”

Of course, no one would leave the glamorous vocation of letter-turning to nag the Buchwalds into driving with their doors shut, so the Buchwalds have come to accept Bella. As it turns out, Bella is far more likable than some of the other dumbbell-driver options. “The thing I don’t understand too well is when you drive without driving, what is that called?” Buchwald asks, fumbling for the option’s proper name. He was told it was Cruise Control (no relation to Tom).

“That I’m not too sure about,” he concludes. Nor does Buchwald appreciate the digital readout on the speedometer: “By the time you’ve found out how fast you’re going, you’ve gone 10 blocks.”

High-tech options that Buchwald would like to see on cars include exterior mattresses to soften impact upon crashing, and a “Star Wars” peace shield doming the car with a space-based missile-defense system that would zap attacking drivers. Buchwald promises he would never use “Star Wars” as a first-strike weapon. He’ll even share the technology with teen-age boys. At a cost of a mere $770 billion, we can’t afford not to have “Car Star Wars.”

But until scientists can iron out those last few wrinkles, there is still good old disembodied Bella.

“That lady in the car talks to us more than our children do,” Buchwald says fondly. “She’s sort of become part of the family. We’d like to get her married. I’d even pay for the wedding. What Bella has done is give my wife and me something to talk about in the car. She is always with us. Does Bella sleep? I have tested her many times to see if she’s asleep by opening the door, and sure enough she’s wide-awake and says, ‘Shut that door!’

“I like to think all these women in the cars live with Lee Iacocca. No hanky-panky. Iacocca is much too serious for that, plus the fact he’s a role model for all of us.”

Buchwald is certain that the reason the voices are female rather than male is that studies must have shown that people would be more likely to obey a mother figure. “They’re all mothers,” Buchwald says. “That’s why people get so upset. It reminds them of, ‘Didn’t I tell you to put on your shoes?’ ”

The concept of equipping cars with nagging women was first invented long ago by the CIA, Buchwald reveals. “What you have to worry about now with someone like Bella, and I’m not saying she’s a person who does it, but it’s quite possible that the credit-card people could plant Bella in your car. All the intimate conversations in a person’s life take place in your car. Not in your house, not in your bedroom. In your car. And she could be reporting everything to the credit-card people, because they’re the ones who would want the information.”

Buchwald has often wondered just exactly where in the car Bella is, and what she looks like. “We’ve tried to visualize if these ladies are tall. I think on Japanese cars they’re very small. The Japanese would not put a large person in your car. They need the space. The Mercedes-Benz might house a very large German.”

Buchwald does own a car--a Honda--but he doesn’t know much about it because he never drives it. “Everybody wants to buy my Honda because it’s never moved,” Buchwald says. “For a little while I drove and decided it wasn’t worth it. There’s nothing to be gained from driving your own car. I get half my columns from cabdrivers, so why the hell should I drive?

“Everyone has to work for something, and I’m working for a limousine. Whatever money I have now, instead of putting it into the stock market, I put it into limousines. I made a decision many years ago which was very wise. That was: Don’t give it to the grandchildren. Whatever you do, don’t let them have it. You go to Dulles Airport in a limo. Don’t die and let them go to Dulles in a limo.”