Going Bananas Over a Lemon
Some of my readers have not taken kindly to my column about my wife’s 10-year-old Nissan Maxima, which I call a lemon and she calls “my little darlin’.”
The car suffered a new malfunction the other day when her windshield wiper started at a slow speed. She could neither stop nor control it.
When she started the car the next morning to go to work, the wipers were still going, though the skies were clear.
The car still groans when she starts it and obviously will soon refuse to start at all.
Its most alarming symptom is that it smells strongly of gasoline, and, as I wrote, I am afraid it will blow up and incinerate her. I have urged her to get rid of it and buy a new car, but she ignores me.
I do not wish to fault the Maxima. In its youth it was a very good car indeed. It was small but peppy and had several features that my wife liked, including a woman’s voice that told her when a door was open or when she was low on gasoline.
Probably she did not have it serviced regularly. In any case, it has deteriorated to the point that I worry about her driving it. If she gets a new car, though, I am afraid she will pick one that is beyond our means. She has talked about a Cadillac and a Jaguar.
I did get one sympathetic letter, from Rae Enoch, of Sherman Oaks. “Your wife’s car is a lemon and she loves it. Doesn’t she realize she’s putting your life (and hers) in jeopardy? Doesn’t she realize the gas fumes aren’t good for your body (and hers)? Doesn’t she realize if she had to get you to a hospital and/or a doctor in a hurry, she may be risking your life if the car stalled--or ran out of gas? If she loves the car so much why not have it bronzed, as we did with baby shoes?”
On the other hand, Morris Markoff writes, “Your crass maligning of your wife’s 10-year-old Nissan Maxima is manifestly unfair. To equate obsolescence with age is beneath you. I would certainly not like to be judged on that basis.
“My suggestion is that you review your majestic opinion. Kudos to your wife whose sense of values has not been corrupted. May the hidden voice in her car always remain friendly.”
Bert Newman of Laguna Hills writes that in 1982, he and his wife, Eleanor, bought “a beautiful, shiny blue Nissan Maxima. . . . Like your wife, I loved that Maxima . . . drove that vehicle some 90,000 pleasurable miles. The car was well cared for through the years and I hoped to keep it well maintained so it would carry me another 30K. Not so. Eleanor kept urging me to unload it. She feared it would break down while she was at the wheel.”
He finally succumbed to her anxieties and bought a new car, which has been “a great disappointment.”
Irl E. Newman writes that he had a 10-year-old El Dorado he cherished. “I’m getting old in years and parts of my body are starting to break down a little. Maybe because of that, until a crisis came, people kept saying that my El Dorado was getting old too. I knew but wouldn’t admit that it would soon start breaking up. My daughter thought I should get one of those short, modern vehicles that has its nose cut off. But I liked the long hood and wheel base. It was like a comfortable pair of old shoes and I figured it would be all I needed. After all, they don’t make cars the way they used to.”
Newman claims that his car never had any alarming symptoms, but one rainy morning when he was asleep, it “committed suicide. Senor El Dorado just burst into flames. The insurance man told me that occasionally old cars do that, particularly on depressive days. If your wife’s car chooses that way to go you both will be lucky.”
It may be that my wife has a diabolical influence on cars. The other night we went to the Music Center and she drove me in my car, since I don’t trust hers.
When the play at the Mark Taper Forum ended, we walked back into the garage, and as we approached my car, she said: “My God! I didn’t leave the lights on, did I?”
She had. The lights were flickering. When she turned the key in the ignition, there was only a click.
We sat in the silent garage for half an hour, waiting for the Auto Club to come, and thought about life.
If her car commits suicide, I hope we aren’t in it.
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Jack Smith’s column is published Mondays.
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