Village Squire, 1976-10, Page 34My rusty car keeps the economy going
BY KEITH ROULSTON
was looking at the car (the one I should
have been washing and waxing) on one of
those last lovely lazy days of autumn when I
saw a tiny bubble beneath the paint. Oh no, I
said to myself in a state of shock as if
someone had just told me I had a terminal
illness. Heck, it was worse. It was rust.
"What do you expect", my wife said when
I pointed to the cancerous growth. "The car's
almost paid for, isn't it?"
As usual, she had come right to the point. I
mean what can you expect, you might get by
for a year or two without having car
payments? How un -Canadian.
There's an unwritten North American law
in the 20th century that a majority of people
have to be in debt for a car at all times. This
of course leads to that marvellous technique
called built-in-obselecence. If the normal
term for repayment of a car is three years,
then a car should be designed to fall apart in
three years plus one month.
I suspect a giant conspiracy here
somewhere but not, being Ralph Nader or Ken
Dryden, 1 can't prove it. Still, I'm suspicious.
Now it's in the best interest of the car
companies as mentioned to have cars fall
apart in short order. If they didn't, the unions
would be up in arms because there would be
fewer cars needed and therefore fewer car
workers. There would also be fewer truckers
needed to truck the cars,from the factories to
the showrooms, fewer new car salesmen
needed to sell new cars, fewer junk dealers to
smash up the old cars and recycle them, and
fewer steel workers to take those smashed up
old cars and turn them back into metal for
new cars. There would be fewer pretty girls
hired to sell cars in TV commercials and fewer
photographers to take the pictures for glossy
magazine articles.
Of course if cars lasted, say six or seven
years instead of three or four, the financial
institutions would also be harmed because
suckers like me wouldn't always be in hawk
for a new car. If they didn't lend so much
money they wouldn't be able to hire so many
secretaries and tellers, there wouldn't be so
many sky-skraper office towers built in
downtown Toronto and thus the construction
business would slow down. In short, the
economy would be ruined if cars lasted
longer.
Now in some parts of the world, people
manage to survive the winter without salting
• streets and roads, but not in Ontario. There
are some' places such as Toronto and
Goderich, where it seems the whole winter
snowremoval program involves trying to salt
the snow to death (why bother to buy snow
plows when you have your own salt mine like
Goderich does). This means that when you're
stuck up to your axles, you're never quite
32, VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1976
sure whether the white stuff you're stuck in is
snow or salt.
Some people think this salting is for safety,
but again I have my suspicions. It fits too
nicely into the overall scheme of things to
make me believe it. I mean at 27 cents a
household box, the saltmines wouldbe a long
time making money. But by using tons and
tons on the roads, well the profit margin
simply soars.
The salt 'in turn keeps the -car makers,
U.A.W., car transporters, car salesmen, junk
dealers, steel workers and the pretty girls in
the new car ads happy because it means cars
rust out in no time and the mighty economy
rolls on
But somewhere along the line, I think
somebody miscalculated a couple of years
back. So intent on keeping the merry circle
going were they that they got too good at this
built-in obselecence bit: Cars started falling
apart before they were paid for. It was a
serious situation. With the price of cars
soaring, it meant nearly everyone who bought
a car had to finance it over the longest period
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possible. But if the cars. rusted away to a
clump of bolts in two years, it was a real
problem. Who would bother finishing paying
for their car if it had already gone to that
junkyard in the sky? The banks and finance
companies were in trouble.
But galloping to the rescue came yet
another beneficiary of the system: the
rustproofing company. Have you noticed in
the last couple of years that the fastest
growing business around seems to be the
,rust-proofers?
So now, for a measly few hundred dollars
on top of the price of your new car you can
have it rustproofed and be guaranteed (well
almost) that it won't fall to pieces before the
last payment is due. Then, on signal, it will
collapse and you can help the economy by
buying a new car.
Now I'd lov‘to find away out of this mess.
I hate spending money on cars. It seems like
such a vicious circle. But in my job, I need a
car. Besides, at $1.00 a bale for hay, horses
aren't too cheap either. Besides, if I did find a
way out, I'd feel like a traitor for wrecking the
economy of the whole country.
166 The Square
Goderich
524-6572
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