Going to get a little metaphysical today.


I thought for a while about the strange life of cars. Well, not so strange; it makes perfect sense to me. A car’s more than just a transportation appliance (even if it’s a Toyota Camry).  There’s a soul, a spirit of the machine if you will, that exists the moment a thing is put together and starts to work. A car is a big machine made up of lots of smaller machines–engine, transmission, windshield wiper motor, brake calipers, headlights, cigarette lighter, power door locks, etc.–and so its “soul” is the collective mechanical consciousness of all these things working together. All of these various components hanging together on the chassis and body work together and create the car’s spirit and its personality.
This is why it’s hard to stay angry at my cars when they’re not behaving. Each piece does one thing, and it’s rarely the whole car that’s causing trouble–it’s just one piece that’s having a problem. If the car won’t start because the battery has gone flat, there are hundreds of other parts that are ready to do their jobs–the brakes are ready to clamp down on their rotors and stop the car; the taillights are ready to light up on command; the radio is ready to make music. It’s not the fault of the other parts that their tasks cannot start the car; they would, if they could. I can’t help but appreciate that loyalty.

It’s not unlike a ship, with each piece of the car being analagous to a member of the crew. As the car ages, parts may be repaired or replaced, but the collective continues. The “life” of a car is only ended by catastrophic damage, or by complete dissolution. Bend a vehicle badly enough, and it can’t continue. The surviving pieces, though, the ones that work, are capable of continuing on and becoming part of another car’s collective. Like all mechanical things, they just want to work. Lights want to light up; solenoids want to open and close; driveshafts want to turn. I can practically hear them when I wander through a junkyard, perfectly good pieces that are attached to ruined carriages and calling out in a thousand little voices that they would like to do their jobs, if given the chance. This is why I get so terribly sad when I see a crushed car on the way to the shredder with an unbroken taillight or some other useful bit still attached. “Hey!” they call. “Hey, I still work! You forgot about me–I’m still stuck here! Hey!” They don’t want to go down with the ship, so to speak.

The cars in the junkyard that haven’t been terminally bent sort of hibernate. There aren’t enough working bits for the vehicle as a whole to run, but the spirit of the machine remains. The more pieces that are removed, the more scattered it gets. Heavily-gleaned cars have a sort of addled aura, as if the loss of working bits could be compared to the loss of working brain cells. Unlike brain cells of course, car parts can be replaced. Anything not bent or broken can be reassembled, and the spirit of the machine will assert itself once more. When they’re disassembled to a certain point, the spirit just kind of winks out, and what was once a car is transformed into an inert twist of metal.

It’s hard to say specifically when this happens, the moment at which the damage is so great or the car so stripped-down that it’s not “alive” any more, but I know it when I see it.  I think that most car people do.
This pointless ramble has been brought to you by a trip to the junkyard in search of a new light stalk for the Ranger.

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