My Jeep

I have an old jeep that nobody likes.

To my knowledge my jeep has never intentionally sought to offend anyone. I’ve never caught it taunting the smaller two-wheel drive vehicles. It hasn’t behaved inappropriately by trying to reject its advancing years, by running with the younger, flashier SUVs and thus ensuing a sports utility scandal, or donning gawdy accessories in a vain makeover attempt. It doesn’t cavort, talk back, speak out of turn, ask for dessert before dinner, and though it stays out all night, it tends to remain exactly where I left it.

It has been known to dribble. Every now and then the periodically incontinent old jeep has been known to leave behind a modest puddle of coolant or oil, but I think even the most insensitive person can excuse the intentional leakage.

My old jeep is a salt and peppered fine wine well-aged Connery by most standards. Debonair is the word that best suits its presence of gracefully mature contours and chrome accents that have added an air of class to an already stalwart driving machine. Time has yet to leave its scar in result of an accident or a corrosive rash of rust, thanks to the dutiful care shown by myself and its several previous owners. Jeeps have a timeless quality in their design, making it difficult for most to distinguish one model year from the next. This stayed look makes it difficult to categorize the old codger as a robust middle-aged to slightly feeble mid-elderly. This culminates in an appearance that is dated but still elder-fabulous.

So, like me, right about now you’re left wondering ‘what’s the problem?’ Why does everybody hate the handsome jeep? The handsome, chrome-crowned, king of class, 4 wheel-drive old blue bear should be revered by all lucky enough to be gridlocked behind it.

They hate it because they are good people. My friends are good people doing what they’re supposed to do; what they’re told to do and trained to do: to be consumers.

A properly trained and conditioned consumer seeks the marketing campaign that most appropriately fits their chosen identity and is prompt in recycling and recirculating that identity through diligent consumption, as they are periodically commanded to so. They consume candied breakfast foods, giga-lectronics, foreign-formed pre-shrunk denim slacks, and all the other shiny bobbles that are rolled down the trough.

The jewel of this market-formed consumption, the grandest trick the Joneses ever pulled, was planned obsolescence, convincing the consuming public that the next to most substantial investments they would be making in their lives, in approx. $500 of metal and glass, would need to be made over and over again, every three years. A house can stand for centuries, but a car can’t make it to preschool.

They hate my old jeep because, like all great hate, it has been taught convincingly. They hate it because it represents a failure to conform, a failure to conquer, and a failure to consume.

I guess I just don’t buy it.

I guess I’m one of the few that realizes I don’t have to.

Why are we consumers? Why must we consume to be members of society? Why don’t we refer to citizens under our system of commerce as contributors or productionists?

I guess I have a problem with attributing quality in the things we have based on their newness. Our cars are the worst offenders. Obsolescence is forcing us to keep up with all of our neighbors in a variety of aspects. Without new computers and cell phones every few years we’re left to navigate the outdated limbo, while the trendy live in their candy-coated mega-nano-pixelled, video-camera phone bliss. The safety features of our appliances evolve. Our needs and desires as people with toys evolve.

We evolve. We have evolved.

Our cars have not evolved.

With the exception of some moderately efficient hybrid models and fairly innovative omni-sized cupholders, the automobile, the central icon of our society’s industrial horsepower, is by most accounts evolutio-proof. But we invest in these vessels of convenience and identity with such fervor, they have become some strange generational prosthetic.

Costs goes up, the cost of fuel goes up, the cost of living goes up, the cost of our frivolous values goes up, while the car conveying us through the tunnel to the light has not. The car has flat-lined. Only the final cost has gone up.

There’s no more Mustang McQueen coolness, Fifties tail fins, or VW Vans, lending to us not just an identity but an immortality, a chance to be part of something. All we get now is a mock-regal splendor, a competitive but fleeting trophy; tickets aboard the Titanic.

I admit that a sentimental attachment like mine to an inanimate object is unrealistic, but I think there’s a value in holding a value in your possessions beyond the obvious and monetary. Why can’t we start to consider our cars like our homes, our favorite friends, wines, and lucky hats?

If ‘better with age’ became more of a consumer’s…‘contributor’s’ mantra, then maybe the car-glomerates would be forced and perpetuated to finally design immortal and market longevity in their vessels.

… Like my semi-geriatric butt-kicker…

…Timeless …Macho …Hated

…No, envied.