All Cars Were Once New

Driving through outback Australia you see husks of cars everywhere you go. Every time I come across one, something fascinates me about the lives they must have gone through to end up where they lie.

Cars undergo an interesting transformation from new, valuable, and prized possessions into something so worthless it’s better off left in the bush. Whether it’s rotting in a field, on the back of a scrappers truck, or posted as a project on marketplace, try and picture it the day it rolled off the line - because that day did happen. It’s strange to imagine the sensible ‘90s Japanese businessman buying and daily driving a nice 2-door, cloth-seat Nissan. Only to see that car screaming around a track just 30 years on. Or the fresh-off-the-boat ‘60s poms and their brightly coloured, not-letting-go-of-the-homeland Austin convertible. Only for it to become a pile of rust in an overgrown paddock.

There is something special about a brand new car. 

 

I had a coworker once who was infectiously excited about her pending-delivery “sporty new car, the interior is so fancy, and it just drives so good!” I couldn’t help but share her hype too. So how does the mentality-switch kick in so fast? Is it after that first scratch that it becomes a used car? Surely someone was once talking like my coworker about this Falcon. They savoured the new car smell as long as possibly, and were emotional when they saw the first stone chip. The first owner rarely determines the fate of a car though, and with every scratch, dent, cigarette burn, and missed service that new car charm fades.

 

 

In some ways the abandoned cars are more interesting than the well preserved. These (HR?) Holdens, at one point in time looked identical, cost the same amount, and were probably owned by similar people, but what circumstances condemned one to slow decay and the other to a climate controlled shed? Timing and luck maybe. Yet I bet there is a helluva tale behind the car returning to the earth.

Today I stumbled upon this Hyundai Tucson. It was manufactured more recently than every car I’ve ever owned, yet here it is. 

Seeming so out of place (literally a Hyundai Tucson City) the car had quite the impact. I thought about the butterfly effect. Seeing it abandoned made me wonder about the chain of events which any ordinary car is central to. Births, deaths, funerals, work, school- every trip you make is either in a car or heavily influenced by their presence. Did the circumstances which led to this car being dumped here change someone’s life? If it hadn’t been here for some good ol’ boys to shoot up, would those bullets have ended up in something else?

 

I liked that even in its state of near-death, the car was still influencing people. And they were still influencing it, the scars and abuse it suffered from its time in the desert just made it seem right at home out there.

The old bushie, just waiting on his next visitor…