January 14, 2004

• Subaru, how COULD you?

  
  

  Since I came to Alaska, I have come to love Subarus, and I have a lot of company.  The little guys are ubiquitous–seems like most everywhere you look, you see one tooling along, especially the four-wheel drive wagons.  Rich folks drive late-model Legacies or Outbacks, and the rest of us drive GLs or other discontinued models, many of which  are old enough to vote.

  
  

  I felt very lucky to get ours, a silver-grey ’87 wagon.  The owner wanted $2000 cash, I talked him down to $1500 cash and $100 in merchandise from my stand.  It’s roomy for a small car, comfortable, and generally reliable, although it does have  carbuerator icing issues, so that in some weather, it sort of dies every 15 or 20 miles and you have to pull off the road and wait for the ice to melt.  And the rear widow wiper blade fell off last year and we haven’t gotten around to replacing it, and one of the belts on the engine flew off this summer and since it doesn’t seem to be essential, we haven’t replaced that either.  Oh, and the return spring in the ignition switch is broken, so you have to remember to turn the key counter-clockwise after you start the car or the starter motor will burn out.  Pretty much all our vehcles have, and have had, their little idiosyncrasies, and Streak is no exception.

  
  

  A great thing is, we got two sets of tires with it–summer ones, and winter tires with studs.  Since it is sometimes necessary to use four-wheel drive just to back out of our driveway, this is important.  It is even more important at times like now,  when much of the highway is covered with black ice.  Anyway, we love Subies. A  friend once said “They are cheap and plentiful, and they last forever.”  And it’s true.  You see Subies running around here that seem to be held together with rust and duct tape. And you can usually get one with nothing major wrong with it for around a grand. Unfortunately, the local Subie mechanic–who is a whiz, by the way–is also a raving loony, with a case of NPD that makes me look like the mental health poster boy.  But I digress.

  
  

  Subaru is in the news, and we are not amused.  For years, unscrupulous automakers have been taking advantage of a loophole in the law which has much laxer safety and fuel efficiency standards for light trucks than for cars, which is one reason SUVs are so popular.  Well now, Subaru is getting cute too, and with a vengence.  They plan to tweak the specs on their Outback sedans and wagons, like giving them an extra inch and a half of ground clearance, so they will magically change–at least in the eyes of Bush and his cronies–from automobiles to light trucks.  According to the New York Times account, this is the first time an automaker has done this to sedans–been so glaringly unethical, I’d say.  A global warming expert for the Sierra Club said  “This is a new low for the auto industry.”

  
  

  I feel like I just found out that my mother was planning on selling crack to schoolkids.  Not quite betrayed, but terribly disillusioned.

  • 7:00 pm
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