Sep 29 2006
The Clown Car
The Clown Car, at the World Famous Hamburger Ranch and Pasta Farm
For some reason, the past two cars I have rented have been very odd, bright blue Chevrolets*. First, there was the embarrassing weird Malibu hatchback thing I had to drive all over Motown last month. This time, it was the Clown Car. It looked like something the Blue Meanies would drive.
It was all they had at the rental place when I showed up (and for the record, it was early, and not late, for a change). I got in and discovered that the seat was really high (I felt like a trucker up there) and the windshield low and slanted. Couldn’t figure out how to move seat. Looked for owner’s manual, which was conspicuous by its absence. Finally figured out that the buttons on the side of the seat would make it ooze slowly down and forward, if you were patient enough. Once the seat was low enough, though, it was hard to see the dials showing minor details like speed and how much gas there was.
To put on the seatbelt, you had to be a contortionist or lift up the armrest, fasten belt, and put armrest down again. On driving it out of the garage, learned that it had a huge blind spot, just what you want for highway driving. I was beginning to suspect that it had been designed by someone who had never actually driven it. Later discoveries included the odd fact that all the back windows were tinted, as if I were chauffering the famous, and that while you could lock and unlock the back doors from the back seats, you couldn’t put the windows down or up. It doesn’t seem like the best safety feature to allow your kids to open the doors and jump out while preventing them from sticking their hands out the window. Oh, and there were no speakers in the back.
This is why they invented the test drive.
*I am always reminded of Ramona the Pest, the heroine of a series of children’s books, who named her doll Chevrolet after her aunt’s car, because she thought it was the most beautiful name she had ever heard. The first Ramona book was published in 1955, and remarkably, Beverly Cleary, its author, is still alive. If only she’d write another Ramona story!