Love The Beast

Normally, I'm not big on documentaries. There's nothing more disconcerting than going to the movies only to realize, halfway through a bag of mediocre popcorn, that, “Hey! You sneaky buggers are trying to educate me!” No thanks. When I want to learn something, I'll go look it up on wikipedia and get it mostly wrong.

Last weekend though, I watched a documentary that didn't teach me anything new, it just put into words and pictures something I already knew: you can fall in love with a car.

The film (I've donned my black turtleneck of pretentious reviewing) is actor/director Eric Bana's “Love The Beast,” and despite his rural Australian roots, it's not what ewe think. The Beast in question here is a 1974 Ford Falcon Coupe that Bana has owned for over 25 years, and he's completely nuts about it.

Spoiler alert, as they say on the interwebs, but the plot is your usual Boy meets Car, Boy restores Car, Boy and Car get into unfortunate love triangle with large, unyielding Tree. Midway through the Targa Tasmania, a multi-stage racing event on the beautiful, twisting roads of that tiny island, Bana loses control of his painstakingly restored and race-prepped muscle car and has a nasty crash. He then interviews such gearhead luminaries as Jay Leno and Jeremy Clarkson and this Dr. Phil fella, who I think is famous for knowing somebody called Opera and making statements that would be patently obvious to the most blithering of idiots.

But that's not the point of the movie (turtleneck discarded). This flick is about how a inanimate object constructed of steel, glass and rubber, which costs huge amounts of money to insure and fuel, that ruins the environment and makes you fat and lazy: how something like that can have a soul.

And they do have souls, you know. Not all cars, obviously, but some do. They have personalities. They begin to become part of your memories, good and bad.

The appeal of classic cars has never been a mystery to me: I knew they had personalities from a very early age. My dad has an MGB and a Land Rover, both of which have the personality of crotchety old men who hate the thought of anyone with intact knuckles. Even now, with a full restoration done, the MGB requires a great deal of fiddling about with the carburettors to get it to start, and I personally find the brakes to be alarmingly ineffective. But Dad loves it. He keeps talking about selling it. Never gonna happen.

That's why I understand the grins on the faces of people driving deeply flawed cars. Sure, the steering column may come thrusting through your chest like a Zulu assegai if you so much as tap the bumper of the person ahead of you, and sure, the roof leaks like a mid-nineties condo, but it doesn't matter.

It's the same thing when it comes time to shop for a new car. Everyone pretends to make a science project out of it, consulting checklists and safety ratings, fuel economy and features. For most of us, what it comes down to in the end is how the car makes us feel. We love to pretend that we buy cars just using our heads, but most of us end up listening to our hearts.

The car parked outside in my garage right now has a special place in my heart. Sure, she's not perfect, but I love the way there's a little lag to the larger turbo I had installed, and the occasional playful pop from the exhaust when the throttle plate closes. I can count each scratch and remember where we got it, whether it was in a parking lot or barrelling along gravel roads in search of the hot springs south of Pemberton.

I remember my wife and I cramming the back full of camping supplies and driving the coast to Los Angeles, cruising through pitch-black redwood forests and curving coastal roads. I remember a crisp fall morning driving the Sea-to-Sky highway and catching that first view of the snow-covered Chief. I remember catching that pack of M3s on turn seven at Mission Raceways. I remember waking up to toonie-sized snowflakes and rushing out to drive down the abandoned roads to Jericho beach. I remember that the bloody dashboard clock is broken and I have to try and fix it.

I sometimes wonder if non-car people will ever understand the attachment gearheads develop with their cars. It would seem to me that falling in love with a driving appliance like a Corolla would be as weird as feeling affectionate towards your toaster, or becoming good friends with the dishwasher.

But on the other hand, maybe you don't have to be the typical car-guy-or-girl, boring all your friends with talk of camshafts and compression ratios. Maybe it depends how you see your car. If it's just the bus or taxi that takes you on an unpleasantly congested commute to your semi-boring job, then you won't get it. If it's the faithful steed that brought home your first child from the hospital, then maybe you do.

For me, the little wagon out front is a part of the family. It's taken us places, hauled our stuff when we moved, been full of friends and their bicycles. Mostly though, it's just there, reminding me that if I wanted, I could go downstairs, jump in and drive to Newfoundland.

Not that I'm going to, you understand, but I could. If I did, my car would take me there, no complaints, no questions asked. Just don't ask her what time it is.