CHCH News - The Winter Car

It's that time of year again. The leaves start turning; the squirrels begin laying in their winter stock. The birds migrate south in big, black clouds. The days shorten; the air cools; the moods turn to football and deer hunting. And I, too, must make my plans.

It's time for me to begin the search for The Winter Car.

The Winter Car is a Northern phenomenon. Ever since motorists decided, what with high-speed expressways, tire chains were an unworkable answer to winter road ice, local highway departments have been laying salt on the pavement. Ostensibly it's a melting agent; covertly it's a kickback tool, bought and used in an ever-thickening sheen each year.

The result for Highway Commissioners and their more powerful deputies, has been an exponentially-increasing standard of living. For motorists, it's become a sort of car cancer which can take a $22,000 investment and reduce it to a $200 nuisance inside of a decade - and often long before the mechanicals wear out.

Hence the Winter Car - a sort of vehicular sacrificial lamb, given over to rot and rust and early destruction - to protect the other, presumably better car.

A Winter Car is a variation on the "beater" theme...sometimes, but not always. Robert The Wrench, the guy who helped me piece together Eugene The Jeep after my botched plastic surgery, told me of his son's problem in protecting a classic CJ7 from corrosion. He'd tried POR-15 and a fiberglass body tub and rubberized coatings...everything failed.

So finally, the kid went and leased a new Jeep - for use in the winter. Four years, turn it back. And the old favorite, the classic Jeep, is unscathed.

That's an extreme position. For most of us, it's a sort of junker - but the best we can afford.

It's not going to be a car you love - not unless you want your heart broken. For Winter Car duty is like a sentence of a recalcitrant slave to the salt mines - there's no coming out. It's only a matter of time till the end.

The best Winter Car is a competent-but-nondescript set of wheels - pure transportation. GM sedans work well - they're eminently forgettable. Old Toyotas as well, except that they hold their value so well, even as they're dissolving into dusty flakes of oxide.

The body can, and really should be, holed with rust. Holes in the floor make for exciting trips; and a seat-track breaking through the floor can make for fine stories later. Sheet plywood, trimmed as needed, is a good one-season patch.

The heater, on the other hand, must, MUST be top-notch. If an otherwise good candidate lacks this, fix it - or pass on it. You're gonna be in that thing in weather cold enough to freeze the parts off that proverbial brass monkey...

Rubber, as well. The Winter Car must have better tires than any junker has a right to. Beater or no, you don't wanna be standing at the side of the road, trying to explain to the other driver and the cops why you were stupid enough to be out in the snow on tires showing the chord. Believe me, you won't get much slack from the law in such a rig, anyway

Wipers must work - but there's some leeway. I like to yank the right-hand wiper, just pull it off. One less blade to gather frozen slush - and I can reach over at stoplights, snatch the blade and twack! off the ice.

The rest of the package is typical Appalachia. The equipment must work - but only just enough to be legal. Two headlights, two taillights. The taillights need not be factory, nor even matching. Truck lights screwed into holes in the bumper - or even holes in the body - add to character.

Hub caps are a nuisance. If it still has them, toss them. If a door sags or binds, ask yourself: How badly do you need it? Passengers can get in on the left side and scoot over. Welding or bolting a righthand door to its jamb is a moneysaving seasonal solution.

A radio is fine if the rig has one...but it's not worth wasting money on. A mini-boom box set on the dash is good enough to pick up Rush or Hannity...and raise limousine-liberal eyebrows at lights.

Pop in a good battery - be sure to size it to your other car, so you can use it afterward - and you're all set. A good battery is worth its weight - remember, the idea is to go, not be towed.

Bungee cords can help in installing a wrong-size battery; the local discount parts retailer can help you. Trust me, he's seen it before.

And there you have it. Reverse status. You'll get the sneers, the funny looks. Smile and wave.

No need to wash this beaut on the odd sunny winter day. Leave it be! Save the money.

Change the oil? What, you kidding? This is a car whose path to the crusher you can measure in hours. Patch it, glue it, duct tape and pliers. That's your maintenance plan.

Clean it out? Naah. Toss the fast-food wrappers in the back, with the busted pieces of the dashboard. The paper will soak up the oil from the carpet...and, if you have a latent streak of pyromania, it can be fun to set fire to, later, as a bizarre Rite of Spring.

It's a liberating feeling. And when spring finally is sprung, you can celebrate Tax Day - by donating the remnants to the local car-collecting charity. A $50 pile of rust can suddenly become a $3500 tax deduction, through the magic of the Kelly Blue Book, and a charity receipt.

Alas for me, the choice this year is simpler - and more complicated. A Toyota zero-percent financial fire-sale caused me, on impulse, to trade in my four-wheel-drive truck for The Matrix Unloaded. In January...and I couldn't just put the newcomer on the road. That could never be.

I stared down Eugene The Jeep...he quivered, he shaked, he whined. In the end, I took pity...and condemned my gas miser, Enko-San, to slow death by road salt.

Enko-San was a curiosity - a three-cylinder Geo, just six years old, mechanically just short of worn out - but totally rust free, a Montana car somehow waylaid in Buffalo. Bought for $1000, it was a steal - it was to be my emergency gas-rationing transport. But the Matrix almost and nearly met it in fuel economy.

So, a change in plan and strategy. A motor transplant was cancelled, as is most maintenance. No more trips through the wash rack for Enko.

It survived the first winter. It'll survive the second. Maybe the third...but the writing's on the wall, the rust's on the pavement. It's painful, when you hold the power of life and death over the cars you love.

Such are the obligations, the duties, the heavy choices. The thrills and letdowns; feelings of love and betrayal - when a car buff needs select The Winter Car.

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JustPassinThru is a locomotive engineman and former political-science student in the Great Lakes region, where he drives trains, worships cars, curses government - and now will try to write about all three.

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