The Senate held hearings today on Blackwater and the shell companies they contrived in order to share lucrative contracts with Raytheon. The Blackwater testimony was misleading, vague, and at times seemed close to perjury. More hearings will be held to sort out the mess. I doubt that Cheney or Eric Prince will do any hard time in prison, but it’s a possibility.
Hearings were also held today to hector and harass the CEO of Toyota, an honorable man who traveled to the US to express remorse for his product’s recent spate of defects and the deaths that resulted. It’s alleged that Blackwater contractors were flat out murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan. If I was producing the evening news I’d want at least to balance the Toyota hearing with the Blackwater hearing, even if it meant I had to cut another story short. The Littleton, Colorado school shootings used a lot of air time. Maybe the eyewitness testimony of the precocious 12 year old Littleton eighth grader could have been edited.
For me the Toyota brand is all about quality, dependability and integrity. The mats in the luggage area of the hatchbacks have bound edges. The comparable Ford economy hatchback has die cut mats with rough edges. I’ve never been stranded due to a mechanical failure. The sales and service people have always dealt with me honestly.
I bought my first Toyota Corolla in 1973. Drove it from San Francisco to an Association for Institutional Research gathering in Michigan. I didn’t see many Japanese cars in Michigan. After the meetings, I circled out through New Hampshire, then back home to San Francisco via Wisconsin where I tore out the backseat to make room for gear and to improve the reclining angle for better sleeping. Left the backseat in the cellar at dad’s cabin on Jordan lake and journeyed onward home. Homeless actually. I was between apartments, working a day job at UCSF, showering at friends’ houses and sleeping nights in the Toyota in Golden Gate Park.
A year or so later, that little car was totaled on Highway 101 northbound near the East Blithedale exit in Mill Valley when the traffic came to a sudden stop but the truck behind me didn’t. There were a bunch of people in the car, but no back seat. Happily no one was hurt. After a brief meeting with the Highway Patrol officer who was trying to untangle the pile-up, I limped on to Novato where I discharged my passengers in Bonnie Peterson’s driveway. An onlooker would have thought we were rehearsing a circus act: clown car. I left that car in Bonnie’s driveway for the insurance adjuster’s perusal, and then had it hauled away to the junk yard.
I was living in a nice little place on Castro Street at 18th, above the all night donut shop across from the theater. Buses roared outside my windows 24 hours a day and I needed a car because I was consulting at the Stanford med school, a lengthy commute down Highway 280. I bought a Fiat, an awful car. In the years since then I’ve owned a lot of cars and pick-up trucks. That Fiat was one of the worst, and the Toyota was one of the best. I’ve lost count of how many Toyotas we’ve owned, but they have always been flawless.
Right now we have a Toyota Matrix and a Rav4 in the driveway. I expect them to last for a long time, longer than the rude and abusive congress-critters I saw on the news tonight. Oddly enough, Fox News has a fair and balanced story on Akio Toyoda’s testimony before congress today. It’s worth reading.
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I drove my old Celica 100K, my son drove it another 100K and sold it for $1000. Been driving a ‘92 Lexus SC400 for ten years and the damn thing goes like the same bat out of hell as always, (not that there’s much opportunity for that in the city of Berkeley. Flooring it up Cedar Street?)
Flooring it in the race for the last parking space in Andronico’s parking lot. The seats are too hard. Still, I like the idea of buying a used Lexus, and if my Toyotas ever wear out and the Maybach is in storage, that might be a good idea.
To begin with, I’m an excellent driver. I’ve managed to get through my entire adult life without so much as a serious scratch on any of the various cars, foreign and domestic, that I’ve driven over the years. That said, About a year ago I bought my first Toyota, a new greenish Avalon with more buttons and levers than even Steve Jobs could possibly learn to use. It was beautiful. But within a week of purchase I began to notice that the accelerator pedal was exerting a malevolent sucking force on my right shoe. Of course, I understood at the time why the trooper might be skeptical. But twice? $260.
Two weeks later I was backing out of a friend’s driveway late one evening assuring my wife that I was certainly under the legal limit when the car lurched backward into a large dumpster that I swear was not there as recently as a year before. I was informed later that it had been placed in that exact spot by an elderly Japanese neighbor. Coincidence? $2,800.
Within a month, again late one evening, the car mysteriously attracted a large eight point buck in full rut to the right headlight at a time when I was being distracted by a tense disagreement with the navigation lady. The deer was probably uninsured, but I’ll never know because he was running off as I got out of the car. And Frank, here’s the amazing part; As I watched the hind quarters disappear into the woods I distinctly noticed a little nip in the air. Now if that doesn’t make you think of a Japanese gymnast I don’t know what does! Are you beginning to see the pattern? $2600.
Anyway, I managed to get through the next few months without incident until one morning about 3:00am during a torrential downpour I was awakened by a neighbor pounding wildly on my condo door. It seems the lower parking garage had been flooded and my Avalon was submerged to just above the windshield. In all, twenty-five cars were totaled including a Prius and two pristine and perfectly innocent Subarus. The horror, Frank! The horror! Do you get it. Now God is involved and He’s going after the entire species. And don’t be surprised by the usual random collateral damage. Avalon totaled…$43,000. Wife’s car totaled…$20,500. Daughter’s (home from college)….$14,000.
Thankfully, I’ve managed to recover and correctly interpreted this sequence of events as an admonition from the deity to buy a new Infinity M35x which, incidentally, doesn’t have so much as a scratch in its first six months. Meanwhile, we’ve seen Toyotas all over the world turning against their owners in numbers unimaginable only a few short months ago. Steven King foresaw this Frank. He just missed the Nipponese connection. So, for God sake Frank, get those two Toyotas out of your driveway while there’s still time. It’s spring and I definitely feel a little nip in the air. Let me guess…Matrix…$16000. Rav4…$18000.
Don, I can’t believe you went with the Japanese gymnast reference not once but twice! So NOT politically correct.
Still, there may be a Steven King “Christine” thing happening Toyota-wise. Me, I never go anywhere without Cujo in the backseat (except Wednesdays, when I have to vacuum all the dog hair and take my aunt to lunch).
Thinking of writing a monograph on corporate genotypes, sort of a Lamarckian take on genetic drift among compact cars… probably call it “Origin of the Specious.”
Why not make a strong appeal to the Jewish readership and call it “Voyage of the Bagel?”
I have to check back here more frequently. I hate to miss a groaner like that one.
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