Corey Pierce
Surviving highways in a diminutive car
At 41 I betrayed my father and bought a Smart Car.
He was a mechanic until the age of 79 so cars were a point of connection for us. From the age of five until my late teens I pumped gas at his station and later assisted him with oil changes. I learned what I could about cars.
My father watched me suffer through repairs on my first vehicle a Peugeot 504 that I purchased for a dollar. After I was chased by a fire truck on Vancouver’s Uppers Level Highway unaware that my car was smoking my father flew out to Vancouver and bought me a reliable Toyota Corolla. He was adamant that Corollas were “the only car anyone should buy.”
Every week from that point on when we talked on the phone my father would first ask how the car was doing then he would ask about me. Although I impeccably maintained my Corolla for 16 years it developed an exhaust leak that was irreparable. It was about that time I saw my first Smart Car bombing around Calgary. It was love at first sight. It was cute small funky energy-efficient (diesel-powered) and I knew I had to have one.
Refusing to join me on a test drive my father — in his thick Hungarian accent — just said the car was “weak.” He maintained his wounded silence as I extolled the car’s virtues.
My husband was offered an opportunity to perform his one-man show at the Sunset Theatre in Wells B.C. With the price of gas hitting new heights we set out on a 2000-kilometre road trip to prove my father wrong.
On the morning of our departure we lined our luggage on the sidewalk in front of our disbelieving neighbours. Across the street teenagers yelled offers to pick up the car and move it down the street. After engaging in what seemed like a giant game of luggage Tetris we pulled away from our astonished neighbours with luggage piled to the roof bikes securely fastened to____.
On the highway to Nelson I worked on weaning myself off my speed addiction. In my Corolla I could drive from Calgary to Vancouver in 11 hours with only the occasional fill-up and bathroom break. Life in a Smart Car is different. While the car is extraordinarily fuel-efficient the gas tank is small and with a heavy load it slows to 80 kilometres an hour uphill. I turned to my husband and said “Don’t tell my father.”
I quickly developed a newfound respect for the small old cars that I used to pass swearing as I did. They were not going slow to piss me off the drivers were not aimless scared incompetent people going nowhere. I developed patience and accepted that we’d get to Nelson when we got to Nelson.
We had no shortage of admirers when we arrived. Wherever we went we quickly gathered crowds and were often forced to push our way to the car. I began to understand what life must be like for Britney Spears.
Arriving in Vancouver (my old stomping grounds) I took the car to my trusty mechanic Helmut for an oil change. He reminded me that although the car was smart it still required oil. I had been driving in hot weather at potentially dangerous oil levels. Our luggage was packed in the back on top of the engine and it’s not terribly practical to unload the whole car to check the oil. Helmut handed me the bill and informed me that there was no opening to drain the oil so he had to siphon it out with a tube. That meant a more expensive operation. This is not something I considered when I bought the car. I turned to my husband and said “Don’t tell my father.”
Our third vow of silence came after a rather harrowing experience as we headed north towards Lillooet. I was reluctant to let my husband drive the new car. It’s a neuroses I inherited from my father which I knew I needed to break. Because the car has no clutch the automatic transmission is controlled by the gearshift which you click upward or downward. It can be confusing at first especially if you are used to driving a standard. Not giving my Ontario-born husband — who has little experience driving in the mountains — sufficient time to get used to the car I handed over the wheel on a winding single-lane mountain highway.
We proceeded along a particularly long stretch of road with no passing lane a lot of steep inclines and a tailgating truck driver. On the downhill we managed 130 km/h and on the inclines we slowed to our halting 80 — no doubt pissing off the trucker.
I was having flashbacks to a 1971 movie The Duel . In it Dennis Weaver plays a middle-aged businessman who finds himself in a bizarre cat-and-mouse game with a trucker in a grimy tanker truck.
When a passing lane finally appeared we were again on a steep incline making it difficult for the truck to pass us. We got out into the right lane so the truck could pass but the passing lane was running out the cliff’s edge approached and the truck wasn’t passing so we attempted to move back into the driving lane. The truck wouldn’t let us. It pulled past us nearly taking off our door. We were run off the road onto the gravel shoulder at the edge of a cliff narrowly escaping a serious plunge. Profanities spewed from my mouth. Sitting in the passenger seat with adrenaline rushing through my body I turned to my husband and said “Don’t tell my father.”
We journeyed northward to Wells. We were shaken by our experience and decided to drive slowly — on purpose — carefully taking in the incredible view. We would get there when we got there. As we parked our car in front of the Sunset Theatre we heard someone say “Who the hell would drive a Smart Car up here?”
I did but my dad doesn’t need to know.
