Sticker Shock

Sticker Shock

from Hemmings Motor News

October, 2009 - David LaChance

If you had dropped by the house the other night, you would have found me out in the driveway, taking a wire brush to the corroded electrical bits at the tail end of the old Saab convertible. It was a pleasant enough way to pass a mild summer evening, even if there was no baseball game on the radio, and I only wish I could take credit for the idaea. It was more or less suggested by the folks down at the local garage--if, by suggested, you mean "do this, or we will never again permit you to drive your car on a public roadway."

It's an annual ritual in Massachusetts, as I suspect it is in your state, too, getting some sort of sticker declaring that your automobile presents no clear and present danger to the citizenry. And if you've got one of those newer Korean-made transportation appliances, the kind the government would like you to buy, it's probably nothing more than an inconvenience to schlep the car down to the inspection station for its annual going-over. But it's anything but perfunctory for those of us with older cars. In Massachusetts, we ransom the lives of the old cars we love one year at a time.

Inspection time, at least for me, is a time of miracles, the one day a year when everything on the car is in working order at the same time. (It's like Brigadoon, but with fewer tam o'shanters and more baling wire.) If there's been a single fly in the ointment in this whole inspection thing, it's been the backup light. Just last year, I was struggling with getting the backup light of the Volvo P1800 back into working condition. It was more complicated than you might first have thought, because someone who had been into the transmission at some point in the past left out the little tab that switches the light on. The problem solved itself when the shift mechanism broke shortly after I sold the car, requiring disassembly of the transmission after all.

The Curse of the Backup Light reappeared during old Saab's recent failure: One worked, the other didn't, and it wasn't the bulb. Among the lunatics who keep old Saab 900s going, you'd get a medal for having only one taillamp out. My old Saab 9000, in fact, had only one backup light by design, and I guess that was sufficient to keep the citizenry safe, because that car got a sticker. That light was just the tip of the iceberg, though. The little turn indicator on the passenger-side fender, the one that most cars don't even have, wasn't blinking, and the airbag light was on, which was okay last year, but not this year. (Saab 900 owners are chuckling now, because they know this one's caused by someone replacing the turn signal switch, which sets a trouble code that can't be reset without the special tool, which no one has.) A death trap, for certain.

Now you might say that it's reasonable for the commonwealth to expect the car to have a working backup light, and I suppose there's something to that. I haven't actually looked at the statistics for the accidents caused by malfunctioning backup lights, which I'm certain are alarming. But I do have to wonder about priorities. I'm living proof that not everyone in our hobby has deep pockets, and I find myself thinking about the hobbyist who spends hundreds of dollars on new tires or--or worse yet, a new brake master cylinder, something the inspectors don't even look at!--instead of a light that will be needed in the .007 percent of the time the car is moving backwards.

Am I a crank? You have to ask? Still, I find myself wondering what difference it makes whether a car's turn signals are working when so many drivers can't be bothered to flick the lever. And I would argue that we're putting too much focus on machinery, and not enough on driver training and testing. I would sooner take a cross-country trip with our guy McNessor in a car with bald tires and bad shocks than a lift to the grocery store in a brand-new Volvo with someone who's addicted to texting. But that's all beside the point when what the rule-makers demand are cars that are not merely safe, but perfect.


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