A COUPLE OF OTHER THOUGHTS
I re-read my last post, and realised there was an omission. I actually have done three things since I got the car back from Dan. The third was the rear shocks. This was such an easy swap that I completely forgot about it. But made a real difference in the way Snow White drives. The shocks I took out were, to say the least, shot.
As I have stated previously, I am new to Mercedes ownership. The only Mercedes I had ever driven before I bought Snow White belonged to a friend of mine. A 2006 E-430 as memory serves me (which it doesn’t all that well by the way). Black. Black leather. Immense. 190 kilometres on the clock. He’d picked it up from the dealer two days before he tossed me the keys and asked me if I’d like to drive it.
Well, say no more! It was effortless and silent. Went like stink. My memory was that if you had enough clout to buy it in the first place, and a really big limit on your Visa card to keep it full of fuel, you could really eat up some miles in this thing. I handed him back the keys after a really high speed run home, grinning like an idiot.
“Nice ride,” was all I said.
I have similar feelings about Snow White. I bought her because I thought it a travesty that such a nice car could suffer the fate she had. I wasn’t sure I would like her. I wasn’t sure there weren’t mice nesting on top of the pistons as well as everywhere else, in which case I’d just flung a whole lot of money out the window.
I wasn’t sure of anything.
But the car talked to me. I know this sounds ridiculous, but this is the way it was. The car talked to me, and I believed her.
And now I find myself on the other side of the coin. I have a forty-two year old car I drive with utter faith. I twist the key and drive. And every time I do, I hear my lovely Snow White say, “I told you so.”
Now I get it why you are all so fond of your rides.
Give me a single word to describe my car, and I will call her “elegant”. Graceful and poised come to mind, but I only have one word so I will call her elegant.
She is elegant. Painted white, which on another car would be boring. It is not. She is neither a hot rod (in which case painted red), nor a truck (in which case painted brown). She is elegant and poised, and wears her white dress with style. It is becoming and understated, much as the car is.
From every angle this is the most feminine car I have ever owned. I look at her frequently and I still can not figure out why. But every time I look at my car, I see a woman. Not a bad thing by the way. I happen to love women, especially when they wear white dresses.
So in summation, I have brought Snow White back from the dead with the least of worries. She helped me every step of the way, because she wanted to be. A car left for dead to be a mouse nest, only that will never do. I bought her, I fixed her, and now she is my friend.
And in a couple of hours, Dan who is Benz Doctor is going to arrive at my door. Tomorrow he and I are headed out with the Mercedes Club of Canada on a drive, wine and cheese tasting expedition in Picton, Ontario, which is about 300 kilometres east of where I type. It is pelting rain right now, but the weather forecast says it ought to get it all out of its system before the morning. Fingers crossed.
This is what I never imagined so long ago on the cold November day when I bought my car. That the experience of my car would bring me new friends. New venues. New everything.
So thank you Snow White for doing so.
Enjoy your rides everyone and talk to them.
Like cats, they will purr.
