Madness, And The Purchase Of New Cars

Today, Sally bought a brand new Nissan Sentra. I congratulated her on her new purchase, but couldn't help but wonder if she was just nuts at some level. Because, truth be told, any purchase of a new car is a highly-emotional experience usually driven by sheer irrationality.

When I've bought a new car (1992, and again in 2002), it's usually been in response to increasingly-burdensome mechanical-repair expenses. Same with Sally, but with a twist. Her efforts to track down a niggling problem with flickering lights - the sort of thing that some people are sensitive to, like the flickering of fluorescent lights, that some people have no trouble with at all, but drives others nuts - drove her to great, fruitless expense to try to fix, and eventually to the radical decision to toss the old auto and buy a new one.

It's all madness, of course. New autos turn quickly into old autos and new niggling mechanical problems appear. All our problems with mobility never really get solved, they just mutate.

Which reminds me, next year is 2012, and if I adhere to a ten-year schedule, as I have been, it'll be time to hit the new car lots before too long.