Cars, cars, cars … my life seems to be dominated by the automobile over the past few weeks. Driving them, thinking about them, looking at pictures of them on the internet, cursing them, praising them, even loving them.
This is a new phenomenon for me. I’ve never been a petrolhead like some of my friends. I’ve always regarded a car as simply a utility product, designed to get me from A to B as quickly, efficiently and comfortably as possible.
But I remember precisely the moment my attitude began to change. Sitting in a traffic jam in my seven- year-old Toyota on Sheikh Zayed Road on May 8, a Thursday evening in the rush hour tail-to-tail of vehicles departing the DIFC area and heading south, I was muttering to myself about the ubiquity of the automobile and cursing it for making my life so complicated.
Then I looked closely at the sleek machines all around me – beautiful BMWs, mighty Mercedes 4x4s, luxurious Lexus.
I was daydreaming when the moment of epiphany occurred. A huge billboard proclaimed “The legend of the land”, with an alluring picture of a pearly white Toyota Land Cruiser climbing a desert dune with the sun setting in the background. I almost heard the car talking to me: “Buy me, buy me,” it said.
Then my gaze fell on the other message on the hoarding: “Zero per cent interest”. Wow. In an era of interest rates uncertainty and rising inflation, that is virtually free money. After a few seconds and some rough calculations, I’d persuaded myself, Al Etihad Credit Bureau or not, that it would be financially irresponsible of me not to at least make some inquiries.
By the time I got home, I was convinced. I’d been loyal to my old car for a long time, it had served me well and was showing only a few signs of its age. But enough was enough. I deserved a new one.
The next day, I headed down to the Toyota dealer on SZR with wife and child. The drive down the slip road towards the dealership is one long seductive car-fest. Past BMW, Rolls-Royce and Jaguar lies the Toyota dealership.
The showroom should have above it the words of Dante “abandon hope all ye who enter here”, but the Italian was describing the entrance to hell, and the Toyota showroom, to my new petro-mind and that of my girls, was pure heaven.
Cars in a showroom are irresistible. Once you’re there, it’s almost impossible to get out without buying. Add to that the persuasion of wife and child, and I was a lost soul.
Mrs Kane fell for the Land Cruiser, as had I. My five-year-old first fancied “the blue one”, but then went for the Land Cruiser as well when she was shown the electric coolbox fitted as standard. “A place for my chocolate,” she giggled in joy.
The words from a pop song came to my head, origins unknown: “Girls don’t like boys they like cars and money.”
After that, it was an easy process for the Toyota salesmen to reel us in. A few signatures here and there, another couple of visits to the showroom to make final decisions on specification and colour (we went for the exact replica of the “legend of the land” billboard), and all was done.
I collected it from the showroom the other evening, luxuriating in that lovely new car smell, drove it around the corner and parked up, just to look at it.
Another pop song was raging in my brain, from Queen: “I’m in love with my car … ”
fkane@thenational.ae