The Biography of a Car and the Mythology of the Previous Owners
The "Little Bastard" that Killed James Dean
Common to automotive folklore is the idea of cursed vehicles (Berg, 2020). The preeminent example of this is the mythology surrounding actor James Dean's Porsche, nicknamed "Little Bastard." The story goes that at an auction, this Porsche scared off other bidders and exuded a sinister aura, but this did not deter the actor. He purchased the vehicle and soon after found himself in a fatal accident. The car passed through several hands and ended up in the ownership of an mechanic who began to take it apart. Another accident occurred and maimed the mechanic. The pieces of the car--the transmission and motor components--that were sold to other people and used in their cars also resulted in dangerous auto accidents. More stories exist and have evolved over the years (Toase, 2017).
This exemplifies the magical thinking that permeates automotive folklore. Even half a century ago this was well-documented by Sanderson (1969). This article discusses the tendency of drivers to attach intelligence or a force of will to their vehicles. Others might utilize talismans to ensure good luck. Anecdotally, my parents always had a small bead cross hanging from the rearview mirror of our Plymouth Grand Voyager. Many friends of mine have named their cars; one of my own was a Toyota Pickup that had more rust than clean metal on the body and so I nicknamed it "King Tet," short for Tetanus and a play on the Pharaoh's name. Coincidentally, it had a lot of damage to the hood and front bumper, making it appear harelipped, also much like the pharaoh.
Regular Cars and the folklore of the "Previous Owner"
If you have ever purchased a used car, you know a little about the "Previous Owner." I capitalize the name as it is a recurring archetype in folklore about cars when people discuss their own vehicles. This seems to happen a lot more with people who fix up their own cars as they notice all the things that the Previous Owner screwed up or failed to maintain properly.
Regular Car Reviews sometimes serves as a place where these stories of the Previous Owner are disseminated. In their 2016 review of the 1991 Honda Civic ED6 EF Hatch, they closed with a story:
"When the owner got this car home... After a few weeks he noticed a smell that didn't go away. And he noticed that whenever he put the blower motor on, it got worse. So he popped off the vents and stuck his hand very carefully down the vents, and his fingers touched goo and he pulled his fingers out and they were yellow-ish brown. And sticky. There was dried vomit inside the air ducts.
"Now how does vomit get inside the vents? He doesn't know, but he can extrapolate a logical story. The mythical old lady who he bought this car from gave it to her granddaughter to use at Chippensburg University. She had it a few semesters and then gave it back to grandma. The girl was in a sorority, and I know that not all fraternities and sororities are heavy drinkers, but I have vomited out the window of a car before. One time I couldn't get the window down, and vomited into someone's shoes. But in that freakish moment, that panic-induced 'oh my god, I'm going to puke in a car, what do I do?' moment, you run through many options.
"Well this girl surveyed her situation who was sitting in the passenger seat and figured her best course of action was to lean forward and press her mouth against the vent. So the owner removed all the ducting and got out the garden hose. Now it smells great!
"When you write about cars, you're rarely writing about the car. You're really writing about the human stories that go with the vehicle. And if you want to get down to the crux of car culture, it's little moments like that. Car stories are really people stories."
In this transcribed passage, Mr. Regular emphasizes the importance of "car stories" as "people stories." In the end, a car is an extension of the individual who owns it, and artifact of their own identity. It comes with scratches, replaced parts, babied interiors, and a sort of psychosocial spirit that follows it through the gaze of an observer. As an artifact, a car is simultaneously what is percieved by the owner and what is percieved by the outside observer. To one folk group, a Toyota pickup is a reliable, dependable work truck. To another, it is the perfect thing to put on lower rims. Another may shorten the bed and remove the walls and take it on hunting trips. Each owner sneers at the other for wasting such a perfect avenue of expression.
But, even among these folk groups, each pickup is going to be different and survive different kinds of adversity. This is where I believe that Sanderson (1969)'s notion of anthropomorphized vehicles comes in: because cars have their responses to input, have different temperaments based on the conditions of their existence or production; and exist in close proximity to their owner--yet the existence of previous owners will always remain as a ghost in the car, affecting its "personality" ever so slightly--a car will feel like a separate entity to the owner. In this way, stories about an individual car arise, turning the car into a character and not just an artifact.
Mr. Regular's video library concerns itself with this idea. They portray vehicles as reflections of the owner, yet creatures with their own histories and desires, restrained by choices made by their creators. They utilize the model of a car from a particular era not just as an artifact from which artistic expression and cultural nuance can be uncovered, but as an evolving folk character that exemplifies all spirits of all owners, past and present. No single review exemplifies this better than their examination of the 2004 Plymouth PT Cruiser.
Mr. Regular analyzes vehicles as folk characters similarly to how the subjects of Miller (2004) collected and annotated folk stories in 1930s America. In those stories, later inspiring novels like The Grapes of Wrath, which depicted folk groups as fertile ground for capitalist alienation, atomization, and exploitation. Steinbeck's novel discusses how the folk group of the hero's family is more and more reduced into interchangeable hands, each member of the family losing their identity along the way, and eventually, the existence of the family is almost eradicated through the misery and deprivation that dustbowl refugees experienced.
Similarly, Mr. Regular tells the folk-economic story of the PT cruiser as a vehicle that was first purchased and babied by well-off grandparents who bought it because of the elevated seating and the nostalgic styling. Over the last decade and a half, these original owners began to be no longer capable of driving it for one reason or another, and so they were sold. But not many people want to drive them on account of their perceived ugliness and lack of attractive features. That means that this undesirable vehicle, who no longer had a nurturing home, was passed into the hands of scrapyards and those in desperate need of transportation. Because after the 2008 crash, and in the era of the pandemic recession, we all need cheap transportation. And because the current owners of these PT Cruisers are in so desperate of a need of transportation, they may not be able to afford preventative maintenance. They won't be babied any longer, the vehicle will not be nurtured. Soon enough, this car will lose its identity, its "home," and its cultural relevance. They will first become uncommon to see, then rare, then only in memory. There is a kind of melancholy in knowing that as Capitalist Amnesia sets in, the artifacts of another time period will be as unknown as the artifacts of a dead culture (Miller, 2004).
Taussig (2010) depicts how magic has changed in interpretation in South America (126-139). Specifically, how now magic has the connotation of being a Faustian pact that will never reap lasting benefits. The boon of receiving a cheap vehicle is one that will not last either. If you are always on the edge, always running a machine that is an inch from failing, it will die. It will go to the scrap yard eventually. And, in this hyper-capitalist age of cost-cutting, more and more parts of cars are electronic and plastic, and thus resistant to mending unlike the metal boats of earlier ages which could be fixed with patch welds and hand tools. With each new generation of vehicles, the cost of repair will go up and up. The specialized knowledge required will go up. The number of failure points will go up. How much longer until the boon of outright owning a vehicle instead of leasing it will be seen as a pact with slimy liars? Already the "Used Car Salesman" is a surrogate archetype for the wheeling-and-dealing Devil of Benet/Goethe.
But one point that Mr. Regular continually returns to is that these cars of the 00s and the 90s will remain. They are precious resources that are able to keep up with the cars of today, even if they lack amenities expected. And, as more and more people are economically burdened, people are buying relatively older and older. Anecdotally, my parents never owned a car older than them. My Dad owned a car that was only 7 years old in high school and he grew up poor. My mother was the same, with a no-frills hatchback that was only a few years old. My first car was already 27 years old when I got it at age 16. The next car I used was 30 years old. My current car is 24 years old. The manufacturer that makes my car no longer supports it, and in fact, has gone bankrupt. That means parts are getting rarer and rarer. How much longer until I can no longer replace what breaks and the car dies for good? It is possible that the DIY nature of car culture will vanish.
There is a kind of dread that I feel knowing that I will eventually have to move up-market towards something that I will not be able to repair without specialized knowledge and equipment. And while a 2010-2020-era car comes with better creature comforts, keeping a hypothetical, high mileage 2018 vehicle on the road in 2030 will be an expensive endeavor.
In the words of Mr. Regular, equally applicable to any aging car:
"PT Cruisers have become a rolling reminder of the fragile nature of our own financial stability," (Regular Car Reviews, 7:50-8:01).