Susie Baroo
A Genuine POS Mountain Car
By Reviewed by B. FrankOK, I admit it. I’m looking at SUV product reviews. It happened because of a commercial I saw in a bar (for Jeep), which screamed something like, “AIDS STRANDED SKIERS! RESCUES INJURED HIKERS! SAVES SUNDRY SINNERS!” — while the camera panned from the heroic Jeep racing through the hitherto unsullied wilderness on a mission of mercy. It might have been the beer in my belly (it was dark and wet), the band’s break-up on stage (another story), or the banal basketball ego-fest (closed-captioned for the hearing impaired) on the aforementioned TV screen, but my attention wandered to thoughts of just what might drive my fellow mountain livers to buy into such clap-trap and purchase one of these gleaming chariots, when for a mere $300 (and a bit of elbow, shoulder, teeth, hair and eye grease), one might proudly drive a Genuine POS Mountain Car (all rights for sale). So here I sit, reading on-line reviews of the latest SUV (SubUrban assault Vehicle) products.
My favorite so far is for a Hummer H1, on a site called www.carsurvey.org. Herewith, some quotes from actual users: “This car is a road leagle (sic) tank AWESOME!”
To which another correspondent replies, “As a US soldier who has held primary duty positions as an M1025 HMMVWW driver, filled all four positions on an M1A2 Abrams, and test driven the civilian Hummer, I can honestly say that ‘there is no comparison.’ The M1025 HMMVWW (Humvee) is an excellent replacement for the immortal Willy’s GPV (Jeep).” He goes on, “I wouldn’t bet my life on a Hummer against a Soviet T-80, British Challenger II, German Leopard II, French AMX-30, or an Israeli Melkava. But I’ll take that Abrams any day.”
Someone else contributes, “OK army boy, calm down. I think the comparison of a Hummer to a tank wasn’t literal. But compared to anything else on ‘civilian’ roads, the comparison is pretty valid. Hummers are tanks compared to all the crappy ass so called Sport Utilities out there. I’d put a Hummer up against anything else out there (save maybe a semi trailer ... )”
I’ll spare you the rest of my research, and — cut to the chase‚ as the hero said in those bad movies I used to watch. The preceding is the tone of most testimonials from owners of these machines, with few references to off-highway (much less mountain rescue) operations. These folks are fearful road warriors, looking for the biggest, baddest piece of commuting security they can find. Most of the shiny Hummers and Jeeps I see are careening aggressively to my favorite mountain town’s new super-shop-til-you-scream-megastore, to increase their patriotic credit card debt load. I seldom see them on backcountry 4WD roads, and have yet to witness one racing up a mountainside like a St. Bernard dog on a mission of mercy. We are being propagandized to believe that our trophy wheels will somehow make us free and able to save our less-fortunate compatriots (while incidentally utterly fucking up the landscape screaming by like a movie stage-set outside our hermetically sealed and soundproofed windows), while the reality is much less romantic and much more destructive. There is another way of being mobile in the mountains. Here then, is my humble review of a humbler type of mountain transportation.
Susie Baroo came into my life at the end of a grieving period for my lost car love, Lucette. Several relationships had failed. The wrong car at the wrong time. Maybe you know the story. I’d just had a falling-out with yet another inadequate car. Then I met Susie. She’d been serially doctored and abused by a previous owner’s boyfriends. The woman left town and car at last, to change her luck I suppose. Susie sat abandoned, full of dust, trash, and spare parts. A friend owned her title, but couldn’t make her run. The battery was dead, of course. The wiring was screwed up and vacuum hoses lay about like arteries in mid-operation. A headlight and taillight were broken out, windshield cracked into a Rorshach test pattern. She had faded paint, dents in front and back bumpers, one fender tweaked. The odometer was pushing a quarter million miles. I opened the back hatch, cleared aside trash and parts, and test-laid the sleeping possibilities. I discovered that a 1986 Suby 4WD wagon has just enough inside room for an average-height, middle-aged American male to stretch full-length. This test-lay technique was first described to me by a lay botanist in a rainforest in the great rainy Northwest. Sometimes, shelter is more important than mechanical integrity, she taught me. Lest you get the wrong ideas, we only counted rare mushrooms and such together. I never inhaled, OK? Now, where was I? Yes, the Suby — I bought her, motor unheard, on faith.
$300, a jump start, and 10 miles at 20 mph later, the Suby sat outside my quarters, awaiting TLC (tires, lights, combustion) and other niceties. Subaru headlights cost half as much as I paid for the car, so I pasted a spare $10 sealed-beam into the hole with caulk. I taped over the taillight. After a day of tinkering, I got the engine to idle without a cloud of smoke and backfires to call out the Homeland Fire Security Corps. I took her to my friendly local mechanic, for some expertise. He just shook his head, said, “So you got a POS (piece-of-shit) car did you?” and gave me advice on further improvements I could do myself, before he would dirty his hands under her hood. I did his bidding, took her back, and for only another $250 had a running Genuine POS Mountain Car of my own. I sold my other car for $1,000 (more than recouping my investment), and test-drove Susie to a little mountain range in Nevada only 600 miles away. Somewhere in Utah, I realized that this would be the long-term relationship that Lucette would have wished for me, before she left my life. (See my Review of Lucette K. Car in MG #81.)
It has been several years and 50,000 miles now for Susie Baroo and me, and (like Kristofferson’s Bobby McGee) she’s shared the secrets of my soul. Unlike Bobby, I’m not about to let her slip away, though Susie has (as does any high-strung mistress) a few faults and proclivities. She shakes like a belly dancer at 66 miles an hour, but I console myself that she is just saving me speeding tickets. Her heater only works on vent, freezing my toes while toasting my face. She also (and I can’t really put this delicately) likes blow-jobs, which has caused me to get odd looks at stoplights in the fair cities and towns of our Mountain West, though what we do out in the woods is nobody’s business.
I guess I should explain.
As noted before, Susie’s parts are high dollar. While tracking down a nuisance habit of hers, in which she refuses to run unless the choke is closed, I discovered that blowing into a certain vacuum tube connected to the altitude sensor (cost: $450) would put her right and purring in no time. I installed a long hose into the driver compartment, plugged the end, and now can simply pull the plug and blow her until she’s satisfied. How long is that, you ask? I dunno. At a time like that, are YOU going to look at your watch? As one or another of my acquaintances has taught me — whatever makes the lady happy will make the gentleman happy too, eventually. All Genuine POS Mountain Car drivers should become aware of this possible proclivity, in the interests of keeping your own mountain lady purring. Requests for tutorials may be addressed to my box, (along with a picture of your Genuine POS Mountain Car). Allow 6 to 8 weeks for response, and (like the president) I may be too busy to respond personally to your request, so don’t get churlish. If you insist on trying this on your own, just remember to use caution and gain some practice before doing it in traffic. If a police car pulls alongside, I advise you to ease your Genuine POS Mountain Car to a roadside pull-off, and blow her there.
Recently, a Subaru parts man prescribed an orifice that he thought just might fix the problem. It only cost $4, so I bought one. After waiting two weeks for the part to arrive from Japan, I slipped it into one of Susie’s vacuum tubes. I turned her key. She purred like a kitten. I felt a little sad, thinking of our many traffic trysts, now a thing of the past. I drove into town, turned her off. An hour later, I started her up. She stalled. With a little tremor of pleasure, I realized what she wanted. I grabbed my end of her hose from its resting place, pulled the plug and blew. Susie Baroo immediately settled into the rattling purr I’ve come to love. She had what she wanted, and so did I. We ditched the Jeeps, Hummers and other assorted assault vehicles on the edge of town, and headed for the mountains.
If you’re looking for personal salvation from the onslaught of shiny faux-mountain rescue tanks invading our roads, there may be a Genuine POS Mountain Car in need of shelter outside your door (like a faded Jesus on wheels), this very minute. If so, don’t turn her away. Just give her a jump start, some TLC, and gently blow the lady back to life.
