A Krautwagon too Kultured

For reasons we needn’t go into here, I have been driving somebody’s magnificent piece of machinery called a BMW 740Il for a year and now I am able to explain why I am so happy, happy, happy that the Krauts didn’t win the last war.

There’s a law against saying this sort of thing out loud and the Thought Police may kick in my door some night soon but I say it anyway. You can have too much of a good German thing.

I would report to you all the tricks and stunts this car performs, except that I haven’t been able to learn more than half of them so far. As with modern computers, I suppose nobody ever learns them all.

It’s only the other day I learned how to turn on the fog lights. I wish I had known last winter but I was never good at reading directions, particularly the BMW directions which come in a book the size of a Gideon Bible.

For reasons only a German could know, they put an automatic transmission in this car instead of the real kind so although the motor has enough power to haul a house up Grouse Mountain without shifting gears, the car moves ponderously. It is more sedate than brisk. Old ladies must love it.

(By the way, I speak of that engine on faith. I’m sure it is there, all cars have one, but I have never seen it. A plastic cover hides it, much as Victorian age ladies hid their limbs. It could be that beneath the cover is a legion of muscular elves from the hills of Bavaria, pedalling like mad.)

Much of the mighty engine’s power is used up on what must be the greatest collection of gadgetry ever crammed into one horseless carriage. The seats shift electrically, up, down, forward, backward and can be made firm or soft with yet more buttons. There is a button for raising and lowering the headrest and, surprise, I found after four months a lever which changes the position of the steering wheel.

Those a meager sampling few of the Beemer’s tricks and stunts of which is has more than are usually found in a Turkish whorehouse.

The dashboard will inform you how many miles to your destination, when you will get there, what your gas mileage will be and when you exceed the speed limit it says “cheep”. It tells the time, the date, the outdoor temperature and no doubt, once I locate those buttons, whether your wife is faithful and whether you are pregnant. The sensor doubtless cuts off the last question from those it whom it identifies as males.

If something goes wrong with a Beemer you take it to an authorized dealer. He knows such things as how much air to put in the tires and where the transmission fluid filler cap is. The owner is only permitted to steer, brake, fill the gas tank, turn on the air conditioning and thumb windows and roof vent open and closed. Almost everything else is a secret.

Being undisciplined, which Germans are not, I was once so naughty as to temporarily disconnect the battery cable. My radio promptly lost its mind. Unless you can remember the code -- and I’ve had trouble with my street address for twenty years -- the radio, the stereo and the compact disc player all shut down.

It was necessary to phone the dealer who keeps the number in a locked safe, under armed guard.

However you get only three tries at punching in the number correctly. Fail three times and shame on you, go hide your face, dummkopf. You then must then leave the ignition on for a full hour before you will be allowed to take the exam again.

Would you like to see people these running the world?

What is it about the Teuton that he will spend time and good money on all those devices merely to prevent some stranger from sneaking a free listen to KISSFM on a car radio playing? I went through far less stringent procedures to hear Pavarotti sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

The Beemer has anti theft devices beyond number. I have made it a point to disconnect as many as I can find. Otherwise the day would soon come when the car would call the nearest police station every time I wanted to drive to the 7-Eleven for a litre of milk.

I don’t wish to be unkind to the Germans, humorless sons of bitches that they are, but thank God they lost.

I wear a sign on the back of the big shiny Beemer which says “MY GOOD CAR IS A 1972 DATSUN 510”

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