08/ 01/ 2004
by Harvey King
I’ve never really been into cars. For me, they were merely a means to get one from Point A to Point B. Perhaps it was a certain frugality (okay, a blatant cheapness) that influenced my decision to downplay the whole status-symbol, self-identifying, aesthetics-appreciation aspects of personal transportation. For whatever reason, I have a track record of driving a somewhat dull car for years (16 is my record), with no consideration of the extra-transportational attributes of vehicular operation.
But then, I read in MyBusiness and my accountant up-and-suggested there may be certain tax advantages to my purchasing a business vehicle weighing more than 6,000 pounds. “What type of vehicle would that be?” I asked. “An over-the-road big-rig?” He informed me that any number of yacht-sized SUVs or military vehicles adapted to street navigation would work.
I began surveying the road, looking for potential tax advantages. At the hardware store, I parked next to a pick-up truck – or was it an SUV? No, it was a pick-up truck – that caught my attention. The vehicle, which turned out to be a trans-vehicular, category-bending Avalanche, was blindingly waxed and spotless, but still exuded an undeniable aura of professional utility and working toughness. Especially eye-catching was the missing front passenger seat that had been replaced with a neatly arrayed deck of office equipment including laptop computer and printer-copier. I swooned at the configuration and went looking for the vehicle’s owner, a salesman, who works “out of his car,” he told me. As he proudly demonstrated how the laptop could swing out for easy use by the person in the cockpit (he actually said, “cockpit”), I grew weak in the knees with what can only be described as a bad case of automobile envy.
“Does it weigh over 6,000 pounds?” was all I could think to ask.
Later that evening, upon hearing about my car encounter of the envious kind, my household’s resident teenage transportation authority suggested I watch with him a program on MTV called “Pimp My Ride.” On the program, the host, a popular rap singer with a strangely spelled name, shows up at the door of a young person who drives what in “my day” would have been called a “heap” (or, “Harvey King’s car”) and takes it to a shop called West Coast Custom Auto where it is transformed into a home entertainment center on wheels sheathed with a veneer of plastic adorned with a paint-job my son ranks up against anything he’s ever seen in an art museum.
That night, my dreams were filled with visions of 6,000-pound SUV “rides” filled with plasma screens and conference tables; 14-passenger vans “pimped out” with theatre chairs and popcorn machines.
The next morning I sprinted to my garage to re-check my car’s odometer. “Thank goodness,” I sighed. “There’s at least another 150,000 miles left.”
