I think it was the white leather
seats that appealed to me, or perhaps it was the winking wing mirrors that
warned of an approaching car in my righthand lane. Whatever it was, it didn’t
take long to convince me that this particular car was the Mazda CX5 I’d be
looking for. Ten minutes later, I shook hands with the salesman and handed over
an obscene amount of money for a second hand vehicle.
When we arrived in New Zealand,
we realised that we needed a car quickly. Very soon afterwards, we realised we
actually needed two. Kiwis have the highest number of cars per capita in the
world. There are a number of reasons for this. Public transport is piss poor in
the cities and non-existent in the countryside. There are none of the
restrictions on owning old, smoke guzzling rust buckets like you find in
Europe. And finally, New Zealand is a dumping ground for all the second hand
cars the Japanese no longer want.
So, the average Kiwi family has a
big car for the weekends, a little car for dropping the kids to school, a
thirty-year-old Toyota Corolla for each of the teenagers over sixteen and an
old Hiace van for when they go camping. And if you leave out the big car, the
rest probably cost less together than an average family car in Ireland.
We bought a 2002 Honda Accord
when we got here in 2016. So, it was seventeen when we sold it recently. That’s
pretty normal for a car here, where most of the cars are driven by people
younger than the car itself. A week later, we bought the Mazda CX5. Like most
second hand cars here, it was fresh off the boat from Yokahama. It was a 2016
model and as I did the test drive, I noticed that things have moved on since I
last drove a modern car. You don’t need a key anymore and the handbrake is a
little button on the dashboard that gives you no confidence that the brake has
been set.
The dials and clocks on the
dashboard have also disappeared, to be replaced by electronic displays that
wink and flash like a joyride at the playground. It makes you feel that you
should be sitting in the back reading the newspaper and let the electronic
wizardry do its thing. On the test drive, I noticed the onboard display was
providing tons of information, but the problem was it was all in Japanese.
Now, I watched a lot of war
movies as a kid and can stretch to a “Tora, Tora, Tora” or “Banzai” if
required. But I’m at a loss for the Japanese for “Average Speed” or “Litres per
kilometre”. So, I agreed with the dealer that they would fiddle with the
software to fix this for a not insignificant price.
I picked the car up three days
later and headed to the in-laws house on the coast. The first part of the trip
was uneventful until an orange light appeared on the dashboard. I pulled in and
checked on-line and it said that this was a warning about tyre pressure. I checked
all four tyres with the time-honoured method of administering a swift toe poke
to each of them and they seemed fine. I called the dealer and he said the tyres
had all been pumped up before he handed the car over and the warning light was
probably due to “settling”. He suggested turning the car off and on again,
demonstrating what a loss he was to the IT industry.
Anyway, this seemed to work and
we carried on. I pulled in for petrol and spent ten minutes trying to find the
cap release switch (why can’t they put these in the same place in every car).
When I pulled out of the garage, another orange light flicked on. This one was
for “check engine” which is the sort of vague answer you’d get from a fifteen
year old if you asked what they had been up to.
Google told me that either my
petrol cap was loose or my engine was about to seize up catastrophically,
proving that the greatest search engine in the world can scare the life out of
you by giving widely divergent results when giving car information as well as
medical updates.
My petrol cap was indeed loose
and I fixed this and carried on my merry way. We soon reached the motorway. The
speed limit there is 100kmh and most kiwis keep to the limit. I found myself
overtaking everyone and whizzing down the outside lane. I glanced at the speed
dial as I did this and it said I was doing 75 to 80. As I overtook a Ferrari, I
realised that there was a problem with the software. I assumed they had set it to
miles per hour rather than kilometres but the problem as it turned out was even
dumber.
Speed dials in Japan only go to
160kmh. In Europe and New Zealand, they go to 220km. So, when they changed the
software to English from Japanese it assumes my dial reflected this. If I was
travelling at 110kmh, the software would set the indicator at half way around
the dial. I still had the Japanese speedo display, so this showed as 80kmh. Luckily,
I didn’t have to explain that to a speed cop. I’m not sure how hot the New
Zealand police are on calibration and mathematics.
I brought it back to the dealer
to be fixed. They said it would take a day or two. Eight weeks later, I finally
got the car back. The entire dashboard had been replaced and from what they
explained, it seemed like they had to contact NASA to get to the root of the
issue.
As I drove from the showroom
after finally picking the car up, I noticed that some of the dashboard readings
had gone back to Japanese. I pondered my options and came to the conclusion that
it would be quicker to learn a new language than to try and get the software
fixed.
