An American in Asia: His Quest for Cosmic Truth (or at least a Decent Espresso)

 

Tell him what he won, Johnny!

It's a new car! I'm the proud owner of a sporty new car and I'm selling the big hurkin' old truck that I bought off the Beverly Hillbillies. All the heavy moving associated with house construction is now in the hands of the builders, so I really have no excuse for hurtling around in a giant truck and polluting the world with its decaying engine.

After nursing my fifteen-year-old Toyota truck into its twilight years, the old beast was showing signs of impending doom. Despite my ongoing efforts to keep the thing going - most recently replacing the whole dang engine block - I still had a vague sense of gradual power loss and any decent acceleration would produce ominous gouts of black smoke. Not a good sign.

So I've fixed it up to sell. I took it into a Thai used car dealer yesterday - more to get an idea of an asking price than for a serious sale. They took a look at my registration book and said, "No can do." Why? Because it has new paint and a new engine. Here I always thought those were selling points.

I managed to get a partial explanation - no mean feat in Thailand - to the effect that Thai finance companies won't shell out for a vehicle that does not have its original colour or engine. In a country that is still quite poor, financing is just about the only way anyone buys anything. We have the occasional national financial crisis to prove it. The roads are crowded with debt on wheels.

When in Rome...

I always seek to adapt myself to local customs and traditions as much as is reasonable. That is unless they're stupid customs and traditions. In this case I've joined the ranks of car slaves, purchasing a Honda Jazz on a five-year finance plan. Americans won't know what a Honda Jazz is, despite the fact that it's the best-selling car in Japan. It's been around since the turn of the millennium, and is only now being introduced to the American market for 2007 as the oddly-named Honda Fit.

I'm really a VW Bug kind of guy. I love old Volkswagens, mainly because the sound of a Bug engine often reached my developing eardrums from the time I was in the womb until my mid 20's. My dad bought one in 1961 and we had it until I drove it into the ground a quarter century later. Even then, I replaced it with another one, which I also eventually drove into the ground.

VW Bugs are a brilliantly simple design. My old math teacher used to describe a concise and effective mathematical proof as "elegant", and I feel the same way about VW Bugs. They are roomy inside, compact outside and easily dismantled and reconstructed using nothing more than an adjustable wrench, screwdriver and spark plug/valve gapper. Anyone can do it.

No other car has inspired such adoration and respect from me. The Jazz, however, has potential. While the Bug kept it simple and clean, the Jazz is a bit complicated and I won't be reaching my arm into its guts anytime soon. Like most cars these days, you need a computer to fix it. Actually, everyone has a computer now. More specifically you need the Honda software and the adapter to plug a laptop into the car's brain. Which begs the question, "Why doesn't the maintenance software come with the car?" We certainly pay enough for cars and I'm perfectly capable of using any old software like a seasoned amateur. With the advent of the computer revolution, owner maintenance should be easier. There's no excuse for this except that the car companies are, as the Brits say, "taking the piss." They just want to rake more cash out of us.

Even so I am developing a deepening affection for the Jazz. It uses all of the latest technologies to great effect. It's just a cool design. Outside, the car is tiny as a Mini Cooper. Yet the inside is spacious, with a high, arched roof and passenger and rear seats which fold right out of existence to create an interior space that can suck in two bicycles and a surf board. I'm 6 foot 4 and I have room to stretch.

The engine is cool too. I shelled out for the sporty model. Four cylinders with two spark plugs each to make sure the fuel is completely burned and sixteen valves to let the engine breathe when it needs to. A computer helps the process, telling the valves to stay open a bit wider and longer when the engine is at high revs - giving the car a big power boost at around 4500rpm. The neat side effects of the efficient fuel burning are great gas mileage and almost non-existent levels of unburnt gas and oil pooping out the back. It's a very clean car.

Automatic or Manual?

How about both? I don't know what is my favourite aspect of this vehicle, but I think it might be the transmission. Instead of a series of fixed gears where you can only choose from first to fifth, the Jazz has this continuous transmission thingy. Imagine if the gears on your bicycle were instead a tapered cone. The chain would float up and down the cone smoothly - to the thin end for higher power and the fat end for hill climbing, or any of an infinite number of places between. Essentially an infinite number of gears, constantly retuning themselves to fit road conditions and the amount of lead in your foot.

The Jazz is both automatic and manual. In automatic mode, the Jazz does the adjusting for you. Acceleration no longer has the jumps a car typically goes through as it changes up the gears. It's just a smooth transition from Zero to 120mph. Also in automatic, you can move the shifter to "Sport" mode, where the car still does the gear shifting for you, but waits a bit before shifting upwards, giving you an extra 1000rpms to play around with.

If you want to be a control freak, flip a switch on the steering wheel and you're in manual mode. With paddles on the steering wheel, you can tell the transmission to select between any of seven fixed positions corresponding to seven possible gear ratios. It's hella fun.

Phuket roads give me loads of opportunities to goof around with all the potentials of this car. Windy blacktop weaves up and down along the coast, while long straight four-lane roads shoot right up the flat centre of the island. And in Thailand, the police are horribly under-funded.

This cop nabbed me for "running a red light". I swear I didn't!

Only Bangkok cops have radar guns. There aren't even any police cruisers. The smokeys just set up check points on the road where they stop you to see if you have a driver's license (and a helmet if you're on a motorbike). No one ever gets pulled over for speeding. The 2006 Gumball Rally - an illegal open-road round-the-world car race - just screamed through Thailand at 140mph and no one got a ticket. The only vehicle you will ever see a cop on is either a 125cc motorbike or a beat-up pickup truck they use to transport the dead. Though recently, cops in Pattaya got air support. They couldn't afford an actual helicopter but they could manage a couple of ultralight hang-gliders with propellers on the back. I am not kidding here. (The actual weirdness of reality can be so intimidating to fiction writers.)

Anyway, back to the car. I've never really had the urge to buy a new car before. I like used cars. I like to tinker with imperfect machines. I love old VW Bugs. However the design of the Jazz is just so cool. Someone who really understands what drivers need, managed to actually communicate this to an engineer capable of creating it. A rare thing that really shouldn't be rare. Everything should be designed this way, or it shouldn't be made at all.

*Honda didn't give me any compensation for this gushing review, though I wouldn't stop them if they tried.