My Confession

My name is Tom and I drive a Malibu.

I am proud of my Malibu. And besides, I really don't care about which car I drive. I only use it to drive fast for an hour each way each day. I park in on the street, trucks back into it, tree’s drip on it, and I only wash it when it turns completely black. It’s a white car.

But my friends and colleagues tend to make fun of me with “that’s your ride?!” comments. See, cars have status in California. My eco-friends drive Priuses, Google employees even receive kick-backs if they drive such eco-friendly cars. Other colleagues drive Audi’s and other high prestige cars, and sometimes if they went to Berkley, Volkswagen station wagons. One of my rich, trying-to-promote-a-luddite-image, friends even goes so far as to drive a VW bus. But I am the only one I know that drives a late-model Chevy Malibu.

Sometimes, my friends even make me try to feel better by saying things like “I saw the new Malibu and it’s really nice…built on a Saab Platform it is.” It’s analogous to saying: “you are butt ugly, but your distant relative is hot.

I hadn’t even owned a car in over 10 years when I returned from living overseas. I’m a big fan of hire cars, taxi’s and trains. When I repatriated, I was absolutely determined not to pay tens of thousands of dollars on a car. I bought a safe Honda Accord for my wife and daughter. And I really should have paid more attention to the salivating, rabid-looking dealer when I said “yes” to the 2000 Malibu in the Honda dealer lot.

But I’m now a bit concerned. When I search for “2000 chevy Malibu”, the top return is a consumer complaint site. Mostly, I am concerned because the demographics of other Malibu “users” don’t seem to fit my own self-image:

• “This was my first "almost" new car purchased last year”.
• “I'm a single mother of 2 and I can not afford to dish out this type of money every 30K miles.”
• “I pay almost $300/month for the piece of s***! I can't even trade it in because I owe over $9,000 which I'm sure is much more than it is worth blue book. So, I guess I'm stuck.”
• “I'm 22 and thought I'd better spend the money and buy a car that I won't have to bring into the shop once a week for this that or the other thing on a reletively brand new car. I was sadly mistaken. Now I have a vehicle that I can't sell and am practically terrified to drive and basically can't do anything with.”
• “I cant get my car fixed because I work two jobs. What do I do with my lemon of a car?”
• “I had to make time from work to bring in the car, because my dealer had NO WAY of getting me to work. So I had to find a Chevy dealer that would take me on a weekend, and traveled quite out of my way (in a car that could explode at any moment, according to my dealer's service dept.)”
• “Finally I had to take the car off the road because it does not stop at all, and I am asking to borrow cars from relatives, which deprive themselves of their own cars to help me, yet they need their cars.”
• “I have since lost my job due to excessive absences and latenesses.This was due to not being able to drive to work or getting stuck on the way to work.
• “I am a union telecommunications worker and it was very important to me to buy American.”
  

And my favorite:

“There is a sticky substance that percolates through the lining on the inside of the roof. This brownish substance falls on the dashboard, the floor, the doors and the benches. It resembles dried-up cola.”

But forget my ego. I’m thinking I’ll keep my Malibu forever…

Unless, God herself has a thing for the damned car:

“…a rock the size of a bowling ball dropped from the sky onto a parked Chevy Malibu”