Pulling into our driveway last year, my daughter asked me why we drive old cars. I guess I could’ve been offended, but I was more impressed by the courage and candor a question like that requires. All of my siblings drive newer cars than Deonnie and I do. In fact, the average model year for the vehicles in our driveway and garage is 2008.
“Crystal and I like to travel,” I answered. “We use our money to visit other countries.”
The other answer is that I get emotionally attached to places and things in my life that are tied to adventures. I’ve been driving the same MINI Cooper for 13 years. I still have a rack of basketball shoes, even though I haven’t played in them in almost 5 years. My closet still holds my Omega Kappa Delta shirts from college.
After Deonnie came into our lives, I needed a vehicle with four doors. I bought a newer MINI for my daily driver but couldn’t get rid of my old go-kart. But even the “big” MINI was too old to have Bluetooth stereo or even an option I could buy from MINI to give it wireless capabilities. I survived a year on a gangly setup with a USB charger and an auxiliary cable, but the sound was horrible.
After several really profitable weeks in the office and some Googling, I found a company in Shenzhen, China that made an aftermarket option that offered not only automatic Bluetooth pairing but also wireless Apple CarPlay and a large touchscreen interface. Oh, and the outer rim changes color based on tachometer, braking, and climate control inputs. The Chinese company and only source for this device had only a few left in stock for my model year.
It got across the Pacific and then North America surprisingly fast.
A MINI dealer wouldn’t install it. Neither would Best Buy. I wasn’t sure my favorite mechanic would either, and I didn’t even ask the automotive accessories place. So, the huge box with an international label sat open on my office couch for months—until I had both enough gumption to try the install myself and a whole Sunday afternoon free to try. I told myself I had another MINI I could drive, if things went south.
And they did. Well, I didn’t know they had.
First, you need to know that I don’t change my own brakes or oil. I don’t trust my skills. I own a torque wrench and know how to use it, but my previous limit had been changing out bulbs and mounting accessories. Replacing my head unit with an infotainment system would require removing most of my dashboard, matching a bunch of wire harnesses, and maybe the scariest: popping a lot of clips without breaking them. There was no YouTube video for what I was doing. So, I watched and rewatched and rewatched a video of someone replacing a faulty CD player. It went like this:
Play a section.
Pause.
Play.
Rewind.
Play again.
Rewind again.
And then play again.
Pause.
Okay, I can do that. And I did. For hours on end.
When I finally got everything connected—before I put everything back together—I turned the ignition to see if this new device would work. I cried when it did, when I heard music from my phone wafting from my speakers like the musicians were playing live all around me. That sense of accomplishment powered me through the reassembly. That pride led me to ask Crystal to join me for a maiden drive.
When we pulled out of our subdivision, I turned up the volume and then reached to turn down the temperature of the climate control. That’s when I noticed that the entire section of controls in that part of the dash was dead. Only hot air poured out of the vents. No sport mode toggle. No fog lamp switch. Oh, and we smelled smoke—an electrical smoke.
Dejected, I left the “big” MINI in the driveway for a whole hot-even-for-June week. The following weekend, I tore it apart and put it back together—twice. Everything was connected. None of the wires looked frayed. I had broken the lamp in my glovebox and covered those wires with electrical tape, but otherwise, the only things out of place were some of the fasteners I couldn’t contort my fingers to get back in.
At 5:00 A.M. the following Tuesday, I took advantage of the cool of the morning to drive my Countryman to the MINI dealer—2.5 hours away in Raleigh, NC. I dropped it off, explained the situation, grabbed a rental, and drove back to the office. The mechanic figured out the issue and repaired it before I got back to the Virginia state line, but I kept driving. I had ordered a new key and some other services that I save my for annual trips to Raleigh. But the fix was simple. That glove box light had caused a short which blew a fuse. (I had suspected the fuse but knew replacing the fuse without diagnosing the cause of its burnout would get me back in the same situation.)
When I picked the Countryman up 90 minutes after a Monday dawn, the mechanic complimented my work behind the dash. He told me he’d never before seen the unit I had installed, that it was pretty slick. (He liked my lift kit and offroad tires too—also rare occurrences in his shop.) I beamed inside. My chest grew a little bit, as my shoulders squared. The ride home enveloped me in both cold air and fun podcast conversations. I smiled a lot and touched the screen to switch viewing options often.
I knew one thing as I pulled into our driveway: it’s probably going to be many years before I could sell a unique car marked by the adventure of accomplishment. I’ll see a lot of countries before I sell this one. I’ll rent a lot of cars with newer technology and intuitive creature comforts. But I’ll probably never drive a car again where I’ll know what it looks like behind the dash.
