Volvo: Not clunky enough to qualify

By ANNA SHAFF

Here’s the problem: My 1986 Volvo station wagon, six months younger than my son, did not clunk — officially that is. Which means I am ineligible for the just-renewed “Cash for Clunkers” program, freshly bloated with cash. I suspect that the government Web site is peering through rose-colored glasses, because 15 miles per gallon is the best my Volvo has ever gotten in the city, and 18 on the highway. Or maybe my big red renegade is simply a deviant from its non-qualifying 20-mpg peers.

It’s a shame really, because after trudging through almost 24 years of frugality, having recently been unburdened of college payments, I would have loved to finally part with a fixture that seems to have grafted itself onto my life.

My station wagon continues to live, barely. I, too, live — in dread of a seized timing belt, of a dysfunctional water pump, of an array of long-impending auto repairs. My garage floor features an 8-by-10-foot Rorschach inkblot, oil tones courtesy of a leaky transmission. Since my son left to teach English in Japan (and no longer shares my car), I’ve opted out of regular 6,000-mile checkups (at $100 per hour), opting instead to nourish my anorexic bank account.

The message

As I followed the recent debate about refueling the clunkers program, it occurred to me that whereas for me Barack Obama can do no wrong, this time his reasoning is simply indecipherable.

Yes, I know the car industry must be revived, towing the economy in its wake. And I know the planet must be saved, partly by offerings of newly crunched, formerly inefficient automobile engines.

But what about the message being conveyed by the methodology? It is this: If you have been so socially irresponsible or economically privileged that you bought anything on four wheels that averages below 18 mpg within the past ozone-depleting decade (or, innocently, during the 15 years before that), you get a second chance. You get to dump that car, even if you purchased it during cash-guzzling gas prices or red alerts about a depleted planet. You win the brass ring for social disengagement and lack of foresight.

If, on the other hand, you have scrimped and saved and made do for the sake of greater priorities, you draw a dunce cap.

X Shaff, a writer, lives in San Francisco.