WIND IN MY HAIR

Don’t you long for the days when a car was a car?
To see the glint of the sun off a chrome bumper bar
White wall tyres on wire spoked wheels
And two-tone duco over fair dinkum steel.
 
Not plastic. Not that poly whatsaname stuff
That poly wussy wimpy mush
And those poly wheel trims scraping the kerb
It’s like plasticene reinforced steel. It’s absurd.

Old cars always had a mean exhaust note
And a horn that could blow the white line off the road
And shockies that could tell you if the road was rough
And you could hear if your brakes were working or not. 

And a bench seat, so your girlfriend could help you to drive
Makes you wonder how you ever survived
And a floor-shift, to help you to build that relationship
That’s why those old-time marriages could survive such hardship.

And aerodynamics these days have totally lost the plot
There’s no big chrome grill to stop the engine getting hot
And wind tunnel tests had proven beyond doubt
That tail-fins stop the back end blowing about.

So what do you get now with these new fangled cars?
I mean, apart from plastic bumper bars
You get a car so paranoid if you take it to town
Its alarm goes off and it howls the place down.

You get an engine that’s tuned by some whiz-bang computer
I used to do that with a hammer and a shifter
And a silicon chip that’s so smug and so smart
Yet can’t even handle a simple jump start.

Then there’s this ‘ABS’ for goodness sakes
Still can’t see the point in anti-stop brakes
Oh and don’t give that brake pedal too hard a push
Or an air-bag’ll jump out and smack you in the mush.

You’ll get air conditioning, that works, if conditions are fair
If you get the right conditions, you might even get air
So if you’d like to keep breathing, best be a magician
Because you’ve never seen air in such condition.

So is there no sense of style around any more?
Don’t they know that’s what curves were invented for?
They’ve got all the smooth lines of a sleek wheelie bin
And a coefficient of dag of minus 147.

But if you think it’ll help the way that you feel
Go ahead. Buy yourself some flash new abominabile
And when you’re cooped up in there with that half vacant stare
That’ll be me cruising by with the wind in my hair.

© Laurie McDonald