Eulogy for 'Doofus', the family car that never missed a beat
Saturday, 30 January 2021
OPINION: The 2006 Mazda Premacy is a vehicle that makes a strong statement in style.
The statement is: “I’ve given up caring.”
Is it possible to love an inanimate object? I’m one who thinks so. I love this 1300kg hunk of faded metal, plastic and rubber. I’ve loved it from the day I bought it in Auckland one chilly autumn day in 2014.
It’s a triumph of function over form.
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I recall driving it home to Hawke’s Bay, and the raptures of our two young children when they discovered the automatic sliding rear doors.
It took us days to decide that this car was a male. It didn’t seem right to my daughter, six at the time, that cars, like boats, were always a ‘she’.
After much argument, and ongoing disagreement to this day, we christened him ‘Doofus’.
It was my choice. A Doofus, to me, is someone who is not terribly bright, or agile, or quick, but someone who gets on with things in their own quiet, stolid, way.
And Doofus has done just that. For the past seven years he hasn’t missed a beat (except for two occasions when he wouldn’t start because his battery had run flat).
He had something like 190,000km under his belt when we got him. He has 309,000km today.
I think we all remember our first real family car. Mine was an orange Datsun 120Y station wagon. A calamity of beige vinyl and paper thin metal, my brother and sister and I spent many a long hot day being thrown from side to side across the rear seat of that car.
Our two kids, now 11 and 13, will always have memories of Doofus.
Years of drop-offs and pick-ups at four different schools, the countless trips to and from ballet, football, cricket, squash and play dates.
The kids are at an age when Doofus, like their parents, is starting to be something of an embarrassment, and he sometimes has to allow them to alight a few hundred metres short of their destination, lest he be seen.
Doofus has been all over both islands. His most frequent destinations have been Wairarapa and Taranaki, so State Highway 2 between Hastings and Woodville is very familiar ground.
He’s a seven-seater, part station wagon, part people-mover, so he’s ferried plenty of friends and family here and there. Beaches, birthday parties, Sunday morning sorties to Pak’n’Save, stream crossings at the foothills of the Kaweka and Ruahine ranges, he’s coped with it all.
A few summers back we built a limestone wall. For several months my mother-in-law, who somehow appointed herself project manager, would join me every Saturday on a drive to a quarry just outside Havelock North.
We’d fill the back of Doofus with limestone boulders then return home. The weight in the back was so great his nose was in the air – a demeanour that made him quite at home in some parts of Havelock North.
He’s made many, many trips to the tip, his seats folded down and branches and twigs jammed hard up against every window barring the windscreen.
He has aged.
His once vibrant silver sheen is delaminating in places. His headlights are rheumy, his electric windows have minds of their own, his cloth seats are stained and threadbare, and the floor carpet is worn through.
But his CD player, like his engine, still goes strong, and the glovebox is filled to bursting with scratched CDs. I went through them the other day. Each has a memory. Mumford and Sons, for example, will forever be associated with car sickness and the road from Whitianga to Thames. The Black Keys were our ‘go to’ for drives to the mountain bike park, and AC/DC live was bought specifically for a ‘boys trip’ my son and I made to Greytown.
Now, at 309,904km, it is time, sadly, to let Doofus go. He’ll be replaced by a later model, but we’ll never forget him.
Thanks for everything Doofus.