356

Wish I had one.

Brought Ava down to the workshop today to sort out a rough idling problem and to have the new seals that finally arrived fixed. Of all the cars I have driven, Ava is the one that I enjoy driving the most. She's not fast nor sexy but she is a complete driving experience. No power steering, 5 speed manual, no ABS, no bullshit. Cars these days are far too clinical and perhaps that is a reflection of the manufacturing process. Robotic arms and machines have replaced the Fritz, Hans or Jens that lovingly assembled cars like this Porsche 356; the welding may not have been that precise but it was a labor of love that imbued the object with a character of its own. Perhaps that is why cars like the 356 will always tug at the heart strings. But I think this point permeates modern society, things these days are put together quickly and hence disposed of quickly too. The modernized and mechanized production line is concerned with churning out the newest and latest but not the most lasting. We may not realize but there may be deeper repercussions to this age of mass consumerism.

"Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leaves us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where we have gone and quite what we have amounted to... How different everything is for the craftsman who transform a part of the world with his own hands, who can see his work as emanating from his being and can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years, and hence feel collected together in one place, rather than strung out across projects which long ago evaporated into nothing one could hold or see."
~ Alan de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.