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| Excel-lent Salesmanship |
Down I went to the yard in Five Dock. As luck would have it, my friends husband wasn't in that day so I spoke to a man named George instead. George reminded me a lot of some people I had met at a yard in Burwood not long enough ago, so I tactfully tried to leave and head home. Not before George and I took a Hyundai Excel for a test drive though. Brand new second hand about 20 months old I think. In the voice of a caring lover George asked me "how does it drive? Good? Smooth?". Settle down there George, I thought.
Compared to the Hondamatic and the rattly Sierra it drove like a dream, but I wanted to go home. I thanked him for a good time, and he asked me what I was going to do with the Sierra, he liked that model, used to have one apparently. He told me he would give me $5000 as a trade in. Really? Probably wouldn't get that privately. I lied and said I liked the car but had a lot to think about, and had some people I needed to talk to. Fabulous George understood completely. "Look, sign here, give me $100 and I will hold the car until the weekend". OK whatever - what a giant pain in the arse this guy was becoming. I agreed just so I could get the fuck out of there.
"Congratulations" George said, "You're the owner of a new car".
Hmmm, that sounded a bit ominous. I left the yard and told my girlfriend how things went down. She called me a fuckwit and the next day I spoke to the lady at work about what had happened. She phoned her husband and put him on the phone who told me "George is a good salesman" . So she greedily organised the paperwork for me to get the loan I would now need to complete the transaction, just like a good salesman does. Because I had never seriously thought about buying this thing, I didn't make any effort to haggle over the price - a cool $15,990. It was already a couple of years old.
I tried to rationalise this to myself. Ok, so now I had a $23K loan + HECS + credit card, but I now had a reliable, newish car and my un-registerable nightmare and legal ticking time bomb was gone. At the end of the day though, I had paid $15,990 for a second hand Hyundai Excel not to mention insurance. A man-boy my age living in Blacktown driving the most stolen car in Sydney presented somewhat of a risk to the insurer, my premium suggested. An educated purchaser could have got the car for about $12/$12.5K - well actually I guess an educated purchaser wouldn't have bought one. I was not a happy little vegemite, choosing not to speak of it whenever this was an option, for a very long time. So I hated it when people asked me about the car. "How much did you get it for?" "Shut the fuck up".
6 months later Hyundai production was moved to somewhere cheaper in Korea, dropping the values of all Excels in Australia overnight. That was a bugger.
My biggest problem now though was my budget. Even with the loan on staff rates, this with my board at home which I still couldn't get a break on, left me with me with very little room in the budget. To make matters worse though my father left home some time later during that year, and told me I needed to move out as well, so I shacked up with the missus. The rent was about the same, but the bills were certainly more.
Turned out that the old boy had been shagging my bosses, bosses girlfriend. It just so happened that this big bad boss worked at the same branch as me at Blacktown, and had a reputation for being a bit of a G. He was also quite a big man, shaped like a tenpin, but his rough face gave him quite a scary "not to be fucked with" demeanor. I don't think he was that happy about the whole affair (pardon the pun). One day I was at my desk when he came in from lunch and said to me:
"Ah, it's the man without a job!"
"How do you mean?"
"Go speak to you boss" he tersely told me as he wandered off.
My boss explained to me I had been transferred to Circular Quay. This meant another weekly expense - a train ticket. I shit you not folks, I now had an expendable income of $7 a fortnight after my repayment, rent, and a figure for bills and food. I became a bit of a master of fare evasion, security guard evasion (concerts, festivals and nightclubs a specialty) and scam running.
The new job really sucked. I had a particularly rich set of clients at Circular Quay, and it was annoying to read their financials and see how stinking rich most of them were, knowing that if I dropped a tenner my rent would be late. This was the state of play for about 6 months at which point I was finally transferred closer back home. My girlfriend left me during this time as well and I moved into a share house with some people I knew.
My pay was still quite modest and it was difficult to see a way through this. I started to look into some 'alternative' ways of getting out of debt. An insurance job was not an option because I owed so much more than the car was worth and I would be left without a car again. I started to deal a bit of pot but I was pretty shit at that. Alot of my friends smoked but most were all broke - some because they smoked too much of it. This didn't last longer than a couple of months. Growing up in Blacktown and knowing everyone around, it is pretty hard to just start dealing and not have everyone know about it. In fact, even over this short time my mum told me one of my friends mums had called her and told her I was dealing acid. "Only taking it mum" I assured her.
The rebirth of the Excel
As amortisation schedules will tell you, the balance of my debt did slowly creep down (albeit much slower than the cars value) and the bank managed to just keep me interested enough with regular promotions. After about 5 years, I found myself renting a unit in Dee Why on Sydney's Northern Beaches. I had finally worked my way into a neutral debt position, and my car was finally insured for more for than what I owed. So I will never forget my pure and unadulterated joy when I stepped out onto the pavement from my unit block one morning, to find the excel gone.
Finally the luck I had been waiting for. I couldn't believe it. So many times I had talked about a way to get rid of this thing including pushing it off a cliff, crushing into a cube, burying it underground, hiding it in a mates garage etc. I was playing cricket one day out at Auburn and batting against one of their slow bowlers. I has been out in the middle for a while, and their keeper as they will, was getting chatty behind the stumps.
"Is that your missus car mate you drove here in, the Excel?" trying to put me off my game. But I never mind a chat in the middle.
"No, it's mine"
"Want to get rid of it? Leave your keys in the ignition? You're insured aren't you?"
"Thought about it a couple of times" I laughed.
He was serious. I seriously thought about it but didn't take him up on the offer. I knew a few people who done this before but I was worried with my rotten car luck I would probably somehow get caught. He even asked me again at the lunch break.
But now someone had just come along and done it for me. This was my lucky day my friends. What a glorious day, what a glorious feeling. The old piece of plastic, with it's dinged panels, left too dirty too often to ever be white again, and ugly brown petrol stains on the paintwork around the petrol tank because I had left the cap on the roof when filling up one time and didn't get around to replace it for weeks - gone!
In 21 days time, yes just three Mondays from now, I would have a bank balance coloured in black and not red. In three Sundays time however, I would be sitting in the tiny lounge room of my apartment when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hello is that Matt?"
"Yes it is"
"G'day Matt it's Butters!" aka Seargent Garry - a cop I used to play cricket with out West.
"Hey Butters what's happening mate?"
"Yeah got some good news for you actually, I'm at Bankstown looking at your Excel, we've found it"
"Fuck! You're kidding man, don't fuck with me Garry my cheque comes tomorrow. I don't want that car I never did"
"Yeah that'd be right whenever we find a car the owner doesn't want it and when they do we can't find it. Anyway, you might want to have it towed somewhere there are some pretty suss people hanging around it - it's in a park and unlocked"
"You're in the wrong profession if you're looking for positive feedback mate, just fucking leave it man, pretend you didn't see it".
(Whispering) "Got someone with me" (and back to normal) "I'll have it towed for you, where do you want it?"
"Fuck that, the Moon. Is it damaged? Please tell me it's damaged"
"Looks OK actually, it's pretty trashed, got some empty bottles in it..... I can see some needles, seems OK though. You'll find out soon enough".
I hung up dejected. Fucking cops I thought, even the ones you know fuck you up.
The insurer, who incidentally treated me like I was the thief the whole time, told me it wasn't a write off and they would fix it. This was definitely the worst thing that could have happened. I phoned a mechanic friend of mine from Blacktown, and asked them to send the car there. He and a panel beater did their best to arrange massive quotes to fix so it would be deemed a write off, but the insurer was all over them and insisted on fixing it.
A whole 5 weeks later back it came, minus the no claim bonus.
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