My trusty Nissan Tiida served as my safe place for the better part of a decade, before its untimely and unceremonious exit from my life.
The night after I sold my 2007 Nissan Tiida, I cried myself to sleep.
I know what you’re thinking. ‘She’s talking about a bloody Nissan Tiida, for crying out loud.’
Yes, I’m aware that as far as motoring journalists’ first cars go, my Tiida doesn’t rate very highly in terms of street cred or bragging rights.
And yet, my Tiida hatchback was my steadfast companion for nine years, rarely asking anything of me other than a visit to the petrol station every three weeks, and a scheduled service every 12 months.
I was a clueless 21-year-old with red P-plates and a job in retail when I first bought my Tiida from a fastidious father of two who’d kept the car immaculate, and the service logbook updated.
I immediately named it ‘Whacko’ after its registration, which began with WKO.
Whacko had very little in the way of standard equipment – no power windows, no parking sensors and no leather seats. It did, however, have a CD player that saw its fair share of home-made Taylor Swift mixes.
Under the bonnet was a 1.8-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine, sending drive to the front wheels via a four-speed automatic transmission. Peak outputs were 93kW and 174Nm. Hot hatch, it was not.
Still, the reasonably roomy back seat hosted many a best friend needing a lift to uni, the boot was used exclusively as a travelling wardrobe and the slate grey metallic exterior did a great job of hiding the cobwebs, smudges and general debris it acquired while parked on the street outside my share house.
By the time it came to sell my beloved Whacko, I was approaching 30, six months into my new role as a senior journalist at Drive and three months into what would, unbeknownst to me, become a year-and-a-half’s worth of lockdowns.
It had 82,500km on the odometer and was in fairly good condition, save for a dint inflicted by some unidentified bad parker, and half-fixed by my mother and her plunger.
Used-car prices were hitting new heights as Melburnians ditched public transport in droves, and I sold my Tiida for a tidy $4000 to a man who simply needed something to get him to and from work.
We did the handover in an outdoor car park, masked and with two metres between us. He came prepared with all the registration transfer forms, handed me the $4000 in cash and was gone less than 15 minutes after he’d arrived.
It was an abrupt and unceremonious end to a decade’s worth of good times and I surprised myself with how unequivocally sad I felt.
I’ve long maintained that I don’t consider myself a ‘revhead’ or even a ‘car enthusiast’ in the traditional sense.
I didn’t grow up around cars, my technical knowledge has more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese and I get more pleasure from completing a neat parallel park than I do from drifting around a race track (in fact, I’m not sure I’d even know how to drift if it came down to it).
But my love affair with cars – and what they represent to me – began in the driver’s seat of that little Nissan Tiida.
For the first time in my life, I could go anywhere I liked and I didn’t have to rely on anyone else to get me there.
Whether it was leaving university house parties, or finishing up a hectic Christmas Eve shift at a packed mall, I took immense pleasure in walking out to find my trusty Tiida waiting for me, ready to take me home – one of the few constants in the chaos and confusion of my 20s.
So here’s to first cars, no matter how lame, and everything they represent.
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