English singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner had striking ginger dreadlocks and a top 10 hit on his hands in 2007, when he released the percussive guitar-driven “Dream Catch Me” from his album “Hand Built By Robots”. It’s been voted one of the top 100 songs of the 2000s.

Newton Faulkner – Dream Catch Me

Because the song was such a hit, he had to become a robot: rushing the last few tracks of his debut album, in just a few weeks. The album title has stayed in my mind, because of the idea of robots “hand building” something.

In the 2000s, Malaysian car maker Proton was using robots, to put together about 60% of each car it made. It had built a new factory, to make the Waja sedan, and the Gen.2 hatchback (which were similar under the skin). Both were imported into Australia, but strangely enough the $27,990 Waja didn’t sell well. However, the sub-$20,000 Gen.2 did, and it started to appear on streets from late 2004. Its headlights were apparently inspired by a tiger’s eyes. I liked the look of the Gen.2.

I was wasting time on eBay in 2012, when I saw a manual orange 2007 Gen.2 offered for $2,300 unregistered, at a Nambour car dealer. A 5-year-old car (with aircon, central locking and alloys) for $2,300!? The ’07 model was selling used for around $5,000, registered. You might think “what’s wrong with it?”, but I knew the dealer wanted this trade-in gone because it was an unknown model to have to resell. To be fair though, it did need new tyres.. and the push-down door lock replaced on a rear door. Proton parts weren’t found anywhere near Nambour.

I’d changed jobs the year before and still had some funds from my unused holiday payout, so I was able to talk my wife into letting me buy it – and driving me up to get it. With the dealer paid and a Transport Department permit obtained, I drove it home.

Proton launched in Australia in the mid-90s, selling copied Mitsubishi designs as a “Wira” with the slogan “People go on and on about Proton”. However, despite a million kilometre warranty (yep, you read it right – but only over 3 years) not many people went on about them – or bought them in those early days.

At around the same time, Proton bought a majority stake in British sports car maker Lotus, and had them help create new models – one of which was the Gen.2. Driving home in my orange buy, I could feel the Lotus influence on the handling (a lot of fun to drive, very tight on the road), but I could also hear the road rumble due to lack of soundproofing, and see the cheapness of the seating and interior plastic.

It looked very funky, with aircon controls stacked on 3 dials at the bottom of the dash, a sporty steering wheel, and an analogue clock at the top. However if you ran your fingers over the dash, door trim and steering wheel, it had all the roughness of very used Tupperware – and none of the flexibility. Plus, the driver’s seat might have been built by the Flat Earth Society – it was like sitting on a hard park bench, leaving you hanging on for dear life while going around a corner. So it handled well, but you’d be brave to demonstrate that.

With 4 new tyres and (after some weeks of waiting) a new lock for the back door from a dealer near me, the Gen.2 was registered and used as my second car. I eventually put it online to sell, and a young lady (not all that local) bought it for a handy profit – this time.

Incredibly, not long after I sold it, this car built by robots was stalking me like The Terminator. One morning as I drove into the city along a very western route (to avoid the traffic of the main one), a blob of orange appeared in my rear vision mirror: it was the Gen.2, being driven by the young lady who’d bought it off me.

My dream (sale) did catch me.

The 1960s hit song “The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)” was apparently inspired by used car salesmen in California, who would tell prospective buyers that a car was “owned by a little old lady from Pasadena, who only drove it to church on Sundays”.

They weren’t always telling a fib, with plenty of religious couples from America’s Midwest moving further west to Pasadena to escape the 1930s Dust Bowl and Great Depression, and leaving a cared-for car in the garage – for much of the week – in their retirement years.

I’d not long moved north for my first paid radio job, when my parents traded their 1985 Mitsubishi Magna in on an automatic 1991 Hyundai Lantra dealer demo. The first-generation Magna had done well, but had some issues – and Hyundai was getting noticed for its cheap prices, and the rising quality of its cars.

On a weekend visit home, I somehow talked them into letting me take this nearly new car for a drive – along with 3 of my friends. We opened the garage door, and laughed: the registration plate on the car said 123-BLO. By chance we all immediately counted together, then blew out simultaneously. It was nice to drive a car, with that “new” smell.

The mid-sized Lantra had clean lines, painted bumpers, velour seats, air conditioning and power windows. Power locks were also included, and so was an intermittent problem with them, that was never able to be fixed. But there was one thing missing from the car: the letter ‘E’.

In plenty of overseas markets at the time, it was sold as the Elantra (and it is now sold as that here). However because Hyundai was getting Mitsubishi’s help with its designs in the early 90s – and Mitsubishi had a Magna model on sale at the time, called the Elante – it was decided that the Hyundai car would drop the ‘E’ and just be a Lantra.

The Lantra was mum’s car, and for years it did indeed do little more than a shopping trip once a week, and a drive to church on Sundays. It was fine for her, but anyone else driving it would notice the complete lack of power from the 1.6-litre engine, unless you pushed the pedal to the floor. It was so underpowered, Hyundai offered a 1.8 engine for the 1992 model.

After around 15 years of ownership – and with the odometer nowhere near 100,000 kms – a newer car, being sold by a neighbour, tempted mum to move the Lantra on. At first it went to my future sister-in-law, who drove it to the train station, but by late 2009 it was back on the market – and the odometer reading of just 102,000 kms meant I couldn’t let it go.

So I brought the Lantra home (the 5-seater shared the garage with the 2-seat Smart), and it had been used so little, it still seemed to have a “new car” smell. It happily did the school run for over a year.

Once I decided to sell it, I had it serviced – but a week later I noticed it was low on oil. I asked the mechanic about it, and it turned out that although the Lantra’s engine was barely used, parts inside it had deteriorated and (at highway speeds) were allowing some oil to sneak out the exhaust. So the engine would need an overhaul at some stage.

A young local mechanic eventually bought the Lantra for his lady, then I heard it was sold (unregistered) to a new owner, who still drives it around the local area. He’s a little old man, and I can’t say for sure what the car does on Sundays.

Seinfeld was into season 4 when it aired an episode called “The Bubble Boy” in October 1992. It followed Jerry’s attempt to meet a fan – a boy in a bubble – and how it all went wrong, when George arrived early and decided to play Trivial Pursuit with him. When George asks the rude and selfish boy “who invaded Spain in the 8th century?” he answers: “the Moors”. That’s when a wry smile crosses George’s face, and he reveals the (misprinted) correct answer on the card is “Moops”. The boy is left deflated, in more ways than one.

By strange coincidence, late 1992 is when I began shopping for a car they call “the bubble”. I’d seen the “new” Mazda 121 advertised on TV, and it looked like a fun small car to own.

The ad ended with the man washing the car having a bucket of water tipped on him from an upstairs balcony by a curly-haired woman – but despite the thought of my then-girlfriend doing the same to me (I lived in a high-rise unit) I still wanted one.

At the time I was driving a late 80s Daihatsu Charade and earning OK money from my first job, so buying new was the go. There was just one thing I wanted my 121 to have, that I’d seen on some others – a boomerang-shaped spoiler on the boot.

The curvy Mazda 121 was a huge success in Australia. In Japan, it was sold as the Autozam Revue (Autozam being a Mazda brand at the time). It had a peppy 1.3 litre engine, plus air conditioning and power steering as standard. But power windows? Forget it. The seats and armrests were covered in strange but colourful squiggles.

The boot pivoted open very cleverly, and the designer supposedly said it was based on a woman’s behind. But even all that couldn’t save it. It wasn’t very popular in other countries, and was killed off by the time the Asian Economic Crisis hit in 1997. Australia was then treated to the “boxy” and more conventional 121 Metro.

To the Mazda dealer in Gladstone, I would have been a gift. One afternoon I walked in and told them I was interested in buying a dark blue 121, but it had to have a spoiler on the back. The salesman told me they didn’t have a dark blue one, but a mid-blue one had just finished a run as a demo car: it had headlight and bonnet protectors, and (wouldn’t you know it) a spoiler on the boot.

He took me out the back, to where the “Canaipa Blue” car was getting a wash and vacuum. Once the staff had finished with it, we took it for a drive and I was sold: it was a perky 4-cylinder to steer, and had fabric-covered seats instead of plastic ones.

It was time to talk turkey – and I’m ashamed to say I was a little caught up in buying my first new car. They offered me a trade-in on the Charade, and then the balance through the dealer’s own finance company. I didn’t say yes straight away, so then they offered me a phone to call someone about the deal. So I called home (an expensive STD call at the time). Mum answered, and the best she could manage on short notice was “I don’t know, whatever you think is best.”

So I thought it was best to take the deal. It was a pleasure to own for the next 3 years, apart from tinny metal on the doors (resulting in minor carpark denting) and paint being easily scratched. That’s probably why the car came with a tin of touch-up paint in the glovebox.

With its air-conditioning and sure-footedness, the “bubble” was a handy car to own for the 6-hour Bruce Highway drive back to Brisbane on weekends.

For me, the purchase had been no trivial pursuit, and there were no Moops.

In 1980s Queensland, you could only get your learner’s permit at 17, but you could try for your licence just six weeks later. So on my 17th birthday, I got my mum to drive me to the local police station, where I answered five questions and received my learner’s permit, typed up on cardboard.

I already knew how to drive – at 12, Dad had let me take his 1960s manual Toyota Corona around the local showgrounds (until the groundsman told us to leave). However I did take a couple of lessons with a driving instructor, mainly so when I turned up for the practical test in the driving school car, the official would see I’d had some “professional” instruction.

Six weeks to the day after my 17th birthday, I got my licence. That was after a close call during the test, where an ambulance, with lights and sirens on, burst out at me in the middle of an intersection. I initially hesitated to stop, but thankfully hit the brakes just as the tester did the same on his set of pedals in the passenger side.

So I couldn’t wait to get my licence – and that was partly because of the car I used to walk past each morning at high school, after parking my bicycle.

It was a Suzuki Mighty Boy – a red one – that I think one of the Manual Arts teachers owned.

Suzuki was a small car specialist in the 70s and 80s, getting noticed here for its tiny but very willing 4x4s, and also offering a cheap new car to Aussie buyers: the Suzuki “Hatch”. In 1985, it began importing a small utility called the Mighty Boy, which started out as a 2+2 sports car (the Suzuki Cervo) with the back seats and back roof/hatch removed. If you look under the parcel shelf behind the 2 seats in a Mighty Boy, you’ll see the footwells in the floor, for rear passengers in the 4-seat Cervo.

The Mighty Boy was a “Kei” class car in Japan – limited in size and engine capacity, to suit the streets of Tokyo. Apart from Japan, it was only ever sold in Australia and Cyprus.

Watch a 1986 Mighty Boy TV ad here

I’d seen Mighty Boys advertised new for under $7,000 at Zupps, which was way more than I could afford. However I knew I wanted one, even if the 543cc engine – and the car – were ridiculously tiny.

8 months after getting my licence, I used my Coles paypackets to buy my first car, a yellow Toyota Corolla for $3,000 or so.. which would ultimately prove to be a bad purchase.

Over the years I kept my eye on Mighty Boys – I tried to buy one I saw driving past in the 90s, but couldn’t afford the asking price. However, thanks to the internet, eBay was now telling me when it found them – and one day in 2013 it found what became known as the Mighty Smurf:

It was up for auction – or “buy it now” for $800. This 1986 model had a blown head gasket on an exchange 800cc F8B engine from the Hatch/Alto, but was otherwise in reasonable condition, with a bizarre two-tone “backyard” paint job.

The one thing it had that I didn’t really want, was an automatic gearbox. However, after a quick discussion with my wife, I pressed “buy it now” and set about hiring a trailer, and hiring Dad to tow it.

I didn’t check for the usual body issues with Mighty Boys: rust in the firewall seam and cracked strut tops. I was just happy to own one for a few hundred dollars. As it turned out, the car was reasonably good on both issues.

It didn’t have the chrome rails on the roof and around the bed. Instead, it had tiny truck-style lights installed in the roof.

With the Mighty Boy at home, I rolled it off the trailer – and discovered the brakes didn’t work at all. I just missed another car on the driveway, and steered into the garden to come to a stop. This tiny car was already turning into a bigger project than I had anticipated.

A mechanic friend replaced the head gasket at home, to get the engine running again, but it took over a year to have the car ready for the road (it needed everything from a new driveshaft to seat vinyl repair). In early 2015, the Mighty Boy was registered, and scooting around with its 2-speed gearbox (yep, just 2 speeds) prompting a busy hum in the engine. It was low to the ground and my head was close to the roof, but it was great to steer quickly. My 1980s dream had been fulfilled.

It certainly got noticed – a friend of my daughter posted a picture of it at the local shops on Snapchat, with a comment along the lines of “OMG I’ve never seen such a tiny car!”. That prompted my daughter to let her know it was her Dad’s car.

The seats are seen as lacking in side support, and they’re usually also bent back a bit from use. Plenty of people put in other smallish seats, with better bolstering.

Inside, the glovebox lid often needs securing at the bottom, where there’s just a plastic seam. Mine had hinges screwed in.

After a year or so, I’d had my fun and it was time to recoup some of the money I’d put into it. I advertised the car in 2016, prompting a former owner to contact me, to explain that she’d painted it blue and white to resemble an esky.

It took a year to find a buyer who’d pay the price I wanted – it was a young mechanic with plans to repaint it and give it a new engine.

I’d buy another Mighty Boy – a manual – for the right price. Look me up in another 30 years.

POSTSCRIPT: It didn’t take 30 years – about 5 years after putting the Mighty Smurf up for sale, I bought a yellow manual Mighty Boy, called Daisy.

Watch the intro video here

In late December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his job, as President of the USSR. At that time, I was just about ready to resign from my job: doing phone surveys, like Newspoll, into the night. That’s because I was also getting up at 5:00 each morning, to work for free at a community radio station, 45 minutes’ drive away. I’d finished uni during “the recession we had to have”, and hadn’t found full-time journalism work. So the split shifts meant I was tired. Perhaps that’s why on New Year’s Eve ’91 I decided to get involved in a charade – a Daihatsu Charade. This car would eventually bring me and my future wife together.

It’s a brave car company that names its dependable little runabout “Charade”, but Daihatsu did that for over 20 years. The Cambridge Dictionary says a charade is “an act or event that is clearly false”. The truth is, the car was a good Japanese product at a bargain price.

For some reason, I was driving my second car (a 1981 Mazda 323) through Kedron in Brisbane, when a dark metallic shape on the corner of the Byrne Ford caryard caught my eye. My 323 was a good car, but it was using a little oil and just starting to show rust spots in the doors – so I suppose I was looking for a replacement I could afford – just not that seriously.

If I’d had the money, I would have bought a Niki but I was still only making casual wages, so I couldn’t afford a new car. The Charade was a dark grey 3-door, only a few years old, and I’m pretty sure it was just under $6,000. With my trade-in I could afford that!

I got talking to a salesman, went for a test drive, and loved the peppy “thrum” of the 3-cylinder engine (yes, 3 cylinders – a friend’s father refused to believe it was a triple cylinder until I lifted the bonnet and showed him the 3 spark plugs!)

The gearbox was light, it was easy to steer through traffic, but the Charade’s interior was a monument to plastic, with entire door trims and seats covered in it. It may have even had plastic for the floor coverings. I would later find that this plasticky interior made it easier to clean out the car after a trip to sandy North Stradbroke Island.

With the test drive finished, it was time to talk a trade-in, and the changeover money. I don’t recall being offered a lot for the 323, but it would get me on the way to a later model car. However even as a 21-year-old, I drove a hard bargain: I asked them to discount the Charade’s price, seeing as they weren’t giving a great trade-in. The salesman went away to “check with the boss” (yeah, right) and after a few minutes, came back looking unimpressed and said flatly: “happy new year, you’ve got a deal”. Perhaps my offer helped them just fill a monthly quota – it was December 31st, after all.

“You’ve got a Charade too?”

Now I had a nicer (and slightly more economical) ride, for my early morning and late night work. Then just a couple of weeks after buying the car, I got my first full-time job in radio, thanks to some networking by my former uni lecturer. I’d be working at a station over 600 kilometres away, in Gladstone. So the Charade was packed up with what little I owned, and with a Phil Collins “No Jacket Required” cassette playing in the tape deck, I drove north alone into the unknown.

A few months after arriving in Gladstone, a co-worker invited me to a cocktail party she was throwing. I don’t think there was any romantic interest from her (my wife will probably dispute this) – and there wasn’t really any from me, but I went along anyway to meet new people in this town.

I arrived at her house one afternoon, and met her flatmate, Andrew, who was very interested in my car. He asked if he could have a drive of this strange little 3-cylinder, and I obliged. Off we went, with me in the passenger seat. As we left the end of his street, we came face-to-face with another Daihatsu Charade (a red one) at a set of stop signs. The woman in the other car noticed Andrew driving mine, and did a double-take. He explained to me that she was another flatmate in their share house, who’d recently bought a 5-door Charade. Upon our return, I got to meet the lovely lady, and the rest is history.

I only kept my Charade until early 1993, when I bought a dealer demo Mazda 121 with my full-time wage. However we kept hers until we’d been married a few years, and were looking for something bigger to ferry a baby around.

The eBay Charade

In 2011 I was wasting time on eBay, when I noticed a white 1990 Charade with just 140,000kms up for auction, priced at $450 (unregistered). How could I resist? It was a 2-owner car, being sold on behalf of someone who wasn’t computer literate (i.e. an older person). The car was in reasonable nick, but had scraped a power pole, so the panel on the front passenger side had been replaced with one from the wreckers (albeit a slightly different shade of white). I won the auction, and by adding $75 to the price, the seller delivered it to my home – all the way from the Gold Coast!

I had to spend a few hundred on new shock absorbers, to get the roadworthy. Plus, the rear hatchback had a habit of falling down, because the gas struts were gone. However I bought a couple of used ones from a wrecker very cheaply, and fitted them. Then, some floor mats and shiny wheel covers completed the makeover.

It was a good car to drive around for a few months, although it did have a bad habit: sometimes when starting it, the car would shout BRAAARP! and not turn over. A mechanic will know what causes this, I don’t – and despite this, I still managed to sell it for around $1,800 to a young first-time driver. That’s the sort of capitalism Mikhail made way for.

There’s a Polish expression my wife is fond of: “not my circus, not my monkeys”. It means someone else has invited trouble, and it’s not my problem. It’s a phrase I used a few times after she bought a 1999 Jaguar S-type on eBay.

Don’t get me wrong – there was nothing really wrong with the car, it was just that I was called on to repair and resell it when she decided she didn’t want to keep it. But, if you read this blog – you know I really didn’t mind.

1999 was the launch year for the Jaguar S-Type, based on the platform of a U.S. Lincoln LS/Ford Thunderbird as the company was owned by Ford at the time. The circular grille was really to keep the look of the car true to the original S Type of the 1960s, as it had a lot of empty space behind it. The 3-litre six cylinder engine in ours was also a Ford design. So even though it sounds very American, with its timber steering wheel and dash insert it still oozed British gentleman’s club. Being a shade of British Racing Green also helped.

The S-type had cost nearly $100,000 when new in 1999. In that same year we bought our second house for $105,000, so this was a true high-class luxury car, that was now 17 years old. Leather was in abundance, with an electric driver’s seat, climate control aircon.. and a Dolby cassette player with cassette drawer in the dash.

She happened on it while searching eBay for a car with a sunroof, to replace the family truckster we’d sold. It had 188,000 kms on the clock, a roadworthy and a month left on the rego – and it was up for auction, due to finish in a few hours, and currently bid at the starting bid of $5,000.

She showed it to me, and despite me airing my hesitations about buying an old British car, and going to the shops in a showy ride, she bid up to $5,100.. and the auction finished on that bid. So we now owned a “Jag” – bought sight unseen.

We picked it up and, as the owner had said in the ad, it was in good condition. So we were lucky there. We enjoyed the silent, smooth experience of driving it. However, after a few weeks of dealing with its considerable length and weight, and being left scared on a rainy day when it slid a little due to terrible wheel alignment, my wife decided it wasn’t for her. So it was time to sell.

Given that it had only passed a roadworthy less than 2 months earlier, you’d think it would be easy to have it reissued. However, when I got the same company to check it out (with a different inspector) a handful of problems were found. The inspector was surprised the previous guy hadn’t seen things like a broken fog light, worn tyre and perished suspension bushes .I was also surprised – and unhappy.

So after about $1,000 worth of work (plus renewed registration) the car was for sale on Carsales and Gumtree (where I felt it could attract a higher price than eBay). A family friend and even the next-door neighbour both made plans by buy it, but they fell through.

The eventual buyer looked at it 10 days after listing, and put down a $2,500 deposit after a short test drive – promising to pay the balance a couple of weeks later. Nearly TWO MONTHS later, we finally had the balance to make a small profit, he had a car he loved, and I had a monkey off my back.

In the meat industry, a butcher might offer mutton dressed up as lamb. In the motoring industry, Mitsubishi once took the body of an everyday 4-cylinder Magna and charged nearly double the price for a V6 version.

It was the Mitsubishi Verada, and it had: one airbag! Anti-lock brakes! An electrically-adjustable driver’s seat! Climate control aircon! And two-tone paint with fancy wheels.

I bought one well-preserved example from an older man who was only the second owner. The first owner had paid $50,000 for this 1995 Australian-made sedan (you could buy land in Brisbane for less than that at the time!), and the second had saved quite a bit by buying it a few years later. When I came along, the Verada was 20 years old, and up for sale unregistered.

It looked good in the Gumtree pictures, except for a dent from a bollard in the front driver’s side fender panel. When I arrived to inspect it, the car was parked on carpet in his garage, and the engine looked clean enough to eat off.

He made a point of telling me he’d disconnected the electric aerial, as he didn’t like the noise of it going up and down when he turned the radio on.

This was a car that had been pampered under his ownership, with some serious money spent on a rebuilt V6 engine just 40,000 kms ago. So even though the odometer said 178-something, the new engine had barely been used in the 8 years since it was installed.

It was clean inside too, with carpets undamaged, and velour seats that had never been stained. So for $550 delivered to my door unregistered, it seemed like a good deal. To me, at least – no-one else in the family liked it.

That’s not to say it didn’t need anything done – rear brakes and some bump stops for the shockies were on the roadworthy list, the original radio cut out and needed fixing, and while it was for sale it developed a hole in the exhaust (the result of the former owner not driving it enough to burn off moisture in the pipe, I was told).

But the biggest repair job was the dent in the fender – I was quoted $750 by a crash repairer, before finding a small dent removal firm that could do it for $450.

So by the time it was up for sale, the money spent had gone well past $2,000. And, strangely, it took a long time to sell – so long I had to re-register it for another 6 months. I ended up taking any reference to a “new” engine out of the ad, as a contact in the car yard game said it was better to say “great mechanical condition” than “this car had a new engine”.

The Verada was my smooth everyday drive, until I sold it to a local couple as their second car. I made no profit (technically a slight loss), but it went to a good home. There was no lamb on the dinner table that night..