Sunday, March 14, 2010

A Ghost In The Machine or What Is Japanese For Vagen Geist




Some years ago I owned a VW Vanagon. It was the second VW bus I had ever owned. Both of them were haunted. They were infected or blessed with Car Spirits: Vagen Geist. I won't elaborate here but the Vanagon had one who loved Country and Western Music, and I do mean C&W nothing after 1974. If I played anything else through its speakers the engine would miss and stall and .... well you get.


So it was not a surprise to me when years latter a friend's new Cadillac showed the same tendencies. Except this time it was in his car's computer. Every time his wife got in the car it would run for about 20 minutes and then die and would not start again. Five trips to the dealer and each time they could find nothing wrong with it, even when his wife rode with them. Finally he traded it in. Years latter he got a telephone call from a guy Maine who had tracked him down as the original owner. Sure enough, the guy said every time his wife got into the car it would die on him.


So maybe Toyota needs to get a priest (catholic/ shinto/whatever) to purge the company and exorcise their cars.


One thing to remember is that what we are really talking about in the Prius Toyotas are computers, not mechanical systems, but the mind behind the mechanical system, the Toyota AI if you please. Also we must remember that at the end of the day computers have Compugeist.

2 comments:

Deanna said...

I hope they can figure this all out. I love my Prius...especially that 48 mpg thing. I've gotten a lot of teasing about it, some of it good-natured and some of it rather mean-spirited (these are generally the ones driving gas hogs). A lot of people don't seem to be aware of all the other cars, including American made vehicles, that have been recalled for dangerous defects.

I think I'm going to get a bumper sticker that says, "Stopping is for Sissies".

drlobojo said...

"Stopping is for Sissies".
Neat!
Heck, just get a shade tree mechanic to install a panic kill switch (manual circuit breaker) on your dash. Even a haunted computer will stop when it is unplugged.