My First Car
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
The first car may have been a hand-me-down lemon, a showroom showpiece with a price tag that can fix Zimbabwe's economy, or a hustler's display of success. Somehow, the first car is a cruel initiation into the realities of owning a car. It'll stall in the middle of Uhuru Highway on that rainy evening when you've offered the office kitten a lift, won't start when you are supposed to lead the bridal convoy, or will run out of fuel right outside your in-laws homestead. Your first car is almost always the spanner mkononi kind, and will force you to learn the difference between a ball joint and gasket. Embarrassing it always is, and six of our readers shared their moments of humiliation.
Ouko Njega, Subaru Kenya Marketing Manager
Fifty thousand bob only? It was the asking price for the Peugeot 205, and the then Sales Representative at Marshalls, Mombasa, finally had a chance to hit the open road. Destination? Nairobi. Little did he know that along the 500km course, he'd see the "ghost and the darkness" (and not in celluloid) and sit on the frame of a little bastard blaring louder than a Tyrannosaurus rex. Drama began at Changamwe, barely five kilometers from Mombasa town when all the electricals failed. He was undeterred. After all, a car is a sum of parts and the rest were ok. So far. Somewhere between Voi and Mtito Andei, one of the tyres burst. He had heard about the man eaters of Tsavo. A few metres later ("couldn't have been more that 100", he recalls) second tyre burst. This time around there was no spare wheel. Those days, the closest one would come to a hand held communication device was the walkie talkie on Tahamaki. He crawled along at snail's pace to Mtito Andei and by the time he got there, the flat tyre had been destroyed irreparably. It was not easy finding a tyre in the small town and he had to make do with one abandoned on a rooftop. It well past 3 PM and his mis (adventure) had finally got a badly need putsch. Aggressive driving, fuelled by excitement of owning a first car, was what making eating away the tyres. So Ouko decided to drive slowly. "Kyulu Hills was then notorious for bandit attacks." What can go wrong will go wrong. Ouko was in time to see a man shove a piece of wood with nail spikes on the road. He swerved in desperation. The front wheel missed the spikes but the rear left was not spared. This meant third flat tyre and he was nowhere near Nairobi. Stopping would be disastrous and so drove on with a flat tyre for the second time in the day. After some distance the exhaust silencer broke off and the car started blaring like a Tyrannosaurus rex. Approaching a police road block, the boys in blue almost took off when they heard the noise. Ouko didn't have insurance and had to lean on the side of the windscreen where the insurance sticker normally is, to distract the police men from noticing its absence. Ouko's options run out and he called off his adventure till the following day, when he was rescued by a cousin. What's interesting is that he still has the car to date and doesn't intend to sell it. "The car has become very much a part of me." In another instance, he drove from Muhoroni to Nairobi on gears 3 and 4 only, because the rest could not engage. Today, he drives a Subaru Legacy.
Aggrey Adoli, Traffic Commandant
The man whose daily headache is how to tame matatus boasts of owning a matatu as his first car. The year was 1990 and his was a Nissan Homy that initiated him into the maddeningly risky business. He had unwittingly sold a piece of land in Kitale to buy the matatu. He was then the Chief Police Inspector in Narok. The matatu that used ply the Narok-Nairobi route would turn into a harbinger of tragedy three years later after the driver and tout were murdered in Gatundu by carjackers. When the van was found in Kahawa west one week later, it had been vandalized. Adoli lost heart for the matatu business after the incident and a disposed it of. He used the money to compensate the families of both driver and the turn boy who thankfully were also insured. Because owning the matatu as traffic police boss would mean conflict of interest, Adoli chose not to enter into the business again. Today adoli drives a number of cars that include two Mahindra jeeps which uses in his farm in Muhoroni, a Mitsubishi Pajero and Peugeot 504.
Paul Mahiani, Marketing Director, Stoic
Imagine spending days fine tuning a car, waxing and polishing it ready for a client only for it to fail to start at that crucial moment of a test drive. It's the embarrassment that KAA ***, a Peugeot 205, presented to Paul one day in 1997, two years after he had picked it up at an auction for Ksh150, 000 and spent a back breaking amount fixing it. He was then account manager at Citi Bank, and the 205 was the product of a bank loan. Throw in legendary shortage of spare parts for European cars, weekend in, weekend out visits to the mechanics and Paul had a real headache. One day, he forgot to change the timing belt and it ended up messing the valves. Result? Engine overhaul at a cost of Ksh60,000. Luckily, the lady buyer ignored the false starts and inherited the trouble for Ksh145,000. Paul's next few days were filled with uncertainty as he constantly expecting a call from buyer. Today, he drives a Toyota Voxy van and Toyota 110, edging slowly closer to his dream of a Lexus.
Altaf
Altaf is yet another well known Nairobi car enthusiast. His specialization is the collection of classic American cars, no matter how beat up they are. A regular participant in the annual classic car event, Concours d'Elegance, Altaf always finds a way of restoring the cars to shipshape conditions. But long before he started parading Chevys and Oldmobiles, Altaf's first car was the Hitler-commissioned people's car a.k.a. Volkwagen Beetle which he salvaged from his father's garage. His father who had tired of the bug was on the verge of selling it when his son approached him in 1997 and asked that he be allowed to have the Beetle. Altaf then began a series of restorative efforts that lasted two years before the car could hit the roads.
When work on it was completed Beetle the then college-going Altaf took the Beetle to school and other rendezvous that are sure to catch the fancy of a college youth. The Beetle which Altaf hails as a chick magnet was fitted with a sound system so loud that it had to be fitted with a double rear windscreen. It was once the loudest car in Nairobi and was on its way to winning the Max Power Award.
So where there any embarrassing moments aboard the Beetle? "Plenty, but there are two major ones," recalls Altaf. "One I was driving from the Carnivore Restaurant with a date seated at the back when the back seat caught fire and I had to stop in the middle of the road to put out the fire," he says. "It's not like I had a fire extinguisher or something and so we had to make do with mud." The fire which he later found out was started by a short in the battery which sits at the bottom of the back seat was successfully killed off.
"The other incident occurred when I was driving home from Oshwal College when the year El Nino was battering Kenya and I made the mistake of following a bus in flood section of the road next to Nakumatt Ukay only for the bus to break down in the middle of raging river created by floods," says Altaf. There was no where to go and there's no way of turning back and in no time was filled with water we had to swim out
"the only visible we could see after we had swam to safety was the car's antenna." He recalls. Luckily for there's an uncle who lived just around the corner and he to be called in with his 4x4 to pull the Beetle out the water.
Altaf later sold the car to an impressionable young who Altaf found to his dismay managed to crash the Beetle in trench somewhere in Parklands. He says the last time he ever set his eyes on the car was in that trench. But so soon fond of the car was Altaf that he even a made a model of it while he still had the Beetle .
Altaf drives a Mercedes Benz as he restores his beloved American automobiles.
Ashraf Sadique
Asharaff, better known as Ash, is a motoring buff and proprietor of Mash Auto,well known for many mechanical exploits that include transforming ordinary cars into limousines and 'pimping' celebrity rides. Ash is a car collector extraordinaire and to step into his garage is like to enter car Elysian Fields. So it was with much interest that we wanted to know what was Ash's first car.
In 1979, Ash, then14, received a gift from elder brother after passing his CPE exams in the form of a Volkswagen Westfalia camper KQN 727. Ash, a burgeoning mechanic, would spend many of his free times working on it and in no time he had successfully replaced the VW's engine with a 1600 cc Porshe engine with twin carburator and fitted the wheels with alloy rims.
The camper which came complete with a fridge, a cooker and a double bed, served Ash so well in his high school days at Parklands Boys and Oshwal High. Enough said. But there were also the embarrassing moments like the day was out with his girlfriend at the Fox Drive-in Cinema when the battery died on him late and the girlfriend had to called in to push the van as he tried to jump start it. That's one experience Ash can look back with a laugh.
So does he have the car still? "Oh yes," says answers Ash and points it us in the middle of his car garage. Ash says he won't sell the car. " I can't sell it because it was a gift from my brother who passed away in 2006. My brother meant a lot to me as he took care of me after my dad passed away when I was just a year old."
So what does Ash drive today? Well, that is not an easy one. There is Nissan skyline around, not far away is a Mitsubishi Evo VII...
Charles Munyori, KABA Secretary
The city accountant and sports car lover Munyori's first car was a first bought a Datsun 160JSS at 28 years of age in 1983. The car which was only 5-years-old was acquired from Munyori's Japanese expatriate colleague at Kenya Telekom. Munyori paid Ksh 21, 000, a no small price then. Munyori says he actually took a Co-operative loan to facilitate the purchase.It among the few sports cars around, Munyori recalls that his Datsun a work of filigree beauty was such a crowd puller. Munyori who had been married for two years says that some of his children being born when he was with the car.
Munyori sold the trouble-free car in 1991 but insists that the car is firmly still in his heart. Talk of first of first love. Today Munyori drives a Volvo 244 GM and Pajero IO.
