HET ZOETE LEVEN - THE MYSTERY OF SHITTY DUTCH CARS 

An old saying goes that God created the Earth while Dutch people created the Netherlands. As far as sayings go, this one is quite a literal.

Once upon a time,  centuries ago, a pack of Germanic tribes, which had a penchant for bright orange colours, decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all to nick some land away from the raging seas. It was an impossible idea but they did it. Thanks to the stubborn Germanic spirit they started pumping away sea water and relocating endless amounts of sand. Nowadays forests, meadows, hills, cycle paths and brown-brick building infested  cities rise in places where North Arctic Ocean once reigned. An amazing feat of engineering prowess. Add to this a fact that they gave rise to such international corporate mastodons  as Philips Electronics and Royal Dutch Shell, it becomes quite evident these  boys are more resourceful than MacGyver and diligent as those last high-risk employees that saved the Fukoshima reactor with their erectile-dysfunction inducing actions.

Given the widespread technological superiority one might imagine their cars are on average between eight and twelve months old while those that reach a ripe old age of three years are ready to be thrown in a crusher and recycled as dildos and refrigerators. Surprisingly it’s quite the opposite. Cars running on dutch roads are on average so logic defiantly  old,  that scrapyards in Slovenia would more than likely reject them,  unless you pay them for recycling and promise them a date with your youngest daughter. Last time I saw such cars on Slovenian roads was back in the day I still played Test Drive on Commodore and bowed to our local Kim Jong Un, commie commander Tito.

Imagine the following scene: the author of this text is cruising effortlessly down a  beautifully smooth and flat highway from Rotterdam to Hague,  whose quality finish could only be compared to that of an airport runway, when a  perfectly maintained hydraulic Citroen BX overtakes him on the left –  beige in colour, a kind that German taxi drivers simply adore, but is otherwise only popular with people who suffer from chronic daltonism. BX disappears in the distance, being followed closely by an ancient Sierra, the last rear-wheel-drive Ford, with an OHV six-cylinder under the hood, the roots of which go back to the Ford Taunus, which was about the time homo sapiens started dominating over homo neanderthalis in prehistoric Europe. Then a Peugeot 309; metallic silver in colour with a kitschy white line running through the the side of it, typically for a period of about 25 years ago, when males were mistakenly convinced  their mating chances might increase witch ridiculously tacky stickers on their cars. Closely behind an Opel Kadett E Caravan in burgundy red, glittering in the spring sun, looking as good as the day it left the factory in Russelsheim, way before the fall of the Berlin Wall.   

When the car radio starts playing chipper synthpop beats of A-Ha’s Take On Me the author ponders whether he  unwittingly drove through a space - time continuum rip and travelled back to 1984. He starts panicking at the thought of being forced to wear fluorescent "Free Nelson Mandela" T-shirts,  tight-fit jeans and a leather jacket with "USA" emblems on the sleeves just too fit in. As the radio starts playing Girls Just Want to Have Fun, he’s almost resigned to his fate, that he will never ever log on to facebook again or make a high definition photo there’s some overwhelming relief.   A brand new Opel Insignia, sweeps past quietly like a futuristic DeLorean from Back To The Future. Thank Goodness! We are still in 2013! But despite the rush hour these messengers of modern times are few and far in between drowned by a majority of scrap metal on wheels that surrounds it. Case in point the Insignia is tailed by a Mazda 929, old enough to still be slightly radioactive  from the  Hiroshima disaster of 45.

I kid you not ladies and gentlemen in the Netherlands you will be confronted by these Twilight Zone moments daily. This just cannot be a coincidence. It surely is something systematic. It is a big conundrum though. It seems rationally inconceivable that these people who earn three times more than an average Slovenian choose to drive archaic time machines on wheels, bereft of advancements in  modern automotive technology like ABS, ASR, ESP, Airbags, and other electronic gizmos which sometimes prove beneficial to prolonging lives of average mammals like us.

I had to get to the bottom of this.

In the role of an undercover researcher I hid in a trash can and ambushed Dutch passers-by, first scaring them to death just for fun then inquiring about their curious national penchant for ancient outdated vehicles. The answers  - of those who didn’t call the police right away  -  were surprising. In fact, many blonde gentlemen didn’t even understand the question. “What do you mean old? As long as they work! When it stops working we buy a new one.” Almost none of the victims of my ambush said they can’t afford a new car, despite an epileptic episode inducing taxes on new vehicle purchases. Which is not surprising seeing as how lucky people of the flatlands earn more than two thousand euros on average (for that kind of money Slovenians would spit-shine ones shoes all year long and then some). Thus even though  they are quite capable of purchasing new cars, they won’t do so for as long as their old Corollas, Micras and Escorts still have any internal combustion action left in them.

I realized that Slovenians – and more than likely other south Slavic tribes - differ fundamentally when it comes to buying cars. We are prepared to sell our internal organs or at least eat bird food for a year, just so we can get our hands on a shiny new VW Golf with lowered Eibach suspension. On the other side, a car is just a random mean of transportation for Dutch people. An emotionless tin box perfect for getting you from Amersfoort to Maastricht in reasonable safety on a dull rainy autumn day (unless you hit a tree on the side of the road in which case your ligaments become crumple zones, shielding the car from further damage with your soft, cushy meat). 

There are other factors in play as well. Bicycles are serious competition to cars in the Netherlands. Dutch people are crazy about bicycles. I mean they are Beijing-crazy about them. These modes of transport follow the lead of cars when it comes to age – most of them are rusty and outdated to such an extent that they would stay parked in the middle of a crowded street in Ljubljana for a decade without anyone touching them – not even an occasional drunkard in need of an opportunistic joyride would hop on them. Yet in Holland it’s not a rare site to see a serious-looking businessman with a suit and a tie, peddling furiously like a sassy pre-teen on one of these rusty  contraptions, navigating through the narrow streets of Amsterdam, while his silk tie is flapping on the back of his otherwise perfectly ironed Armani suit. Cars only come into play when a distance is too great to be overcome by a bicycle without sweating profusely, which  usually means trips over 20 kilometers.

Add to this an extensive network of trains and buses that also compete successfully with cars in routine commutes - if you don’t mind daily congestion, due to frustratingly endless railroad repair works and daily congestions after desperate people throw themselves under trains on a daily basis (which is the second favourite form of suicide in the Netherlands, after autoerotic asphyxiation – actually I just made that last bit up, however throwing oneself under a train is definitely the Dutch way to leave the mortal coil).

So all in all this phenomenon of scrap metal infesting ultramodern Dutch highways is a natural occurrence.  It’s not like fathers over there say to their 7 year old sons something like:, "Ruud when you grow up, you will also drive this rusty old Citroen AX with no air conditioning,  which I inherited from your grandfather in 1991." Things just happen.. Cars are regularly maintained and driven on straight , smooth roads, resulting in quite a stressless life for these automotive fossils. No potholed, gravel infested madness of the Balkans. Thus a ride in a supremely comfortable Maybach is not tremendously more comfortable than that in a seventeen year old Skoda Felicia. Another thing that is strangely absent in the Netherlands is random distribution of nervous, aggressive drivers, which are always in hurry nor did I ever notice any bat swinging psychopaths. Most people adhere exemplary to limits. It’s amazing to observe a whole convoy of cars all traveling in a steady 120km/h with no BMW 5 series zigzagging from left to right, trying to find a way through. Absent are the young wannabe alpha males in hot hatches sticking to the back of slower vehicles blinking furiously to get through, while on their way to save the world (or perhaps have a beer in a pub, whichever is more likely. ) These kind of driving conditions are like nectar and ambrosia for aging shock absorbers, springs, clutches and other wear&tear parts of old Dutch cars.

I believe that this drive-till-pistons-shoot-out-of-the-bonnet philosophy would never work in Slovenia even if by some miracle teutonic plates moved and  Alps collapsed into the Mediterranean, leaving a flat landscape, enabling us to build perfectly smooth Dutch-like roads.. Slovenians perceive motoring differently. To us a car represents that untouchable added value. A status symbol. Phallic extension. Object of pseudo-erotic desire. Something to make our neighbors envy us. It is quite literally a way of life. Buying a car for a Slovenian is as emotional of an experience as Amnesty International food packages are to an average sub-Saharan African.  Will 110 kilowatts will be enough? Naah it has to have at least 130.  Hell we are a mountainous country, 200 is a minimum if you don’t want to get stuck in a steep alpine pass. Tires for 60 euros? No that can’t be right! Cheap Asian junk probably made out of minced dogs. You can’t go wrong with proven European quality for at least 120 apiece. Now that will surely make times on the Nordschleife drop by at least 10 seconds!  

An average Slovene has no problem throwing away half of what he owns to buy a car.  An average Dutch car buyer would start foaming at the mouth if he had to give five percent of his net worth to buy what is ultimately just another mode of transportation – something that can also be achieved – usually much more economically - by trains, buses and bicycles. We laugh at them, as they pass Slovenia on their way to the Croatian seaside for a cheap-ass vacation in their old wrecks from the 80s and 90s, but they are the ones who are laughing all the way to the bank, while we barely have enough left for a warmed-up goulash spiced up with rotten paprika after we’ve paid the monthly car instalment.

 La dolce vita. Everybody has a different opinion on what it really means.