The Camry Sportswagon

The Sportswagon, circa 2008
The Sportswagon, circa 2008

Almost ten years ago, we acquired a second-hand, New Zealand-new stationwagon. The Boy, seven at the time, took one look at the Advanti Racing alloy-shod Camry 220 GL and declared it a sportswagon. I suppose when you’re seven and you’re a Holden V8 fan with a cap and jacket to prove it, you make do with what you get.

I grew up with a succession of Ford Falcon stationwagons. A lot of my childhood holiday memories include lying in the rear cargo area, in a cocoon of blankets and luggage, en route to some faraway destination; if I got bored, I played polite games of shoot-’em-up with the driver of the vehicle behind us.

I never thought I’d end up driving a Toyota as an adult. They’re so ubiquitous that… well, I thought Other People drove the damned things. Not me.

But the Camry grew on me. The 2.2-litre engine is a good compromise between around-town trips and our annual cross-country holidays. It’s wide enough to give each occupant room to move — on long trips, the kids would fill up the backseat and footwell with a myriad of items to keep them occupied. The rear cargo area can accommodate: luggage for five; film-making gear; a month’s grocery shopping; or firewood aplenty (with the backseat folded forward). It’s a workhorse, baby, and it can take on any job you throw at it.

I know that, alloys aside, we’ve got a stock Camry. But there’s something about our ‘wagon that makes it stand out from the rest of the ‘wagons out there.

And you know what it is? They’re not sportswagons.

(This post started out as a bit of a love-post in 2007. I thought I’d published it ages ago but obviously haven’t. So why now? The Camry is about to be retired. We added 200,000+kms to the odometer, traversed State Highway 1 innumerable times in it, and it has long been Fortress Mamea’s faithful and reliable war- and work-horse. A farewell ceremony involving fish ‘n’ chips and lipstick is scheduled in the very near future.)

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Lists

We’re a two-car family:

  • The Goddess drives Her chariot, aka The Little Car;
  • and I drive the sportswagon, aka The Big Car.

The sportswagon is Japanese, inconspicuous and boringly reliable.

The chariot is Italian, spunky and an attention-seeker – the attention being of the garage mechanic kind. But The Goddess loves it to bits.

Just before we headed south last weekend*, the wee car was lustily belting along when all power disappeared – just like that – and, after some checking and poking under the hood, and reading of the user manual, the sportswagon and I towed it to the local garage.

A few days later, mid-holiday, I came upon a scrap of paper with The Goddess’s handwriting:

  • hatchback
  • 1200-1500cc engine
  • manual transmission
  • a Honda Jazz?

(Below Her writing was a scrawl by different, mortal, hands: ejection seats, STOL capability, NOS on-demand, coffee machine, HUD with satnav, cloaking device.)

Like I said, The Goddess loves Her chariot. But I suppose there’s a limit to how much one is willing to contribute to your mechanic’s passion for deep-sea fishing.

I have a similar list for my current project:

  1.  treatment
  2.  scene breakdown
  3.  working first draft
  4.  first draft
  5.  inflict on readers
  6.  second draft
  7.  inflict on surviving readers
  8.  third draft
  (and so on)

The thing is, the first draft was aborted after eighty-plus pages and although I’ve returned to a prose treatment… I’ve started another list:

  a.  it’s a story about fathers and sons
  b.  the father was a towering personality
  c.  the son has a chip on his shoulder (ie., his father)
  c.  it’s a tale of love lost… and regained

– while in a less tidy hand – still my own – and in no discernible order:

  –  throw in a car chase
  –  and a gratuitous sex scene
  –  have them sort it out over hot lead
  –  as long as they all hold hands in the end
  –  gratuitous sex tasteful love scene

Mm. Getting there.

(This’ll be the last post about the process (and That Project) for a while – the potty-mouthed Phill Barron and the mysterious Daily Screenwriter write about process much more interestingly than I do.)

*  Sorry for the week’s silence. The Mamea family were in Wellington visiting aiga and the only ‘net access I could get was through my cellphone (hence my few emails were of the all-text-on-one-line variety).

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