Diary

Entry 3

My landlady out here is a widow in her 70s who, if she were British, would be classed as a Miss Marple type. She’s a keen gardener, she keeps her bird feeder regularly topped up, and she’s a passionate whist player. When she makes her weekly drive to the local supermarket, she never exceeds 20 mph. The only thing that marks her as Californian is the car she putters about in: a brand new Lexus SUV.

It’s a rule in Los Angeles that the smaller the person, the larger the car. As you pull up at the traffic lights next to what looks like a monster truck, you’ll see a 16-year-old girl poking her nose over the steering wheel. It’s almost as if they’ve chosen the vehicle in order to compensate for their diminutive size. I still haven’t spotted Danny DeVito, but I imagine he tools around in a Sherman tank.

Before I got here, I rented a car sight unseen from the LAX branch of Budget. I debated whether to get the obligatory red Mustang convertible but decided against it. My wife and I rented one of these when we came here on our honeymoon, imagining it was “typically L.A.” We quickly discovered that the only other people in red Mustang convertibles were know-nothing tourists like us. The low point was when we spotted two parked outside Fred Segal, and both turned out to belong to British honeymooning couples.

This time around, I went with the recommendation of the Budget rental agent I spoke to on the phone. When she said the words “Ford Escape,” I pictured a little runabout, the American equivalent of a Mini. You can imagine my shock, therefore, when I actually saw it. I was so nervous about hitting a pedestrian that it took me 45 minutes to get out of the car park.

The intimidating Mercury Mountaineer    

Last Saturday I went back to Budget to try and trade it in for a normal-sized car, and the lady behind the counter offered me a “free upgrade” to a Mercury Mountaineer. As a self-respecting British journalist, I’m never one to turn down a freebie, so I accepted, only to learn that the Mountaineer is even bigger than the Escape. The Escape is a “midsize” SUV, apparently, while the Mountaineer is a “full-size.” All I can say is that the last three letters in its name are unnecessary. Before I leave L.A., I’m determined to find a Sherpa so I can climb it.

Given how much more safety-conscious Americans are than we Brits, I can’t understand why these deathtraps are so popular. For Angelinos in particular, road safety seems very low on the list of priorities. One of the things I find most shocking is how many people talk on their cell phones while driving. (Not to mention inhaling an In-N-Out Burger and juggling a gulp-sized fizzy drink at the same time.) On Dec. 1 of last year, it became illegal to do this in the U.K., and anyone caught now faces a £1,000 fine. There was a two-month grace period, but at the beginning of February the police started to enforce the new law, and as a result, you almost never see anyone on their phone behind the wheel.

The danger is far from theoretical. On Monday I had dinner with Chris Ayres, the L.A. correspondent of the Times of London. He told me that shortly after he arrived he was rear-ended at a stop sign by a woman in an SUV. She was on her cell phone at the time, and even though she was traveling no faster than 5 mph, she did $2,000 worth of damage.

“Before being posted here, I was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Iraq, but that was nothing compared to driving in L.A.,” he said.

Back in London, I’m the proud owner of a Skoda, a notoriously cheap, Czech-built car, and have to endure endless ribbing from my friends. (“How do you double the value of a Skoda? Fill up the tank.”) I usually respond by pointing out that unlike the drivers of more expensive cars, I have nothing to compensate for. Just as women assume that men in Porsches have very small penises, when they see me behind the wheel of my Skoda they imagine I’ve got a python in my pants.

The flaw in this argument is that no one spying me crawling along in the slow lane would think I could afford to drive a Porsche but had elected to buy this car instead. They assume—correctly—that I’m only driving a Skoda out of dire economic necessity.

I have to confess, now that I’ve been behind the wheel of a big, expensive car, I’ve acquired quite a taste for it. As I come careering toward a stop sign in my Mercury Mountaineer, trying to wrestle it to a halt, all the smaller cars in front of me scurry out of the way. Occasionally, my wife and I spot another British couple behind the wheel of a red Mustang convertible and the look of terror on their faces as they see this battleship bearing down on them almost makes up for the astronomical fuel costs. (It does about half a mile to the gallon.) I’d take it back to London, but I couldn’t possibly afford it.