Keeping Up with the Lexus

What happens when your car has more status than you do

Earlier this year, a distant relative sold us his 1995 Lexus LS400 for a song. He loved that car, took obsessive care of it, changed the oil far more often than necessary and kept it ding-free for all those years. I think he took a lot less money than he might have gotten for it because he couldn’t bear to turn it over to a stranger.


Barb and I really didn’t need another car, but who turns down a Lexus for a song?


I’ve been driving it to work every day, and I have to say it’s a fine car indeed. I don’t mind that it’s a 1995 model or that it has 200,000 miles on it. It has real leather upholstery, folks.


TO THE DMV
But there are problems that come with driving a Lexus that are not encountered when driving a Mercury or an Olds. Expectations are … high. For instance, when I went to DMV to get the title changed over, get the plates and so forth, the lady behind the counter didn’t seem to believe me when I told her how little we’d paid for it.


"Do you have a notarized statement from the seller attesting to that selling price?” she asked.


Well, no, I didn’t. It never occurred to me that I’d need one.


“Then I have to record the Blue Book price for it,” she said, “and you’ll have to pay taxes on that amount rather than [and here I swear her lip curled up a bit] the amount you say you paid.”


Because the seller lives in another state and, more important, because everybody knows you never turn away from DMV once you’ve actually gotten up to the window, I paid the extra taxes and let her record the sale price as the Blue Book value.


A few days later, Barb drove the Lexus to the grocery store. On the way home, she stopped at a stoplight where a seemingly able-bodied man was holding up a sign that said, “Will work for food.” She handed him an apple and a banana from her grocery bag, and as the light changed he yelled after her accusingly, “Nice car, lady.”


A MINOR REPAIR?
And it is, except for a small tear in the passenger-side seat. Don’t take a Lexus into a shop to get some little thing fixed, though — like a teeny-tiny tear in the upholstery. Just don’t do it. Barb stopped by a place where we’ve had many a small seat-cover job done quite reasonably on other cars we’ve owned, and she came home gray-faced and breathing hard.


“They wanted $400,” she said. “I need duct tape and a needle and thread.”


At least I insisted on going to Pleasants Hardware and getting a color of duct tape that more closely matched the off-white leather seat than the neon blue roll Barb was wielding.


The first time I took the Lexus for gas, I was about to place the nozzle in the tank when I noticed a warning on the inside of the little gas tank door that said, “High-test gas only.”  I’ve never owned a car that required high-test gas. That was when I really realized we might be out of our league here. When I told Barb, she grumbled, “Yeah, and it takes extra-virgin oil, too.”


ALEXIS
But actually she’s quite fond of the car. Over the years she’s always given our cars names, and it took her about four days to bestow a moniker on this one. “This is Alexis,” she announced, naming the car after the sexy character Joan Collins used to play on “Dynasty.” 


“Alexis is the right name,” she said, “because this baby has a lot of years on her and a lot of miles under her belt, but she still turns heads when she comes down the street.”


Yep, Alexis it is — and she’s got the nip and tuck in her upholstery to prove it.


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Randy Fitzgerald is chair of the English and Mass Communications Department at Virginia Union University. He was a longtime public relations director at the University of Richmond and columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia.