WARNING: This column has enraged the Land Rover Defender neck-beards on the Stuff website. It also aroused a particularly passionate conspiracy theorist who thinks the Aussie gummint is the whole reason behind the demise of Australian production, as opposed to unsustainably low sales figures… While know-it-all-iness is fine on the Stuff website, be warned that it will be met with a finely balanced blend of sarcasm, surreal humour and vitriol here. That said, go for it!
Death, as it has been noted many times, is a natural part of life. And so it goes that grief is a natural part of death. Not for those who have died, but for those who are left behind.
I manage all of my relationships with wisdom from Wikipedia. It says that grief is a multifaceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond or affection was formed.
Note the use of the word “something” in that definition. It’s not always the loss of a loved-one, pet or favourite television show character (I still miss you, Maude Flanders) that can cause grief. Sometimes it can be the death of a favourite model of car.
It seems that the way a lot of people deal with that kind of grief is to go on the internet and act like a complete tool about it.
The internet has given us many, many wonderful things – access to almost unlimited information, the ability to shop while wearing only undies and free pornography. But it also has its downsides. Justin Bieber, cat memes and Twitter are just a few, but perhaps the biggest of them all is the voice it has given to grief-stricken fanboy know-it-alls.
I’m not suggesting for a moment that the idea of a comments section on a website or any other sort of open forum is a bad thing – in fact, some of the most interesting, intelligent, funny and well-considered things I have read have come from such places. Unfortunately, some of the most spittle-flecked insanity-tinged rants and ill-informed idiocy masquerading as knowledge has also spewed forth from forums.
While the sensible among us are currently enjoying the final chapter in the long and well-overdue death of the Series Land Rover (more recently known as the Defender), there is guaranteed to be a barrage of comments from upset Land Rover enthusiasts – you know the sort, the ones with a fondness for silly knitted hats and weak, scruffy neck-beards – on anything written about it, proclaiming how Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is making a massive mistake and that the Defender is the best vehicle ever.
But let’s be brutally honest here for a moment. While the Defender is still impressive off road, its other talents are limited to transport for trendy film-industry types, developing interesting and exciting new ways to leak and backing over your kids in the driveway.
There are actually plenty of other less-agricultural, safer, more comfortable and, well, modern vehicles that are just as good – or even better – than the Defender off the road.
That won’t stop the neck-beards whining on and on about how JLR are clearly a bunch of idiots and that they won’t buy a new one, because it could never be as good as the original. Because, dammit, they love that thing. But now it’s actually gone.
There are five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
While Land Rover fans generally never accept anything they can’t see leaking for themselves (so getting to that last stage may be difficult for them), at the moment they seem to be somewhere between denial and anger. However, denial is also something you have to be good at to be a proper Defender fan, as insisting you can’t hear any rattles is imperative.
Rather interestingly, we have another bunch of grief-stricken fans who have leapt straight to the bargaining stage, admittedly having already spewed forth much anger and denial. Remarkable given that their favourite cars are still in production.
I am, of course, referring to fans of the Magnum Sedanosaurus Australicus, or the big Australian dinosaurs more commonly known as the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore.
While Ford will drop the Falcon name, Holden has chosen to carry on with the Commodore badge on an imported car. Both are apparently dead-wrong, according to the anger and denial let loose on the internet.
“How dare Ford let the Falcon die!” cry bereaved Falcon fans. “They need to build it forever. It’s way better than that crappy Commodore!”.
The saddened Commodore fans scream: “How dare Holden put the Commodore name on a front-wheel drive Pakistani three-cylinder car [I might be paraphrasing a bit]. By the way, the Falcon is crap.”
Meanwhile, the Defender fans are trying to figure out whether that’s a new leak or merely an extension of a previous one. And what the hell is that new noise they will never admit to?
By the way, there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that Holden is slapping a Commodore badge on the Suzuki Khyber. It’s just a rumour I’m starting and I hope it will stick.
But now the bargaining part has started for the Commodore fans, following the persistent (and ridiculous) news that a Belgian businessman is keen to take his large fortune and make it all go away by buying the plant that produces the car in Elizabeth and continue production past 2017.
I am sure the chap in question has already had many emails, letters and disturbingly-stained parcels from rabid Commodore fans offering things like their beach house at Corumbumboola, their first-born child, or the use of their missus for the weekend if he can just keep the Commodore in production.
Falcon fans, however, just have to embrace depression, accept that the Mondeo is a better car anyway and try to move on. The Commodore people will have to do that soon enough as well – possibly with something Opel-based, possibly with the Suzuki Khyber.
Land Rover fans are too busy wondering what caused that particular fire in the engine bay and exactly when the wife left them, because the dishes are really starting to pile up.
