Sicelo Fayo's Street Talk

We should have been consulted before this decision

IT’s real a shame, tog maar, ne; that of the few vehicles that are unique to South Africa, and after such a long faithful service; the “Volksiebus” and the pikinin “Rustler” bakkie from Mazda (read Ford) are to disappear forever from this country - and with little or no input at all from you and me, the poor consumers!

Never mind, for a while the 12-volume “economic rationale” dished out by the respective companies, Volkswagen SA (Uitenhage) and Ford Motor Company SA (Pretoria) recently as being behind the phasing out of the vehicles this year.

Theirs would be about “money” at some point, anyhow, wouldn’t it!

Yet, when we - the individual private owners of vehicles - make the choices we do when we decide to buy cars, costs are almost always of secondary importance.

First, it’s what vehicle type and why? Then we look at the stuff like affordability of the car type and range chosen, right!

If it’s not new, then it’s a used one, and if it’s not the Caddy, then it’s the Rustler, full stop!

Car buying was never supposed to be a scientific treatise.

Once “affordable” and acquired, we never really ever moan again about the price at which the car was bought or the usually heavy instalment one pays every month for five years thereafter.

We focus on the pleasure of driving and using that car or bakkie or minibus for whatever reasons, while always making sure that it is well-looked after for as many years as is possible.

Not that car-makers, make this latter goal any easier for private individual buyers these days, anyway.

As most South African motorists now know, car producers have now all decided on “sell-by- date” cars (both passenger and light commercial vehicles) that have a life-span similar to a sponge cake.

Once a model has completed a three-month run on the country’s roads, the vehicle is deliberately rendered unattractive so that fashion-fixated customers can go spending a few more rand on the “latest model”.

Yet in most cases, this “latest model” is often no major case than that of the car’s body being given what is colloquially termed a “cosmetic facelift”.

All of it, often nothing but a ploy deliberately set up to lure the unwary customer into constantly swelling the car-markers’ bank accounts, as none of the so-called “new models” ever come out at the old new car price.

That’s beside the fact that the car dealer’s advertised price is almost always misleading, anyhow.

Car prices, I add, never show also the “service fees” - quite a variety too, for the same transaction - the banks always find a delight to load on the instalment tab, the “postage fee” the postman demands, the ever increasing “premium” charged by the insurance salesman, and the “speeding ticket”.

And talking about loading; come to think of it; cars are about the only consumer product to have such costs associated with one single product!

These costs, synonymous with car-ownership, come all packaged neatly with every “new model” the car-makers churn out.

But disposable “sell-by-date” cars, and their true exorbitant costs aside, the ditching of the “Gus Bus” - and about which I first learnt on the reverse side of a Chappies chewing gum wrapper all those years ago (the only South African produced vehicle ever to feature there) - and the dumping of the Mazda Rustler, associated with my family for close on 15 years now, can’t just go unlamented. At least not by me.

These vehicles are as South African as most of us claim to be, if not better, and I believe their demise should have been determined by the entire nation, maybe through a referendum.

This is a democratic country y’know!

We, who have had a history with these vehicles - and I know I am speaking for a few million people; owners and riders in equal measure - should have been consulted first.

We should’ve been asked the question: “Is it your opinion that this vehicle should be phased out?” and I bet you, there’d have been more “No” than “Yes” votes!

I dare VWSA and FMCSA to try it!

---