I worked at The Grand Summit Hotel as a valet and bellboy in Park City, Utah. We offered our services to many wealthy people, especially during the Sundance Film Festival where B-list celebrities would come for the week to promote their upcoming movies and invade our ski slopes. I must remind you that the Sundance festival takes place at the end of January when it is still very much winter, reaching temperatures as low as -10C° and there’s at least 20cm of snow on every inch of everything. Yet, wannabe Paris Hilton’s will walk out in miniskirts and high heels in the middle of winter. Women will wear the most impractical attire in the most inappropriate moments. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that skintight dresses and ten centimetres heals aren’t the appropriate attire for the mountains. Yet, here we are.

Unfortunately, I can’t judge these ladies too much, because I daily drove a 1991 Honda Accord Coupe back when I lived in California. But it wasn’t like every other Honda, mine was slammed to the ground. My Honda could not physically go over speed bumps, potholes, ants, and dead leaves. It was stupidly low; it was the most impractical car I ever owned. The previous owner installed adjustable coilovers. But instead of adjusting them in a way that would improve handling without compromising useability too much, say around 113mm of ground clearance, he decided to slam the car as low as he could. The Accord was now 82mm from the ground. But the setup wasn’t installed properly. The driver-side back coil was lower than the other three, and the alignment wasn’t done – probably why I got the car for 700$. Needless to say, after my GMC Jimmy, this was one of the most dangerous cars I owned.

So I got my hands dirty, cracked open a couple of beers, lifted the car and fixed the mess done by the previous owner. While I was under the car I thought to myself: why keep it so low? I’m here with all my tools, I can lift it back up to a functional height. Just a few centimetres higher, so I can drive over a twig without getting it stuck between the bumper and the tarmac. But I decided against that; I wanted to experience the lifestyle of living with a car so low that every pebble on the road is an obstacle.
All my commutes needed to be planned out. If I’m going to the Westfield Mall, I can’t use the main road because there’s a speed bump, and Portola is out of the question because of the potholes. I need to take a five-minute detour and go through Washington Avenue.
Highways were always very scary because I never knew if the imperfections in the road would cause my car to hit the floor, crack the oil pan, spin off the road and kill me. If I had friends in the car, it would sit lower, consequently making the task of driving around town even harder.

Now that I’m writing this, I’m wondering why I inflected myself with this lifestyle of pain and suffering. But it all comes back to me when I look at the car. There’s a saying that goes “If you don’t look back at your car after you’ve parked it, you bought the wrong one” and the hundreds of pictures of the Honda I have on my phone are proof that this was definitely worth the hassle. I don’t want to brag, but I looked really good in this Honda. Even though I might be late to work because I couldn’t take my usual road due to the new speed bump, I had the best-looking car on the lot when I got there, and that was good enough for me. I guess that means I understand why women wear miniskirts in winter. They would rather freeze to death and look the part just in case someone takes a picture, the same way I’d rather take a five-minute detour because I can’t drive over a speedbump but get tons of compliments when I arrive late to a car-meet. It’s all about self-gratification, there isn’t any logic involved, we simply decided to pick form over function.   

Max.