Lost in the Great Melbourne Used Car Bazaar

By Keith Butler

Last summer, I discovered that one way to become acquainted with Melbourne’s multicultural population was to try buying a used car. The $4,500 ONO price range was where the city’s more intriguing characters hung out. I was after a quick buy for my daughter, Tiger-Eyes, who needed wheels to get to Deakin University from our Glen Waverley home; I had suggested something solid, preferably in safety yellow like my Volvo, circa 1979 but she gave me The Look.

‘Something me,’ she said quietly – that translated into a Nissan Pulsar with a high priority in the sound system department.

That’s when she showed me the advertisement in The Trading Post; right car, right price, wrong place - Werribee.

‘Please dad,’ she said rolling her tawny eyes at me and so it was that I telephoned the owner of PSS345. In Weribee. A deep voice rasped through the handset, ‘Yazz, ve have carrr forr sale.’

I explained that Werribee was a long way to come, was the car in good condition?

‘Perrfect maite, he said, ‘ you no sorry.’ He spelled his name: *Ldvic Balzvin

Ah well, I thought, at least I’ll get to use the new tunnel under the Yarra. So that Saturday at nine we set off, daughter and dad in search of a Pulsar Q. Fifty minutes later we turned into Ldvic’s driveway. He came out of the house wearing a namazi topi - a skullcap, dark tracksuit, white socks and slippers. His four-year old son dribbled a soccer ball into the backyard.

We introduced ourselves and looked around for the car.

‘In garrrage maite.’ said Ldvic.

‘Where you from mate,’ I said.

‘Kosovo. You?’

‘India,’ I said, ‘mate.’

We were fellow migrants, and he was obviously Muslim so I’d tried my smattering of Urdu on him; ‘Salaam Ali Kuum,’ I said hoping to bring the price down.

He mumbled Salaam in reply. I continued – Arp kaise hein - how is life? He looked at me quizzically; they obviously didn’t speak that variant of Urdu in Kosovo. Tiger-Eyes looked at the both of us. We headed for the garage.

As he backed the car out my eyes fell on the black heavy-duty masking tape holding the side mirror together. ‘ Nuthing,’ Ldvic said, ‘nuthing.’

To give Ldvic his due the car was not in bad shape. Tiger-Eyes liked it so we went for a test drive. Ldvic sat in the back and directed, ‘Tiz vay, round the bout,’ so I went left at the round about. As I drove along Farm Crescent I took my hands off the steering wheel to check for drift and Tiger-Eyes reminded me not to test the car’s wheel alignment whilst coursing along a curve. It was a front wheel drive car and I worried about the vehicle spinning when the brakes were hit hard.

‘You juzz prez small,’ said Ldvic.

We returned to the house and the haggling started. He wanted $4,700 and would pay for the Road Worthy Certificate. I suggested something in the vicinity of 4,000. This triggered a tirade of mathematical reasoning from him that suddenly ended with a figure being spat out: ‘$4,500. He then added, ‘Vith RWC.’

Would he accept $4,300 with the RWC?

Another major thesis was offered, containing mathematical, biographical and political points of argument. Whilst I was trying to figure out how the break up of the Baltic States had entered our car sale negotiations. Ldvic said, ‘4,000 vith RWC;

I accepted.

Then he said, ‘$4200 vithout RWC.’

I again accepted. I had now bought the same car twice in a matter of seconds at two different prices. I asked Ldvic, very slowly, what his final price was and he told me that I had wasted HIS time. He was ‘very bizzy man you don understan, very bizzy.’ Also, my offer was insulting and he wanted us off the property. Fearing another Ldvic exegesis we backed off and drove the 60 kilometeres home in silence.

We were now learning how to read The Trading Post advertisements intelligently; no mention of kilometers usually meant the car had been driven into the ground; ‘lady owner’ meant to hell with stereotypes, we all know that men really do possess lead feet, so buy from ladies only. That was why I knocked on the door of a Malvern home and a tiny Asian woman answered. ‘You want car?’ she said as if in the next moment I could also buy a packet of chewing gum from her. She slippered her way up the driveway to two Pulsars parked in the garage. ‘Which one?’she said.

‘What’s the price difference?’ I said.

‘Same,’ she said. Then her husband loomed into sight, mobile in one hand, sandwich in the other. Khem didn’t talk, he giggled. I was curious about where they came from. They had been rice farmers in Myanmar. My mother was born there when it was called Burma in British Raj times and I wondered if I could use that to talk the price down, so I mentioned my favourite Burmese food - Panthe Khowsway.

They knew it and smiled; food is such a great peacemaker.

We asked for a test drive and they entered my driver’s licence number in a book; they were ex-rice farmers turned car dealers operating from a private address. After the test ride Tiger-Eyes whispered, ‘I really like this one dad.’ I made an offer conditional to an RACV test.

Khem looked doubtful. ‘Why you no believe car is nice car?’

‘It’s standard procedure,’ I said.

He didn’t have time for a RACV test. He too was very busy.

Tiger-Eyes was now quite desultory but word had spread amongst my Indian friends. They all wanted to help. I received email, ‘Gurbux Singh’s father is going back to India, he’s got a Pulsar.’ I rang Gurbux and he somewhat absent-mindedly said we could come over immediately. As we approached the open door of his Eltham home we heard Gurbux screaming, ‘Out! Out!’ We retreated. What the dickens was happening? I tentatively poked my head inside the door. Gurbux spotted me and waved us in. He was watching the Second Test between India and Australia at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta. He shook my hand, both eyes still on the TV.

‘Where’s the car? I asked

‘Silly mid-on,’ he said pointing to a fielder being repositioned on the screen.

‘Where’s your father? I asked.

‘He’s taken two wickets,’ said Gurbux as he watched the TV screen with bulging eyes. Harbhajan Singh had just bowled Ponting and Gilchrist out and was poised to take another wicket. Gurbux’s face mottled as Harbhajan delivered the next ball; it hung in the air, then dropped to Shane Warne who poked at it and a fielder snapped up the catch. The third umpire was consulted. Warne was out. The roar of the Calcutta crowd came over the TV into Gurbux’s room, ‘Bom, bom bole, Australian gelo gole’ – Hip hip hooray, Australia has melted. Gurbux was standing on his chair screaming himself hoarse. I bellowed at him, ‘Was it a hat trick?’

‘First Turban Trick in Indian history,’ he screamed back and then duck walked around the room. He suddenly realised he was not his usual hospitable self, ‘Cricket yaar’, he panted, ‘you understand!’

He told us the car was in the garage; we liked what we saw but knew Gurbux was not ready for anything but cricket.

We saw a lot of cars-sellers in the next few days such as Ferret of North Dandenong whose tomato plants reflected in the gleaming duco of the professionally detailed Corolla sitting in his driveway. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to buy a vehicle he didn’t own. ‘Youse wasted me time,’ he said slamming the bonnet down. And Jacob Ghoogassian, a carpet seller from Armenia. The worry beads tied to the rear vision mirror of his vehicle dangled like black grapes but he was not a genuine seller, just testing the market to finance a dream holiday back home.

Now, another uncomfortable thought loomed: were immigrants not to be trusted? We found ourselves avoiding sellers with accents, almost practicing a sort of voice discrimination, which was probably why when Ian Jarvis of Ivanhoe described his Corrolla HISS 420 as a ‘little ripper’ of a car, belonging to ‘the missus’, we bought it soon after- throwing in the ‘conditional to a satisfactory RACV pre-purchase assessment’ almost as an afterthought. The $100 RACV report told us that the car had been in a major accident and the chassis had shifted. Ian said the accident was news to him.

Two weeks later Judith Goldberg of East Bentleigh sold us a decent car, right price, no lies. She restored our faith.

A few months later the stress of the experience still washes through me. Melbourne’s used car market echoes more like an Eastern bazaar: people haggle, drive hard bargains, suspicion is everywhere, truth a fugitive. The atmosphere is both familiar and strange. I know that what we Indians call ‘dharm dhoom’ – tension and noise, of the experience will fade, but what remains are the voices of the sellers; voices now sequestered in Melbourne but which once echoed across the river Indus, sang at rice harvest festivals in Rangoon, fled the killing-fields of Europe or sold carpet in Isfahan.

*All names have been changed. First published in The Age, 20 June 2001

E-mail to: Keith S Butler