Why do they tie bows on new cars?
I have only had one new car. I bought it recently after breaking down on the roadside and being towed to the mechanic who had previously said ‘she is good to drive’. The repair was quoted at $20k. Ouch. That was double what the car was worth. So I decided to ‘buy’ something new. That wouldn’t break down. And by ‘buy’ I mean: go into debt with car finance.
When I picked up the car it had a big red bow. I’d seen this on Facebook. Happy people standing next to a car with a bow on it, and I‘d thought ‘what a wanker’. Now I was that wanker. They don’t put bows on second-hand cars. When you drive off in a car bought on the roadside for $5k no one sticks a bow on it. They just hope the money clears before it breaks down.
I remember looking at the bow and wondering what it means. A bow is what you put on a gift. A gift is what you give to someone. For free. I have never given someone a present that they bought for double its value. I think, has this car yard given me this car? Is this a gift?
Then I realise that I have been given something: debt. I don’t know about you, but six years of monthly repayments for a depreciating asset with not much resale value feels like a pretty shit gift. Sure, I appreciate that I was considered worthy of a car loan. That a faceless finance company figured I was a risk worth taking.
So what is the bow all about? I guess it’s about making this exciting moment of a new car feel festive. And in a way I guess it is. Especially for a woman in her late 50s who has never had a new car before. Remember the ad? Oh what a feeling? When the newly minted debtor would leap into the air? The thrill of that feeling of driving a long distance and feeling close to 90% sure that you are going to make it there and back definitely deserves a thumbs up. Maybe a leap, but not a fancy ribbon.
My friend Sylvia told me that in Uganda a car is a symbol of wealth – no one has one. She showed me a video of a new car arriving in her community and the whole village dancing around it. Drums beating. Men and women dressed in their finest, shaking their bodies with joy and abandon. Some of the older women were so excited they were literally rolling over the bonnet. Not from a hit and run. For fun!
I imagined my whole family dancing in the car dealership. My mother, my aunts, my siblings, my children. Like a car wedding. For a few hours. It made me smile. I love the thought of that – it acknowledges the massive energy and resource input it takes to make something we take for granted.
But the weird bow. It’s clearly now an Instagram thing. You take a photo of you and your fancy new car and post it on Instagram. So now you haven’t just signed up for years of debt, given money to a finance company in interest, and paid a car business for their product, you are participating in creating free content – advertising. For them.
And you don’t get to keep the bow. It’s a magnet that sticks to your car for a moment for a pic and then they take it off. Rude. So I decide, if I’m going to carry years of debt for what is basically a liability, I am going to take the dam bow. It’s hard to drive with the thing flapping in your windscreen. So I pulled over at a servo and had an idea. Pay the bow forward. Maybe there’s people who need the bow more than me. So I popped it on the bonnet of a beaten-up 1990 Ford Festiva. So that the owners might be reminded that life is a gift.
The power of bow.
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, is the preselected Greens candidate for Ballina and was the Greens candidate at the past two federal elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
