If you’re what is known as a “deep” person this column may not be for you. It explores the act of deriving emotional fulfilment from a superficial source – automobiles – and contains imagery that some may consider spiritually bereft.
I’m here to praise the power and majesty of the spotless automobile interior.
How do you define it? The cost of the car is irrelevant. Anyone can have it. It’s the care, not the car.
A Porsche with an interior like a dumpster does not qualify. A 2009 Honda Civic with an interior that’s been vacuumed, seats, carpets and floor mats cleaned, dashboard wiped clean, in other words an interior that’s been nurtured, that car boasts a spotless interior.
For most of my life I have kept a neat car. The minivan years were a strain. They have passed. I do not tolerate wrappers, old coffee cups, receipts or any other detritus. I wipe the dash regularly. Occasionally, I’ll vacuum when I fill up. When I am feeling out of sorts, when the world seems fuzzy and determined to be at odds with my plans, I take my 2021 Mini Cooper S Countryman ALL4 in for a detailing. I’ll go for a quick “VIP In and Out” and tack on a few extras.
A few weeks back, when I was struggling to bounce back from the summer cold that’s been plaguing Canadians, I brought the Mini in for the “works.” After a half hour, they brought my car around, I tipped the attendant and paused. I wanted to savour the anticipation, to enjoy the last moments before I climbed in.
And then … paradise.
Every inch was immaculate. The dashboard, steering wheel wiped to a shine, the seats pristine, the mirrors gleaming. In short, my tiny little world was in perfect order. It was a reset. A new beginning. If only the rest of the world could be as peaceful and well-ordered. I was reborn.
‘Nothing has the reaction of this one’: Driving in the most admired car in the most beautiful city
Note: This is the superficial aspect of the column. People are supposed to attain rebirth and emotional rejuvenation through relationships, spiritual belief and art, not fine leather interiors.
The average “Interior Auto Detailing” involves the following steps:
- Initial inspection
- Vacuuming
- Stain and spot treatment
- Shampooing and steam cleaning
- Leather and vinyl conditioning
- Dashboard and trim detailing
- Glass and mirror cleaning
- Final touches
- Odour neutralization
- Final inspection
Oh, if only they could do the same thing with the human mind. I know I could use an initial inspection, vacuuming, stain and spot treatment and odour neutralization, at minimum. I doubt I’d pass final inspection.
Yet while we can’t be it, we can be in it.
That’s the nature of the spotless interior. It is transformative. It can take a person who is feeling low and raise them up. Take a moment, recall a time when you stepped out of a rainstorm into a car with an interior that has been meticulously cleaned and cared for. The rain fell away, and you were safe, whole and dry. It is the outside-in approach to well-being.
I’ll compare it to some advice my father once gave me. I was 28 and my life was in tatters, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, and he said, “Whatever you do, make sure you shave every morning.” He wasn’t against facial hair; my father had a full beard in the early 1970s. He meant that the rituals performed to celebrate and dress the external summon resolve and hope inside us. A morning shave reminds you that you have something to do that day, something to look forward to, someone to look presentable for, and when your life is in tatters that can make all the difference.
That is why I have vivid memories of spotless interiors. I recall stepping into a Black Cab at 5 a.m. in London in 1990, scrubbed and pristine. I remember driving as a boy in my grandfather Cecil Lyman Clark’s spotless ninth-generation four-door Oldsmobile 98, which was, like his house, workshop and yard – ordered and tidy. Like many in their generation who experienced the Great Depression and Second World War, a craving for order wasn’t a chore – it was a default mechanism. That is why you will find me looking sideways at you if you drop a candy bar wrapper on the floor of my car.
In Candide, his 18th-century satire of human suffering, Voltaire concluded, “We must cultivate our garden.”
If that happens to be the interior of a 2021 Mini Cooper Countryman, so be it.