Defender dreams

I was an awkward, pubescent tweener when Woody Allen’s movie, Annie Hall, starring Diane Keaton hit the theaters.  A hardcore Allen fan, I remember being completely captivated by the movie, more so with its lead character, Annie Hall.  To an impressionable mind, Annie Hall was Diane Keaton so there was a rabid transference of adulation.  I devoured everything Keaton and so found out that she drove a Land Rover Defender.

I grew up in the boonies, literally, amid grazing animals, fruit trees and farmlands, where the mode of transportation, logically, was on horseback, on foot, or in a four-wheel-drive. I grew up among Land Cruisers and by the time I hit my teens, my family must have gone through them in all colors of the rainbow. I was a farm girl who had never had a relationship with a sedan, so when I saw a photo of Diane Keaton beside her Land Rover Defender, I was hit hard. It was coup de foudre (love at first sight), as the French would say.

There was not one Defender in my “old country,” so for a long time it was the stuff of dreams, immortalized in my “secret” album of wishes: the photo of Diane Keaton beside the Defender.

Once mentally primed for it, I started spotting them abroad during travels but my hopes of ever driving one were extinguished because I ended up with a parental-purchase BMW while away at college. Not that I’m complaining because it, too, was a dream car. 

Back in the home country, I again ended up with yet another BMW with which I have had a deep, enduring relationship — 15 years to be anal about it. It is a ’97 model and I can’t seem to part with it. There has been a replacement, same make.  It’s been sitting in the garage for a year, waiting to be driven regularly and yet somehow, there is that nagging feeling of disloyalty every time I get behind its wheel. The guilt does vanish once I step on the accelerator and feel its power but the moment I pull back into the garage and see my trusty old silver one, un-commissioned and alone, my heart sinks. In time, I guess, but right now I just can’t seem to disengage from my old car.

That was until I saw the new Land Rover Defender of celebrity architect Ed Calma, which reignited the forgotten passion of my teens. It was an arresting, shiny, black Defender 110 — the latest model with non-tinted windows and white seats — the stuff of dreams, a jaw-dropper of a car. It just looked . . . well, for lack of a more suitable word — guapo.

What was the matter?  I had seen several Defenders here over the years driven by friends.  There was Fred Mesch’s, Nikki Gozon’s and Dickie Buhain’s, which did make me silently swoon but perhaps because my car had then been new-ish, owning one didn’t really consume me, well, because I couldn’t afford it.

I know the Defender is not an easy drive.  I recently spent a beach weekend with car encyclopedia of a man, Dickie Buhain and his wife, Susan, and Nikki Gozon’s wife, Carmela — Defender owners all — who attested to the driving challenge the SUV poses.

Susan said, “It’s not easy to drive because it is manual and working the clutch and gears is sweat-inducing, so it’s mostly Dickie who drives it.”

Dickie told of this one time when Susan drove it to go grocery shopping at the S&R in The Fort.  When she was done and ready to load up and get home, the car went on “Superlock” mode and just wouldn’t open. 

Dickie said, “The Defender has that anti-theft feature called ‘Superlock,’ where no matter what you do (unless you know how to override), it won’t open.  Susan must have activated it somehow and it was difficult to explain to her over the phone how to do it, so I had to drive over and disarm it myself.”

I asked Dickie how he went about disarming.

He chuckled and said, “It needs several flicks of the wrist and turns of the key.  It has an amo.”  Well, guess who?

Another time, Dickie recalls getting a phone call from Carmela, who happened to drive Nikki’s Defender that day simply because it was the one nearest their gate and quickest to drive out with.  She did get to her destination but as she got ready to drive home, it wouldn’t budge no matter how hard she stepped on the accelerator.

Dickie to the rescue: “Hi, Carmela, what’s the matter?”

“The Defender won’t run no matter what I do,” Carmela said.  Dickie took a few beats to consider the predicament and said,  “Try this; look under the hood.  There should be a cylinder/vial of pinkish fluid there — the transmission fluid — look for it please.” 

Carmela tried and couldn’t find it.  Dickie said, “Just what I thought, it’s out of that pink fluid and therefore would not run.”

No matter. I don’t know squat about cars — zip, zilch, zero.  All I know is how to get it from point A to point B; everything else is taken care of by the driver. I can’t even change a flat tire to save my life and did not know until Dickie told me recently that you should replace your tires only in even numbers: two’s or four’s and in the same brand so the car runs evenly.  Of course — duh!

Anyway, freshly armed with insider trivia about the Defender — merely a week after that beach weekend — I had that close encounter with Ed and Suzy Calma’s James Bond of a Defender.  Really, if that SUV were a man, it would be Daniel Craig —no less. 

Suzy did tell me, “It is hard to drive, so it’s mostly Ed who uses it.”

Ed countered, “There is an automatic, two-door version.”

That’s all I needed to hear. When I got home I immediately researched on the Defender and ended up with information overload.  According to privatefleet.com, “This is the legendary Defender. Off road, no one else comes close. Effortless power from the Defender’s refined 2.4-liter diesel engine comes from an output of 90kw and a class-leading 360 nm of torque — with 90 percent of peak power on tap from less than 2200 rpm to over 4350 rpm.”

Huh? Who cares? With a car that looks that good, who cares what it does, as long as it can go forward and backward and it can turn, nothing else matters.

The review went on to say, “What makes the Land Rover Defender such a weapon off road is its ability to find traction where other marques can’t.  If you want to take on pebbles the size of dinosaurs’ eggs and slopes steeper than an A-frame roof. You best be piloting a Defender.”

Why would I want to do that?

It continued, “This is a true off-road vehicle and is meant to go to places where your average Hummer can only dream of.  The Defender can climb slopes of 45 degrees and descend slopes of 49 degrees and it can stay upright on slopes of 35 degrees — with ease.”

So what?  I’m afraid of heights.

I turned off my laptop and rushed to the garage and stared at the year-old BMW sitting there peacefully.  After several minutes I called a friend and asked, “How much is my white car and how much is a two-door, automatic Defender?”

He said, “About the same, I would say.”

It was a light bulb moment.

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Thank you for your letters.  You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.