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: Outside Counsel

By Bill Altreuter

Around this time last year the ignition lock in the steering column of the old Volvo broke.  It was made of some sort of metal, and it failed after having been turned-- who knows? -- thousands and thousands of times. 

It was an expensive repair.  The part had to be shipped from Sweden, and was hand-tooled by gnomes or something.  It was one of those automobile repairs that you hate paying for, but that you grit your teeth over, because you are committed to getting a lot more miles out of the vehicle.  You never stop  paying for a car, but after the loan payments end they become intermittent, in the form of repairs like this.

The new Swedish Batmobile doesn't have a key, as such, and at first I was puzzled by this.  It has a plastic fob with a transponder in it, and when you want to start the car you stick it in a slot, and then push a button.  I couldn't see what the advantage to this system was until I remembered our experience with the old ignition lock.  Fewer moving parts means less wear and tear, and presumably this means that  there is one less thing to break on the new car.  What I really like about it is that it reminds me of the "brain" that the Mother Thing steals or builds in order to highjack the Wormfaces' ship in "Have Spacesuit Will Travel".

Full post as published by Outside Counsel on December 04, 2010 (boomark / email).