Editors Note:             
This article is reprinted from The Australian, Wednesday August 3^rd.  Although not a story concerning, or even about Mopars, the author’s sentiment and humour involving his mother, and her car, can still be enjoyed by any reader.

My mother is a caring and kindly woman, a grandmother of four, a keen gardener and active in her local church. For reasons that have never been adequately investigated, she owns a turbocharged Subaru WRX.

If you’ve never driven a WRX, you may well ask, ‘so what?’ Despite four doors and conservative silhouette, the WRX is a high performance sports car, which means that you don’t so much drive it as hang on to the steering wheel while it tries to launch itself into orbit. It moves like a highly strung greyhound that’s just caught the scent of an injured bunny. It takes a great deal of care to keep it under any sort of speed limit, and even moderate pressure to the accelerator causes the turbo-charger to kick in with an enthusiastic WhoooooOOOOOOO…. which is also the sound you are tempted to make as it happens.

It’s great to drive, especially because if you do something inept, such as accidentally cut someone off or attempt an overtake when there’s a Daewoo coming in the other direction, all it takes is a little right foot and suddenly any unpleasantness is several hundred metres behind.

The only effort required on your part is putting your foot down and fighting the G forces long enough to bellow, “eat my dust, Daewoo-driving mortals!” out the window. It’s very liberating, not to mention cathartic.

My mother is by no means a typical WRX driver. Owner demographics for the Rex, as it is known, are teenagers and hoonish lawyers who got sidetracked on their way to the BMW dealership.

I’d wager that hers is the only WRX in Australia used primarily for tootling up to the supermarket, ferrying grandchildren about and lugging patch working supplies to and from the homes of other ladies in her quilting club.

Sadly for this particular WRX, maintenance is somewhere below “clean up the sewing room” and just above “take control of a Columbian drug cartel” in my mother’s priorities. This became clear when she left the WRX with me while she and my father holidayed in New Zealand. The outside was so dirty there were stalactites of mud around the wheel arches, and even though I washed it carefully the next day it needed washing again to remove dirt which loosened up and leached out of the joins and crevices in the first wash.

Furthermore, cleaning it only revealed all the scratches and dents, from when my mother backed it into the trailer, or my sister’s large and brainless dog head-butted it, or her kids opened the doors into the wall of the garage.

Inside was even worse. Remnants of my dad’s favourite mints lodged in the folds of the gearstick’s leather boot, a dirty teaspoon in the ashtray, an encrusted ceramic coffee mug under the passenger seat, faded grocery receipts in the footwells that swirled like fallen autumn leaves and a thick layer of dust on every horizontal surface save the seats (dotted with bits of chocolate and dried fruit juice from the grandchildren).

And it’s probably best not to consider what’s going on under the bonnet. The last time we opened it we found a chop bone lodged between the manifold and the alternator. My mother blamed mice.

Of course the only person properly appalled by this clear case of WRXual abuse is yours truly, and as a general rule the only time it gets cleaned is when it’s left with me for a few days.

It’s disgusting. But when push comes to shove I don’t really mind doing it. A little bit of cleaning is a small price to pay for the opportunity to get out of my small, cheap, sluggish hatchback and into something that tempts me to go WhooooOOOOOO….!