Appreciation for the Sorento

It was around 2008 and my father, who runs a small construction firm, was securing a contract to work on a high-paying project to provide pre-cast moulding. At the time he was driving a white first gen Honda CR-V. It was a smaller and humbler SUV compared to its much larger and more popular rivals such as the Pajero, Land Cruiser, and Expedition at the time. Despite that, I loved our CR-V. It meant that we no longer had to look up when we were stuck in traffic with bigger cars around us. More importantly, it meant that we were no longer helpless whenever the streets flooded. It was always a heroic sight whenever I saw our CR-V fording knee-deep flood-waters. But alas, I never would have thought it would be taken away from us in an unexpected way.

There's no other way to put it, my father was already well beyond retirement age during 2008. That meant projects rarely came to his company without a hint of doubt regarding his ability due to his age. So when a project was offered to him, he was prepared to give anything, even his beloved CR-V. A client took a liking to my father's CR-V. I'm sure he had the choice to buy any brand-new car in the world if he so desired, but for whatever reason he picked ours. It never fails to bring me to tears imagining my father, who loved our CR-V just as much as I did, being forced to give up and selling his precious car in order to make money and provide for us.

I, on the other hand, never really realized what just happened because the CR-V just never turned up at our house ever again. I just assumed it was at the office all the time. I never really knew it was gone until our father one day came home in another car. A first gen Kia Sorento bought second hand.

The Sorento had everything a kid like me wanted in a car. It was big. Much bigger than the CR-V. It had faux wooden trim, leather seats, and most impressive of all, an overhead DVD player. I wasted no time trying to figure out how to play DVD's of The Simpsons on the overhead unit. My father and I loved watching The Simpsons together. Whenever my mother would be doing the grocery, my father and I would stay back in the car and pass the time watching the classic, dysfunctional family and their misadventures. The show had humour and charm only my father and I shared much like our love for cars.

It had other cool features too. It had a knob for selecting 4WD modes which was, I believe, a feature only present in much more expensive SUVs at the time. This is also feature I extensively used on rough terrain by the time the Sorento became my daily car. The fact that it was a diesel meant we saved a lot on fuel too, which meant we went out to further places than we usually went to.

I had tons of memories in the Sorento. After my father had bought a Hyundai Accent because he wanted an easier to drive car, the Sorento was mainly used to chauffeur me to and from UP. It had frequent stints running errands, carrying supplies, and ferrying my classmates whenever our college held events. The Sorento became synonymous with my term as a student council member. I would go as far as saying that the Sorento probably did half my work as a council member.

By that time, the Sorento was, like my father, a capable but aging icon. It had seen good days when my friends and I would ride in it and go to random places. The destinations did not matter much to me and I mostly remember just us tightly knit friends having a good time inside the Sorento which became a second home to us. But it also had some bad days.

Accidents and mishaps are almost unavoidable in cars. I once ran over debris from a dump truck and burst a tire at high speed. Good thing the Sorento was able to keep stable and I was able to bring it to a stop on the side of the highway where I impromptu learned how to change a tire. My girlfriend also tried to drive it once and accidentally scraped another car. She got off after reimbursing the other driver but the Sorento came out with a permanent white scar on its bumper. During a trip back to Manila after going to Vigan, I ran it flat out on the TPLEX (irresponsible, I know) and that may have shortened the already old Sorento's lifespan by a year. A month or two later while I was driving my girlfriend and her classmates to Ortigas, a radiator hose burst and the engine overheated. I was able to hide the problem and spare my girlfriend embarrassent before I finally absolutely had to bring it to a service station where I could fix the hose. The scariest mishap in the Sorento I've had was when it suddenly lost power steering and the brakes hardened while I was driving around Marikina. It happened just after I went down some hilly parts of Marikina. Imagine if I had lost brakes and steering then. My father had to fetch me whilst he wrestled the car to the office where his mechanics worked on it.

But the worst thing to happen to the Sorento was neither my own doing nor was it a mechanical fault. One day I parked it in a street within the UP campus. I left it there overnight thinking it would be safe. After all, other cars were parked there and the area was well lit. The morning afterwards, what I had found left me truly speechless. Somebody had keyed our precious Sorento. All along it sides were multiple lines running deep into its silver paint. It wasn't something accidental. You could see how deliberate the scratches were inflicted. Some heartless, gutless, lowlife had wounded one of our closest family member. It angers me to this day someone could have done something as low as that. If they had a problem with my parking, a note could have sufficed.

We've all seen cliches of those types of people who were hurt beyond repair. People who had experienced horrible things and could therefore never love again. These were people who could no longer trust anyone and had a cynical view of the world. From the day the Sorento was vandalized, I too became such a person. I no longer had compassion for other motorists trying to bully me in traffic. I shouted back at angry motorists. I glared at security guards who think they could ask me to move my car to make way for more affluent clients than myself. The Sorento, at a cost to itself, had taught me to be assertive and aggressive. These are two qualities a timid person such as myself had struggled with growing up.

In the last two years the Sorento's age had begun to catch up to it. The breakdowns were becoming more frequent, the brakes were fading faster, the cabin was squeaking louder and louder, the ride was getting harsher, the exhaust was emitting soot darker than a jeepney's. Ultimately, it was deemed unsafe for me to use by my father. We swapped cars and I was never to drive the Sorento on a regular basis again.

Before the Sorento is sold off or scrapped altogether, I would just like to tell it thank you before it was too late. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if another treasured family member would vanish without my knowing once again. So thank you for all the lessons and experiences you shared with me. To me you were more than just a car we used everyday. You were a partner worth remembering who was a part of our lives.

Thank you Sorena.