Horst and His New Opel

Abstract

Captain take us with you, spacious six-seater, six cylinders, pan oramic windshield, stretching right back into the side panels, ride quality of the big Americans, the really big ones wheels, thirteen-inch, with super balloon tires, wide shark's mouth grille, enormous trunk, with courtesy light, no carefully rounded forms or pontoon bodywork any more, 4.8 meters long, fenders chromed in a galvanic bath, thinking about it causes galvanic skin reactions, rust-proofing, two-tone paintwork, pastel shades, Opel dealers everywhere, uni versal GM dealer network, Horst proud owner of a Kapitan / Kapitan L, road cruiser bristling with canon, privateer on the prowl, when it suddenly emerges it frightens the senoritas on the road sides, athletically built new-world hunter, always too fast, Shell AG (60 pfennigs a liter)-that's how to fill up!-makes driving a real pleasure, the driving force behind asphalted lawns, playing-fields Opel's test track on land, on water, in the air, looking down from the bridge onto the freeway, onto feeder roads with great swooping spans, top speed 140 kph, real power under the hood, where pistons work, pansexual out for a spin, no nesting, no resting, no rusting, no settling down, nowhere, look ahead not behind, eyes glued to the highway, stopping, turning, reversing are forbidden, you follow roads without intersections, bypassing towns, straw man with a straw bag in the stowage space, gets mobile still foregoing family happiness, Horst in his new Opel, swinging its shark's snout in the airstream, air cooled, lord of the situation, lieutenant of the street, steering obliviously, aim lessly, seeing himself as something of a man for the ladies, the most impressive figures out there on the street, take me with you Captain on your long-haul trip, take me with you if there's an accident, the paramedics appear many accidents are caused by the dashboard, recognised as being fatal more often than not, the force behind the rush-hour, the wrecking force composed of mass and velocity buckling the chrome finish, bursting the radiator, skulls through the windscreen, passenger's teeth punched into the metal dashboard, jaws broken my driver's not coming back the whole model a solitary single-purpose machine pedal to the metal get me through this small consolation for the man at the wheel, after seven-tenths of a single second-as demonstrated by Detroit dummies-it's all over, the trip ruined, no longer innerly secure, the journey to the demi-monde in a chassis from Opel's trained demiurges now over, that's how everything was supposed to be, of course I'd give up pay, rank, and status, changing that just depends what the whole story costs …