Which modifications will lend my Toyota Belta a stylish, edgier look?

JM,
Driving has given me an incredible opportunity to observe human behaviour. Sometimes I think of other drivers as rats in a laboratory experiment and the roads as a maze designed by a psychologist. Most drivers follow a routine pattern, driving up and down the road, checking and sizing other cars in traffic, and therefore I’ve seen how they look at my fuel-efficient 2012 Toyota Belta — you’d think I’m on a bike.

I bought the car because of its fuel efficiency and resale value. Six months down the line, though, I’m tired of driving it and tired of looking at it. It looks cheap and ugly and feels as if it’s being powered by a washing machine motor. I have also realised that my overpriced Belta has way too much plastic inside. What’s wrong with Toyota’s styling department?
Mama Kieran, seeing my agony, tells me to get rid of it and then later changes her mind and tells me to keep it. Now, Mr Baraza, if I want to make it have a stylish, presentable edgier look, what modifications could I add?
George Omondi

Hi George,
There are a few times I have been accused of automotive bigotry as far as class of vehicle is concerned, that I am a tad dismissive of the lower end of the motor vehicle hierarchy.

Of the broad spectrum of accusations that are thrown my way, this is one I will confess to, and you know why? The second paragraph in your message: that there is exactly why I don’t think much of and/or about those unassuming admissions that one is not suffering from success. Forgive the brutality.

Those cars are weak and boring and they lead to situations such as the one in the third paragraph: they strain relations.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

Mama Kieran is employing psychological warfare as punishment for your crime against living a good life. She will not pick a side and stick with it — what she is doing is trolling you by waffling.

She is making a statement and you need to read between the lines. I don’t understand women as well as I understand internal combustion, but this I can bet my magazine sales on: there will be a lot less tension in that household the day that affront to personal achievement that is the Belta is shown the door for good.

There is a reason why they exist. They are built so that Toyota can make money from those who have little of it. It is not diffusion of affordable mobility from manufacturer to customer, this is financial osmosis from breadline buyer to moneyed megacorp powered less by the need of the 99 per cent to be mobile and more by the need for this 99 percent to assert that it too does, in fact, “drive” as well. This is wrong.

You “drive” an exciting car, anything that runs the gamut from the smallest jumped-up hot hatches like the Fiesta RS, through the Impreza WRXes and Lancer Evolutions and Golf Rs to super saloons like M5S and E63s to the bahn-storming LaFerrari that was recently captured clocking 372km/h on a public road in Germany.

It is also wrong to allege that you “operate” a Belta. One can only operate heavy machinery such as diggers, dozers, harvesters and a Rolls-Royce Phantom. When it comes to disposable appliances, you “use” them the way you use a dot matrix printer or a sanitary towel. They’re piffling and lurk on the blurry fringes of normal human twenty-twenty vision, useful but only on a need-to basis.

Have you seen anyone add aftermarket leg-stands to a desk printer or customise the colour of a panty liner? No. Why? It is an exercise in futility and a waste of resources.

There are those who call it “polishing a turd”. That’s what you are thinking of when attempting to make a Belta “stylish”, “presentable” and “edgier”. There is only so much you can do, the car might stand out at the end of it and the result might be edgy but it will never be stylish or presentable. Remember you still also have to drive the thing anyway. You will have spent precious shekels and solved nothing.

A happy wife makes a happy home. Fish around tactfully to establish Mama Kieran’s automotive tastes if you don’t already know them and react accordingly by first getting rid of the Uber reject, then buy something that will end the shifty behaviour once and for all, forcing her to make a stand by declaring “Now THAT’s my man!”

(Disclaimer: I know some of my readers own Beltas. They have my sympathy.)

Aren’t vehicle assembly lines simply DIY projects where well-measured CKDs are cobbled together to make a complete unit?

Dear Baraza,
What really occurs in a vehicle assembly line? I imagine a DIY project where well-measured CKDs are cobbled together to make a complete unit. If I can disassemble my kitchen mixer, clean it and cobble it up and it purrs like a well-fed Arabian cat, why would GMEA occupy acres of prime land just to do joinery. And if that’s the case, should they be classified under manufacturing in GOK reports?

I recall GMEA partnered with the jua kali sector to be supplied with parts for their assembly work. What kind of parts were they and why, given that they import completely knocked-down kits for this purpose? Further, what quality guarantee do these supplied parts present in view of safety and serviceability?

I am an enthusiast of aeroplane disaster investigations and regal at the informed outcomes of these reports. Notably, there are plane crashes caused by poor quality parts, specifically composition of the materials used. This may not be a fair analogy to the case at hand, but it should worry anyone with deep thoughts like me. Remember, the unsinkable Titanic was neutered by low-grade rivets.

Finally, talking of rivets, why has the motor industry shunned this diminutive member in modern vehicle assembly? I recall vehicles of fore years clad in well-joined panels by sturdy rivets, depicting a masculine pose since the rivet represents symmetry and control.

The departed Kenya Bus and now the endangered Land Rover 110 are good local examples. Our local body builders have all but welded panels, which yields inferior bodies.
Regards,
R. Mwangi

Hello R. Mwangi
Interesting questions you have there … I have visited several motor vehicle assembly lines both local and global and your imagination is bang on: it is a warehouse where men (and women), robots and various combinations and permutations thereof meet to conjoin and paint various components into drivable automobiles.

The disparities are: I wouldn’t exactly call them DIY, a lot of this work requires either specialised skill only learnt through training and/or apprenticeship, or proprietary equipment customised for that particular assembler — case in point: I have visited the manufacturing plants of Scania (in Sweden) and Iveco (in Italy and Spain) and despite the fact that both build heavy trucks for the global market, their methods and equipment are actually very different.

I can see where your question originates from, so I will clarify something. In other factories across the world, many components are outsourced while some are made in-house from scratch, then they are all cobbled together into something a Kenyan will proudly import seven years down the line.

This is slightly different from local factories in that very few — if any — components are built in-house and the ones that are imported to be joined are less componentry and more of sub-assemblies. This may be the DIY angle you may have implied and it ties in with your ability to have your way with a kitchen mixer. You can break it down into small parts and put it back together but you cannot make those small parts yourself.

The reason GM (no longer GM but Isuzu EA now, if you will allow the pedantry) occupies such vast tracts of land to do “joinery” as you call it is due to the numbers they push. Isuzu EA is the biggest assembler in the region and can be ranked favourably on the Pan-African scene. They occupy that space because they need it.

They are classified under manufacturing because they sure aren’t in processing. If I recall my studies from 20 years ago, industrial output was classified into two: manufacturing and processing.
I am not aware what parts GM (back then) was supposed to source locally from jua kali, and in this age of lockdowns and social distancing, following up on that is a bit tricky.

Perhaps they will read this and revert. Factories cannot be sanctioned if they have no quality-control department and even if they do, the bureau of standards is out there waiting to nab any substandard products they may try to fob off on us. I too am a pundit of the aviation industry and the cause of aircraft crashes stemming from low-quality components are few and far between.

LOWERED STANDARDS

If it happens, this is quickly rectified. Your reservations are understandable, and not to chill your bones, but the automotive industry is more prone to this kind of thing, more so than aviation.

So, I get where you are coming from, but both aircraft and automobiles are made from thousands upon thousands of tiny little parts, and therefore it’s almost impossible to identify all potential failure points unless and until the product is in extensive use in the field. That is why we have recalls — we will ignore capitalist-driven corner-cutting and planned obsolescence for now.

(The Titanic was undone by an iceberg. The rivets were just the icing on the cake — pun not intended. Not even titanium rivets could save the liner from the inevitable.)

The problem with rivets is they are unsightly, sturdy as they may be. In addition, with advanced welding techniques, or the use of hi-tech bonding agents, one gets stronger joints that look very neat with it. I recall a bus company called Shaggyy that gained infamy from its atrocious road safety record as much as it gained fame from the beauty of its buses.

One particular bus stood out because it was rumoured to be the first locally assembled bus not to use rivets. I don’t know how true this is, but it really did look very good. Back then, local fabrication was of a very high standard, which may be why some of those bus bodies are still serviceable to date and can be found in active retirement-defying service in the flower farms of Naivasha alongside their riveted compadres.

In recent years — local fabricators brace yourselves — standards have dropped drastically. The focus is on gaudiness and price-gouging at the expense of actual engineering and quality of work. These builders try to outdo themselves on who will “unveil” a bus that collects the highest number of social media engagements while raking in the highest amount of cabbage from unwitting investors and the results … well, the results speak for themselves.

What comes out of their sheds is a bauble that will attract simple-minded dwellers of noisy forums but will need to be redone less than three months into service when it starts coming apart at the seams, literally. No amount of exhortation will make them see sense, not even such obvious pleas as: Why not just build a strong simple bus like your fathers used to instead of something as flimsy as it is flashy?

Have you seen any imported buses? Do you see any rivets on their body work? No. That’s because they don’t use them. And yet, despite misguided beliefs that anything from abroad cannot “survive” on “Kenyan roads” these imports are faring a lot better than local units.