My earliest memory of how motoring would be like for the dead is from an old Hong Kong tragicomedy (on VHS!) whose title I cannot recall.
The scene in question showed funereal cars being driven around by deathly pale drivers on dark dirt roads, which could have passed for the sombre little lanes around Choa Chu Kang Cemetery.
Yesterday’s youngster variant of me, who already had a keen interest in cars, wondered about the engines powering the vehicles depicted in the underworld.
Then I realised they didn’t have engines at all – the drivers were “driving” the cars with their legs and feet, moving along like combustible Chinese versions of a Flintstones Flintmobile.
I was sad to learn this, because I had imagined that my personal vehicle in heaven (or one of the less punishing levels within Haw Par Villa’s 18 levels of hell) will have any powerful engine I desire and all the forceful pace I don’t need in a peaceful place.
I’m probably not the only petrolhead, dead or alive, who feels the need for speed at every opportunity (where permitted).
I believe that the driving environment is not the same for heaven and hell, which is another reason for me to clock greater mileage on the “good” side of my lifetime odometer than on the “bad” side.
I reckon that heaven’s roads and racetracks are somehow always empty for whoever is behind the wheel, with the otherworldly option to invite anyone else up there to hit the road/track together, forever.
Hell’s roadways, however, are eternally hellish.
Their wet-blanket speed limit is “Dead Slow”, the gridlock is horrifying, the traffic summonses are endless, and most of the drivers are evil spirits who brought their nasty driving habits down from earthly tarmac.
Wherever I end up after reaching the end of my long road in this not-long life, I hope to choose the afterlife automobile I want and inform my family accordingly – in a timely dream and not in a scary nightmare, of course.
It might be a hot hatch (delivered in the heat of a columbarium burner), or a supernatural supercar (powered by internal/external combustion), or an exotic EV (with respectful thermal runaway).
Or I might as well pray for all three Qing Ming cars, since I intend to pay for them in hot ash rather than cold hard cash.
PS: I dedicate this story to a few (too many) automotive friends who departed to a better place. May each of them continue to rest in peace and rev in peace too.
Supernatural supercars, powered by internal/external combustion, are on the columnist’s wish list for the drive of his afterlife.
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