If you walked past the right side of a Getz, you would see the word "FUN" cut out of a vinyl sticker and placed above the right turn signal. If you had spent any time behind the wheel, you would know that there is little truth in this advertisement.
I was behind the wheel of Hyundai's lowest hatchback when I decided to drive at three a.m. from the desolate Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv, where I lived, to the desert oasis of Eilat for a cup of espresso - a 500-mile round trip. On the country's southern border, overlooking Egypt, a new branch of the popular chain Aroma Espresso Bar had just opened. As soon as I heard the news, I was out the door.
It's not that the sophisticated, sophisticated city of Tel Aviv isn't full of coffee shops and their attendant hereditary socialites and latte-guzzling proletariat. Quite the contrary. But when an enthusiast gets the chance, rational arguments give way to brutal instincts. Six hours later I was at Avis signing the papers for a 24-hour rental of a dusty, outdated Hyundai Getz with 45,000 miles on the odometer.
Five hundred miles seemed like a long way to find the same cup of coffee you can get four blocks away. However, the true enthusiast realizes that this route is a chance to race through a relatively desolate desert on some of the best roads east of Europe. Historically, the port of Eilat was connected to the rest of the country by the Arava Road, allowing the British to transport imported goods with relative ease. As the country's infrastructure developed, a second two-lane road, Route 40, was designed to run through Ramon Crater as a parallel route to the south.
Route 40 is a road built from a driver's imagination. It cuts through the desert and conforms to its contours as if drawn by a mountain goat. Double yellow lines are rare, so fast maneuvers are encouraged at all levels of daring. The key is driving without distractions, with the exception of good company and background noise.
That said, the Getz was not an ideal travel companion. Despite its light weight, it is equipped with an engine that should have 100 horsepower on a good day, and the engine noise was as rough as the surrounding sand. The suspension was sloppy, our tester suffered from poor alignment, and the steering was too lumbering and inconsistent. At speed, there seemed to be a strange clicking sound coming from under the car. In some countries, the Getz is known as a "clunker." Is that a coincidence?
The interior is an example of "no frills" in an era when Hyundai leads most competitors in equipment. No power windows, no anti-lock brakes, no defrosters. Avis livened up the interior by installing a radio, as opposed to the standard audio system: it's fun to roll down the windows and listen to the whine of an over-accelerated engine.
The car rental guy got us a Getz with a blue interior accent that brightened the sleek black interior. He also pointed out the excellent workmanship and hard plastics with which the interior was upholstered. The seats, which were almost certainly garden chairs upholstered in the finest velour, gave the impression of comfort and the reality of late thrombosis.
Despite all the drawbacks of a cheaply built, underpowered, low-maintenance hatchback, there is one argument in favor of driving a slow car on potentially fast roads: the ability to squeeze out all available horsepower.
The road from Tel Aviv begins as a state-of-the-art six-lane highway, but after about 100 miles it turns into a four-lane. At the fork in Beersheba, the road splits, with either a continuation of the four-lane road or a more challenging two-lane road, and I naturally chose the two-lane road. With 150 miles to go - relatively speaking, almost half the country from north to south - the road began to open up.
I was overtaking everyone. I was driving at the equivalent of 135 mph and watched the tachometer jump to the 3000s to keep up. I played cat-and-mouse with a late 1990s Pontiac Grand Prix (unlike other Middle Eastern countries, American cars in Israel are similar to ours) for nearly 50 miles before he stopped to let me go. Not that I could have driven much faster on the Getz's small, thin tires.
Then, almost out of nowhere, it looked like the road was about to fall off a cliff. The road suddenly dropped sharply to follow the curves of Ramon Crater, which rivals the Grand Canyon and Stelvio Pass in size in terms of winding surface. The rendering of the road on Google Earth, showing its similarity to the natural path, made my mind spin. For a moment, I wondered if there was car karma. Then the Getz started clicking again.