Not far from home there's a scrapyard; hundreds of cars, piled one on top of another, awaiting final breakdown into reusable parts and eventual smelting.
If only the planet's automotive companies put as much effort into keeping old cars roadworthy as they do in manufacturing and marketing new ones!
Yesterday, I filled up the Micra for the first time since the 19th of December. Since that day, the 21-year-old car has been driven 724 kilometres (450 miles). I'm getting 18.4km to the litre or 52 miles per (UK) gallon. Other than the big weekly shop in Warka (exactly 18.4km away), I hardly drive the car at all. For the first seven weeks of 2026, the car didn't move because there was too much snow, and the salt used to clear the roads is dreadfully corrosive to the car's undersides. I hope to keep the Micra running for many, many years. Following classic-car Facebook accounts, if cars I remember from childhood are still in regular use today, why can't a 2005 car be around in 2070?
The scrapheap on the DK50 at Nowe Grobice is full of cars that I'm sure could have been repaired and kept going for years had there been a will to do so. Many owners get caught in the following trap: "My car's worth €5,000. It will cost me €3,000 to fix. So I will sell it for five and use the three set aside for fixing it to buy a used car for €8,000." And then they end up buying one for ten. "But it's got all the options." The idea that an old car is beyond economic repair is what fills the scrapyards to the brim.
I was particularly sad to see an Audi A2 up there. It was a car built before the current craze for oversized SUVs, a car with an aluminium space-frame body, light in weight and resistant to corrosion.
With a diesel engine, it could cover 33.3km on one litre or 94.2 miles per (UK) gallon. Surely, this is the sort of car the world needed? Well, it turns out that – no. After a mere five years in production, the last Audi A2 rolled off the production line in August 2005. Today, Audi produces five saloons (also offered in hatchback/estate versions) and eight SUVs.
The smallest car in Audi's current line-up, the A3, takes up 22% more roadspace (7.9m² vs. 6.4m²); in its base version, the A3 weighs 35% more than the A2. In stop-start urban traffic, the A2 can cover over 18km on one litre of diesel, while the A3 can only cover 14km, what with having to accelerate that extra bulk every time the lights turn green. And for the gentle, rural driving that I do, an A2 can cover over 26km on a litre – something impossible for even the most feather-footed A3 driver [Data via Google Gemini.]
Meanwhile, I am being bombarded by online ads for new cars. No – I will not buy one. I would rather sink thousands of zlotys into keeping the old Micra roadworthy than to walk into a showroom to buy a brand new car.
We talk of 'supply chains'. What about 'demand chains'? ChatGPT defines demand chain as "the sequence of activities through which customer need is identified, stimulated and converted into profitable orders." Note use of the term 'customer need'. Our needs are for most part simple; our wants are complex and latently profitable. The demand chain is about reframing our desires – often spurious or frivolous – as necessities.
I've been interested by the concept of behavioural economics for a long time. It is the main reason why economists can't predict the future: the infinite complexity of the market behaviour of eight billion individuals. Like the butterfly in your garden whose flapping wings unleash a typhoon in Indonesia, one person's decision not to buy a winter coat can result in the closure of a garment factory in Brazil.
Endless economic growth is predicated by consumers' insatiable appetite for more, stoked by the demand chain. A consumer may begin with a vague want – comfort, status, convenience, security, belonging, self-expression, relief from anxiety. The market then supplies the narrative machinery that frames that vague want into something harder to resist: a need.
How many times have you caught yourself saying "this is not indulgence; this is self-care," or "this is not luxury; it is an investment," or "this is not about convenience, it's about productivity." A crucial part of the demand chain is the psychological conversion mechanism: transforming an entirely discretionary desire into a seemingly rational expenditure decision. And this works so well in the clothing industry.
For the good of the planet, for the good of your bank account, doing less is not necessarily the answer; the real answer is wanting less. To quote epigramologist Jacek Koba, "happiness is when the ratio of your expectations to your reality is 1:1".
This time last year:
The pareidolias of smell
Qualia compilation 7: Motorways at night, Yorkshire
This time four years ago:
Interstices (junction of S7 and S2 expressways just ahead of its opening to traffic)
Joys of Spring
Jeziorki in May
This time ten years ago:
The eyes... the eyes...
This time 11 years ago:
New old terminal open at Okęcie airport
This time 13 years ago:
Arrogance vs. humility
This time 14 years ago:
Warsaw looking good ahead of the football-fan influx
This time 15 years ago:
Heron over Jeziorki
This time 19 years ago:
Present rising, future loading
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