Garage
BULMERLIMBERSUPONTHE
LINGOTOBIDHISKOREAN
WAGONA FONDFAREWELLTONGUE
TWISTER
for them the gentle reflection on the
dent in the side of the old Holden from
where their first wheelie went amiss. No,
we Bulmers enjoy a far more transient
relationship with our family cars, but
this doesn’t stop us making great short
long-term memories in them.
Case in point, our road trip to
Sydney in January, which allowed us to
test the Santa Fe’s long-haul comfort
and efficiency, as well as its luggage
capacity and load carrying; not to
mention the efficacy of its air-con in
40-plus degree heat. It passed with
flying colours.
So, too, at the other end of the
spectrum, where the Santa Fe toiled
dutifully in the daily cut and thrust
of roughly 100 school runs. Here, the
sat-nav’s speed-zone alerts helped
avoid many a demerit point, while
its reversing camera and high-quality
screen made for safer manoeuvring.
On winter mornings, Mother Duck
never lost her appreciation of the fact
she could open and close the electric
tailgate from her heated leather seat,
avoiding the shame of letting the other
mothers see she was still in her ’jamas.
Wait, was I meant to say that?
Visits to the servo to replenish the
2.2-litre turbo-diesel’s fuel supplies
were pleasingly infrequent, with
consumption varying from a best ofa culturally appropriate farewell, of
course. It turns out that the correct
Korean phrase for when someone (or
presumably something) is leaving is
‘annyeonghi gaseyo’, the translation
of which is ‘go in peace’. However,
if you’re leaving and the person
you’re addressing is staying, you say
‘annyeonghi gyeseyo’, or ‘stay in peace’.
Then again, you could opt for the
more informal ‘annyeong’, which PSY
and other cool young South Korean cats
are likely to utter while lashing out on
a bootload of Louis Vuitton in Seoul’s
upmarket Gangnam district.
Sadly, after six months and some
8120km, there was nary a discarded
$55K LV croc-skin City Steamer satchel
to be found beneath the detritus of
our habitation; just some muddy boots,
discarded coats and something that
might have once been the dog’s lunch.
Either that or it was the remains of
Rocko, the guinea pig, who hasn’t been
seen for some time. Same thing, I guess.
As I pulled up alongside a skip to
begin shovelling out the worst of it, the
kids suddenly twigged that something
was afoot and the family car was about
to be repossessed. Again.
It’s a curiously First World problem
these kids have, in that throughout
their lives they’ve never had a family
car beyond the six-month mark. NotD
110 whichcar.com.au/wheels
HYUNDAI SANTA FE
HIGHLANDER
Price as tested: $61,490
This month: 1018km @ 11.4L/100kmID YOU KNOW there are
three different ways to
say goodbye in Korean,
depending on who leaves
and who is staying?
No? Me neither, at
least not until I sat down to write this
farewell piece, at which point I also
learned that Korean is one of the world’s
oldest living languages, most likely a
distant relative of the Ural-Altaic family
of languages, which includes Mongolian,
Finnish and Hungarian.
Why do we need to know this? Well,
in order to bid our Santa Fe long-termerREPORTSEVEN EXIT