A No-Frills Car, Perfect for This Age of Austerity

2009 Nissan Versa 1.6

It was a car appropriate for the times -- spare, base, depressing.

It had crank windows, the kind you manually roll up and down.

It was bereft of entertainment value -- no radio, no connections for iPod or MP3 player, no navigation system or video screen.

There was a blank space where a radio would be found on the instrument panel of a normal car. But there was little normal about the subcompact 2009 Nissan Versa 1.6 sedan, a conveyance more symbol than automobile.

It was an exercise in motorized austerity.

Among young people unaccustomed to such things as crank windows and manually operated door locks, it came as a shock.

"Is this a joke?" asked Q Manglapus, the 13-year-old son of my Washington Post associate for vehicle evaluations, Ria Manglapus.

The boy wasn't laughing. There was a trace of horror on his face, something akin to the expression of a child seeing what no child should see, a child being asked to understand what no child could, or should be asked to understand.

"Is this a joke?"

No, it isn't.

It is what we have come to in an age when banks borrow money from taxpayers in order to exist as banks, when financiers receive bonuses for bankrupting finance companies, when pink slips flow like rivers from businesses going out of business.

It is all many people, desperately in need of personal transportation, can afford in an age of hostile economic climate change -- rising unemployment, vanishing retirement savings, frozen credit.