During a two-week tour of the US, JOHN HARRIS discovered how a good GPS can make up for driving the worst car in the world.

It all started so well as my bronzed Aussie colleague and I collected our convertible from the Thrifty Car Rental depot at Atlanta airport, just hours after arriving in the glorious state of Georgia.

The autumn sun baked the car lot in an afternoon haze and the road beckoned with the allure of a torch song. Our ‘sheen was an electric blue four-seater Chrysler Sebring with a huge boot and a tank full of gas.

Until a nudge dislodged the knob to adjust the driver’s seat and its electric motor failed to open the roof. We should’ve been suspicious when the young lady checking our paperwork offered us a midnight blue replacement without any fuss.

If Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise had relied on the Sebring to traverse the US, Kerouac’s book would be called On the Bench.

Funnily enough, despite this feckless start, a highlight of the holiday was a $150 device I’d picked up from a Target store during a visit to Disneyland last year.

The Tomtom GPS guided us out of the Shifty Car Rental yard, on to Interstate 85 and down the 150 miles (yep, miles, ‘cos this is the US of A) to Montgomery, Alabama without a moment’s grief.

The next morning, it led us to Martin Luther King’s first church at Dexter Avenue and the Hank Williams Museum on Commerce Street before we headed up I-65 for the long haul to Nashville.

The Sebring had one more gift for us as we cruised into the world capital of country music at dusk, when an old guy in a disheveled suit mistook the open convertible for a buffet table. As we idled at a traffic light, he whispered in my ear “can you spare a dollar for a meal, pal?”

After I parted with an Abraham Lincoln, my Celtic-born cobber informed me that I’d been panhandled.

We finally abandoned the Sebring in a Best Western parking lot for Thrifty to tow away on a trailer after the roof refused to close and its so-called Helpline struggled to fill out the paperwork.

But our low-price GPS device guided us almost without failure, except for some “ghost roads” in the southern suburbs of Memphis, which are expanding faster than Elvis’ waistline.

Our successes included navigating an interstate cloverleaf in Louisville, Kentucky, that was more convoluted than Kevin Rudd explaining his government’s fiscal position.

The Tomtom’s highlights included points of interest such as petrol stations, ATMs and hotels and a Walking mode that made it an ideal companion for noodling around New Orleans. A standard USB port makes it easy to connect to a notebook for planning routes and updating maps.

There are two postscripts to this story, both from last Saturday: Firstly, I replaced our old no-name GPS with a Tomtom ONE XL filled with Australian maps: Secondly, Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson’s penned a fulsome critique of the Chrysler Sebring, which he dubbed “the worst car in the world.”

If only I’d read that first!

John Harris is managing director of Impress Media Australia. You can view his website at www.johnharris.net.au

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