Last week I had my car inspected at my local Chevy dealership; it isn't a Chevy, but I went to elementary, middle, and high school with one of the brothers that run the place, so they do what they can to look after the old Saab for me.

So, while Wayne (the eldest brother, who runs the service department) did his thing out back, I loitered around the showroom with Mike (the youngest brother, who I went to school with) and we looked at a new Cadillac CTS they had. Nice car, but I don't know about that grille. Anyway, a few minutes later Wayne came up from the shop and said, in that portentous way car dealership service managers are trained to say things in,

"We got some problems with your car."

Well... like what?

He said the windshield washer wasn't (which is annoying, but not cause for failing an inspection), the cornering lights weren't working (more on this in a moment), and the battery was flat. I was a little puzzled by this, since I drove it up there, but he explained that they'd left the headlights on for a minute to do the various checks, and that was all it took for the car not to start. It had been sub-zero the night before and I'd noticed it didn't really want to crank when I started it to take it up there, but anyway. They'd jumped it using one of those cunning compact battery gizmos and I got home all right.

The cornering lights thing baffled me for a moment, though. "What cornering lights?" I asked.

"There are white lights built into the corners of your front signal clusters," Wayne explained. "They're supposed to come on when you signal and light up where you're turning."

Now, I know what cornering lights are, my very first car ever had them. It's just that, er, my car doesn't have cornering lights. I pointed this out, and Wayne repeated that they were there, they just didn't work, on either side, and he was going to have to deny me an inspection sticker until he'd sorted them.

"Oh!" I said as the light (no pun intended) dawned. "Those aren't cornering lights. They come on when the car is in reverse."

Wayne gave me the kind of look you give extremely stupid people and said patiently, "They're on the front of the car."

"I know," I said, and then, shrugging, played the card that always ends this kind of conversation with service guys at Chevy dealerships: "It's foreign."

"Huh," said Wayne. "Weird. Well, you want to do something about that battery. It'll leave you by the side of the road before too long."

So today I went down to Sears in Bangor and bought a new battery.

The downside there: A new battery in the odd size the Saab wants ("it's foreign") costs daylight robbery. Mind you, the top-of-the-range Die Hard batteries at Sears aren't cheap examples of the breed on the best of days, but still, the Saab's cost more than twice as much as a battery of the same capabilities for my father's Pontiac.

On the upside, I have reason to believe that the battery that was replaced today, which the Sears guys determined was ill but not yet quite dead, was the original one the car came with.

In 1997.

And, well, that's a pretty damned good show for an OEM maintenance-free battery.