Vern's Volvo and Grace's Garage

Vern has been bringing his old Volvo for servicing at Grace's Garage for many years. Unknown to Vern, Grace kept every single part that she replaced. Every time Vern dented a wing or a door, the panel was replaced by a new one. What Vern didn't know was that a couple of decades later Grace had Vern's entire original car in the form of a heap of (still usable) parts hidden in the back of her garage.

So which is Vern's Volvo, the one he's been driving for 20 years, or the heap of parts? Why?

What if, instead of having only the parts, Grace actually used those parts to create (or recreate) the Volvo? Would that be, somehow, a different issue?  

Even though all of the original parts of Vern’s car are no longer part of the Volvo, the car that Vern has been driving for twenty years is his, rather than the original parts in Grace’s garage. The progression from the car being made up of its old parts to containing new parts is very gradual—so gradual that the division between the old and new is not so distinct. For instance, Vern may have ruined a hubcap and replaced it only five months after he bought the Volvo. Although the hubcap is not part of the original car, it is far from being new relative to the last repair. The last original piece was removed the twentieth year; however, the first “new” piece could have been put in place nineteen years and seven months ago. The continual replacement of car parts establishes the idea that the car’s parts cannot be distinguished between being “old” or “new” because Vern has been driving the car with repairs possibly since he purchased the car twenty years before. The parts of the car that existed before any replacements should be referred to as the original parts, not the old parts, since an old part does not have to be an original. Vern would consider the replaced hubcap as an old part even though it was not part of the original Volvo. Thus, the new parts are just an element of the development of the car’s life. As soon as they were added, they became a part of Vern’s car and the pieces that were taken away ceased being part of the car because they no longer belonged to the car’s working system.

            As previously stated, Vern’s Volvo is the car he has been driving  for the past twenty years while the heap of car parts in Grace’s garage is essentially just a heap of used parts. Even if Grace assembles all of the car’s original parts together, the car is not Vern’s. As Vern brought his car into the shop to have its parts replaced, the concept of his car changed as to become accustomed to the new parts. The added parts became part of the car while the pieces Grace took away no longer belonged to the car or Vern. Thus, the evolving car is Vern’s while the heap of parts, or the reassembled original car, is not. Vern had developed a schema in which his car is classified as the car he uses daily and the car that goes into the auto shop to get fixed—the parts of his original car that are removed do not fit into this schema but the replacement pieces are associated as becoming part of the car. If Grace were to show Vern his reassembled, original Volvo, park it next to the car he currently uses, and ask Vern which car is his, Vern would surely reply that the car he has been driving for many years is his. Each time he went in for a repair, Vern dismissed the original parts of the car as continuing to be part of the car and they no longer pertain to the idea or schema Vern has of his car. Vern may consider the original car as his old car, but it is no longer his car.

            Along with Vern’s perception of what his car is, regulations of ownership also support that the car in the garage created from the heap of original parts is not Vern’s car. As Vern mentally discarded the used car parts, he literally relinquished his rights of ownership. He gave Grace money in exchange for new parts and her labor and skill that allowed the parts to become part of his functioning car. In addition, he gave her his old car parts while most likely assuming that they would be thrown into a dump yard or recycled to be used as material for an entirely new object. No matter what happens to the broken, original car parts, Vern does not own them anymore. If a certain part had been recycled and reused to become metal in the manufacturing of a stop sign, Vern cannot claim that the stop sign is his. He could say that the stop sign was made from a car part that used to be his, just as he could look at the Grace’s reassembled car and say that the parts that make up the car were once his.

            It does not matter whether Grace threw away the parts of Vern’s original Volvo, whether she kept them in a heap in the back of her garage, or whether she actually assembled the parts into a working vehicle—Vern no longer owns the parts or the car. They were once his, but ceased to be his once they were replaced and handed over to Grace. Even though Vern no longer has any of the original parts, the parts that replaced the originals became components of his car throughout a gradual process.