A POSSESSED car? An insanely angry 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine that drives itself around attacking people? This time Stephen King has gone too far, I said to myself as I began to catch the drift of his eighth and latest horror novel, ''Christine.'' This time he's not going to get me the way he did in ''The Shining,'' ''The Stand,'' ''Cujo'' and his other maniacal stories. This time he's just going to leave me cold.

SEVERAL years ago Stephen King published ''Night Shift,'' a collection of short stories that had appeared in magazines before his debut as a novelist. Among them was ''Trucks,'' in which the products of Detroit's auto industry were anthropomorphized and portrayed as barbaric, homicidal and utterly antihuman. I recall the piece vividly, because Mr. King made those vehicles - all vehicles - live not only on the page but in my imagination. ''Trucks'' might also have been the inspiration for Mr. King's latest novel.