#car rant

ITS JUST ALREADY ON WHOLE ASS ANOTHER LEVEL

oh to live in a world where american car manufacturers remembered that eggshell white looks good actually...

oh to live in a world where american car manufacturers are not going senile and forgetting all of the reasons why cars looked cool to begin with...

the post was originally going to end here but i just took my ADHD meds and i need you all to know that i live in a city where we have a yearly event to celebrate old cars that actually looked really good and everyone in this city fucking LOVES cool old cars and every now and again you can just see someone driving around the beachside roads on a vehicle straight out of a Guardians of the Galaxy flashback. cars used to look GOOD. this isn't a generational style thing, look at these.

even if this kind of car isn't your style i get that, but you can surely see that there is at least a vision here, there was a passion in the people who made them back then, cars weren't just churned out willy nilly to make the line go up.

well okay yeah they definitely were but there was still some art there. now i need to ask you. look at modern cars for a second and just let the mundane-ness of it all sit in for a while

ohhhh yeah can you feel it? have you soaked it in yet? all of those sanded down soulless smooth edges? all of those monocolor coats of paint? the fact that the only thing you can really tell is substantially different is the kind of wheel each car has if even that?

now i need to ask you, in 80 years do you think there are going to be any events to commemorate these kinds of cars? do you think anyone is going to take time out of their retirement to appreciate these wonders of modern technology enough to create a whole ass city-wide convention to show appreciation for any component of these cars except maybe some of the internal mechanics and engines???

now admittedly selection bias is a thing here, its not like these cars being celebrated in my city are the average car, those are Woodies, which are a very specific artistic style of car. so maybe we need to look at the average car from back then. lets see, the Woody style was started around the 30s, so what does the average car look like around the 30s?

well a quick little research says that the biggest automotive manufacturer around then was General Motors (or at least a very big one), and a quick little Wikipedia stroll shows their platforms from back then. Behold! i show you cars from back when people cared about design!

Oldsmobile Series 60

1930 GM Marquette

1940 Pontiac 'Deluxe' 6

I know that last one says Deluxe, but keep in mind that beauty only went for ~17k in 2023 dollars! So much cheaper than the Ford F-150! And you get more seats too! Sure the paint is probably leaded and so is the gas and so are the lights and so is the steering wheel probably and to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if somehow the rubber was too, but god dammit it just looks good doesn't it? Don't they all? 2 of these 3 random samples I just learned about still have the monocolor stuff that I was complaining about but don't they just look better? It's not like this is a lost art, we can still build this today if we wanted, we could just put the modern engines and batteries and non-lead metals in it! That's what the people who drive restored versions of these cars do! Imagine how much easier it would be if you just built them that way and didn't need to take all of the lead and old broken down engines out in the first place!

"Ohhhhh but the aerodynamics!! What about the aerodynamics!! Modern cars are so much faster now because of their ugly shapes!!"

yeah dumbass and that's why you keep mulching kids whenever you tap the accelerator. my city has plenty of people who drive modern cars, you all could do with a lower speed capacity. it would be good for you in the same way that confiscating an addict's tobacco would be good for them. fucking chill.

besides if you're really worried about speed trust me, modern engines are wonders of science and engineering, i promise you that cars can still go zoom if we made the aerodynamics slightly worse in order to make them look better because the magic piston box that you pretend to know how it works while being carried by your 4-wheel drive will cover the cost. trust me.

"But cars in general are bad! We should be getting rid of all of them! Even cool looking cars can mulch kids too!"

yeah yeah sure, still ban them from city centers and stuff. i just got back from a 2 week long trip around all the best parts of europe and also paris so i agree with you there, but as much as it would warm my autistic heart we realistically cant have trains to take us everywhere and the genie is already out of the bottle. besides i dont care what you think cars are just cool. i can turn a wheel and push on a pedal with my foot and make a 2 ton hunk of steel and gadgets move at a speed to carry force surpassing that of a bullet, and if i turn really fast i can make tire doodles on public infrastructure to keep the rent low. plus road trips with friends are fun. look all im saying is that cars definitely aren't going anywhere, so we could at least have them look cool while they're here. to be honest i definitely agree that we should be phasing out cars as much as we can for long distance travel (TRAIN SWEEP WOOOOO CHOO CHOO) and everything but come on dude i dont want to look at my ugly ass streets and see them swarming with ugly ass cars. i want pretty ass cars. please? pretty please? my birthday is coming up soon wont you do it for me?

"Lower aerodynamics means that the fuel economy will be worse! People will need to use more fuel for the same distances! That's bad for my wallet and also the environment!"

putting aside the fact that aerodynamics really only become a major factor when you are going really really fast like on the freeway--a place where ideally you would rarely ever need to go on in favor of public transport taking you everywhere you'd want to go to at a price cheaper than your gas in the first place, i want to ask you something a little emotional here:

do you think that you would be better off if you saved maybe 1 or 2 dollars every trip to the gas station, or if when you were stuck driving all those long drives you were in a car that you could actually smile when thinking about, that you could watch other people look over and see children excitedly getting their parent's attention to show off the cool car driving past them, that you could have a car that looks good enough to actually wow people when you pull in for your 9-5 that is a 2 hour drive away from you for some reason, that after a long shift and a long drive you could come home, get out of your car, and have the first thing you see when you close the door be something that actually looks pretty instead of the same personalityless blob that everyone else drives? look, i get it, maybe your finances are super unstable and every penny counts, maybe this specific example isn't for you, but im willing to bet that once you get to a better off position you'd be pretty fine with the idea of sacrificing a few bucks for a whole load of warm and fuzzy feelings of pride and satisfaction. i sure as hell would. why the hell do we do this whole capitalism thing in the first place if we can't spend the money eventually to feel nice??

oh yeah also for the environment bit most of the impact against the environment isn't cars at all, it's energy production and other stuff, also most cars are switching to environmentally friendly alternatives now anyway sorryyyyyyyyy

look all i want is for when my time comes to get mulched against a bumper like nearly 1.2 thousand american children each year i dont want it to look like the edmunds.com best rated cars by price section

2008

2011

Notice the yellow LTO conduction sticker since 2013.

2014

Pay attention on the hubcaps design on the 2005, 2008, 2011 & 2014 models.

I did my research on the fucking Toyota Hiace Commuter, the hubcaps on the 2005 variant are the same as the ones overseas, in Africa, the Middle East, here in Southeast Asia, Latin America, South America, & Oceania.

The Philippines is the only country where the Toyota Hiace Commuter's hubcaps underwent a fucking design change since 2011, in other countries, the hubcaps design remain the same.

Why the fuck did the shithead, fuckfaced, ball-breaking, motherfucking dicks at Toyota have to change the fucking hubcap design of the fucking Toyota Hiace Commuter for the fucking Philippine market?

W

H

Y

T

H

E

F

U

C

K

?

& 2020, Toyota ditched the hubcaps to keep the price down.

People are buying hubcaps for it.

I recommend the 2005 Toyota Hiace Commuter hubcaps, you can pick them up on places like Facebook & Shopee.

[me when friendship]

[but yeah seriously 3 years isn't that much especially when talking about movies- like Wolfwalkers came out 4 years ago and thats fairly new to me, even if in my perception of time it feels like forever. anything to do with time is weird]

yea this is just cemented into my head. And this 1 to 2 year age difference doesn't change much if anything

Can you tell I like Oswald's character? [joking]