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Another Road Hog
If there's one thing this nation needs, it's bigger
cars. That's why I'm excited that Ford is coming out with a new mound o'
metal that will offer consumers even more total road-squatting mass than
the current leader in the humongous-car category, the popular Chevrolet
Suburban Subdivision -- the first passenger automobile designed to be,
right off the assembly line, visible from the moon.
I don't know what the new Ford will be called.
Probably something like the ''Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure.'' In the
TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up
rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through
the surf and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface
-- all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial
World, where nobody ever drives on an actual road.
In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility
Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming
with deer, squirrels, birds and other wildlife species that have fled from
the forest to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles
barreling through the underbrush at 50 mph.
In the real world, of course, nobody drives
Sport Utility Vehicles in the forest, because when you have paid upward
of $40,000 for a transportation investment, the last thing you want is
squirrels pooping on it. No, if you want a practical ''off-road'' vehicle,
you get yourself a 1973 American Motors Gremlin, which combines the advantage
of not being worth worrying about with the advantage of being so ugly that
poisonous snakes flee it in terror.
In the real world, what people mainly do with
their Sport Utility Vehicles, as far as I can tell, is try to maneuver
them into and out of parking spaces. I base this statement on my local
supermarket, where many of the upscale patrons drive Chevrolet Subdivisions.
I've noticed that these people often purchase just a couple of items --
maybe a bottle of diet water and a two-ounce package of low-fat dried carrot
shreds -- which they put into the back of their Subdivisions, which have
approximately the same cargo capacity, in cubic feet, as Finland. This
means there is plenty of room left over back there in case, on the way
home, these people decide to pick up something else, such as a herd of
bison.
Then comes the scary part: getting the Subdivision
out of the parking space. This is a challenge, because the driver apparently
cannot, while sitting in the driver's seat, see all the way to either end
of the vehicle. I drive a compact car, and on a number of occasions I have
found myself trapped behind a Subdivision backing directly toward me, its
massive metal butt looming high over my head, making me feel like a Tokyo
pedestrian looking up at Godzilla.
I've tried honking my horn, but the Subdivision
drivers can't hear me, because they're always talking on cellular phones
the size of Chiclets (''The Bigger Your Car, The Smaller Your Phone,''
that is their motto). I don't know who they're talking to. Maybe they're
negotiating with their bison suppliers. Or maybe they're trying to contact
somebody in the same area code as the rear ends of their cars, so they
can find out what's going on back there. All I know is, I'm thinking of
carrying marine flares, so I can fire them into the air as a warning to
Subdivision drivers that they're about to run me over. Although frankly
I'm not sure they'd care if they did.
A big reason they bought a Sport Utility Vehicle
is ''safety,'' in the sense of, ``you, personally, will be safe, although
every now and then you may have to clean the remains of other motorists
out of your wheel wells.''
Anyway, now we have the new Ford, which will
be even larger than the Subdivision, which I imagine means it will have
separate decks for the various classes of passengers, and possibly, way
up in front by the hood ornament, Leonardo DiCaprio showing Kate Winslet
how to fly. I can't wait until one of these babies wheels into my supermarket
parking lot. Other motorists and pedestrians will try to flee in terror,
but they'll be sucked in by the Ford's powerful gravitational field and
become stuck to its massive sides like so many refrigerator magnets. They
won't be noticed, however, by the Ford's driver, who will be busy whacking
at the side of his or her head, trying to dislodge his or her new cell
phone, which is the size of a single grain of rice and has fallen deep
into his or her ear canal.
And it will not stop there. This is America,
darn it, and Chevrolet is not about to just sit by and watch Ford walk
away with the coveted title of Least Sane Motor Vehicle. No, cars will
keep getting bigger: I see a time, not too far from now, when upscale suburbanites
will haul their overdue movies back to the video-rental store in full-size,
18-wheel tractor-trailers with names like The Vagabond. It will be a proud
time for all Americans, a time for us to cheer for our country. We should
cheer loud, because we'll be hard to hear, inside the wheel wells.
~ This classic Dave Barry column was originally
published on March 21, 1999. ~
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