Car Talk With an English Major

One of the unexpected outcomes of working on this Top Gear article is that I find myself viewing cars, for the first time in my life, as something other than a great incomprehensible tangle of plastic and metal which, if it decided to stop working– entirely of its own accord, of course–would render me entirely helpless until a person with coveralls and an itemized bill showed up.

But as the Bridemobile (just because I don’t understand ‘em doesn’t mean I can’t name ‘em) and I trundled across state lines last week,  I saw the grille of… some car bearing down on us, and I knew, just by glancing in the mirror, that this was something that I will be able to afford just as soon as the enormous Money Bundles of Serendipity come tumbling down from the sky.  And as it zoomed past, there it was on the back of trunk– four rings.  Which I wouldn’t have been able to identify a few months ago, either, merely chalking it down as a tragic attempt at Olympics-supporting car decor.

Now I find myself wondering about at body lines, brake horsepower, and turning radius, although I understand absolutely none of it.  “What about the color?” I’ll say when purchasing my next car, sometime around the next total eclipse of the sun in both hemispheres.  “And the radio?  And the cylinder head exhaust manifolds?  You know?  Those things that… exhaust… the manifold?”

Sometimes I like to look at less exotic cars, which are no less cool, if only because they don’t possess, as a main feature, a dent made by a deer.  Here’s one– the 2010 Honda Odyssey.  It’s  this BIG ENORMOUS MINIVIAN with a  cute little snub nose, and if you click on the picture tab at that link, you’ll see that if you park it near a hill, the Odyssey will even smile at you.  With dimples.  These things are important to me, as a driver.

This Ford Fusion Hybrid review announces that the 2010 version “has improved interior quality and quietness,” and that’s vital, considering the way I treat car interiors, which is to say as my own personal stress pillow.  Every time I don’t bust a cap in the tires of the line-barging hatchback in front of me, the passenger seat gets a fist-pounding.  So here’s to you, Ford Fusion Hybrid, and your ability to serve my needs.

Now, given my vast auto knowledge, you’d think that I’d be all over the fact that a Mercedes comes in something other than flat little thing, so I was surprised when I came across a Mercedes Benz GLK review and realized that Mercedeses come, like, twice as large as I’d expect.  Here you can take the car pool to soccer practice… in a freaking Mercedes.  Perhaps I will have a child as an excuse to obtain one of these.  Car seat’s gotta go somewhere.

vroom at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com