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by Lore Sjöberg
Moon Roof
Ah, yes, the moon roof. Let us commune with the
gentle healing rays of Mother Luna through a hole in the
top of our Dodge Neon. This is essentially a cheap sun roof,
which itself is an excessively conservative alternative to
a convertible, which in turn is just for those too faint of
heart to buy a motorcycle, and a motorcycle is just compensation
for an inability to be transformed by a mysterious chemical
accident into a super-speedster capable of running fast enough
to break the time barrier. D
Ten-Disc CD Changer
I admit I'm speaking from ignorance here; I've never actually
had a CD player in my car. But looking at my own life, I realize
that my own trunk-opening habits are such that leftover picnic food
often converts to a toxic gas similar to those used for fumigation
in poorly-regulated South American countries before I get around to
removing it from my car. So my thought here is that I'd pick
ten CD's, load them up, and never change them again as long as I live.
Oh, sure, I'd get really tired of listening to "Best of Blondie" after
a few weeks, but it's all I can do to change the discs in my home
CD player, and that doesn't require me to find my keys. So I'd
end up listening to the same hundred-odd songs over and over again.
Admittedly, that's more variety than you get from your average
commercial station, but it's the principle. C+
Factory Air
I like this because it's better than it sounds. In a world
where marketers are paid the big bucks to come up with
"Corinthian Leather" as a euphemism for "Naugahyde" which
itself is a euphemism for "Ill-Smelling Plastic Covering,"
it's refreshing to hear "factory air," which brings to mind
the choking scent of oil, ozone, and vending machine snack items,
instead of the more pleasant "built-in air conditioning." A
Power Windows
First off, "power" is a little bit overblown as a synonym for
"electric." You don't hear people referring to their "power toothbrush"
or "power can opener," do you? But in car ads, where every word is
designed to make you feel like you could overthrow a dictatorship
using only the latest model of their automobile, the windows are
"power" in spite of the fact that they couldn't so much as crack
a nut. Alternatively, "power" could be a synonym for "likely to
break down at a financially inconvenient time." C
Winch
I'm not personally a fan of off-roading, and I don't care to
get myself involved in the American sport of pretending I
might very well go four-wheeling at any moment as soon as I
drop the twins off at soccer practice. But goshdamnit, I want
a winch. It doesn't matter what car I drive; if I was on a
Vespa scooter I'd still want a winch. I have no idea what
I'd use it for; I don't have own any property with stumps
that need to be removed, and I don't need to bust any friends
out of an Old West jail cell. There's just something about
this industrial Batman car accessory that makes me want one. A
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