You know what… yep… I’m gonna beat this dead horse one last time & then I’m done.
I will never, ever understand why the new Toyota Supra is a BMW that doesn’t come with a manual transmission or targa top. It’s impossible to wrap my head around it. Furthermore – Chevy finally makes THE killer mid-engine Corvette, and doesn’t even offer it with a manual. Just think about that for a second. America’s flagship sports car for over 60 years… and no manual transmission. Just… nope… can’t have it that way pal. And Porsche… PORSCHE of all companies… puts a ‘turbo’ emblem on their EV!!?? Well at least they know who their customers are these days.
Stop. Pause. Let it all sink in…
Hoverboards don’t hover. Ok I’m f*ckin’ done.
Does nothing hold truth anymore?!
What happened to substance, authenticity, character??!! Did all that stuff die with good music & original movies??! Have we all just completely lost our balls?
The answer is a resounding yes, y’all have… but I haven’t.
It’s sad because I used to have a dog in the ‘save the sports cars’ fight. I was passionate about it. But now at this point… I kinda just wanna take my dog & go someplace else more fun. If I’m gonna ride an automatic it’s gonna be a freaking awesome stand-up jet ski… not whatever the hell y’all are making these days.
Because the God’s honest truth is: I just can’t get outta my pool floaties to go finance some $50,000+ soft-handed sports car that’s got more sensors than soul. And I’m DONE banging my head against a wall every time you car companies f*ck up another new car.
So I’m gonna let that ship sail, and I’ll just keep playing with the cool cars y’all used to make… and at least be grateful for that.
Because I still know what you forgot…
That the true spirit of car culture is found in the intangibles. The attitude. For example, does vtec pop & scream-out to 9k? Does boost hit like you’re being sucked through a giant straw? Do you anticipate the next shift with your arm flexed on the shifter like a total badass?? Or do you just flap the paddle and – poof – go fast with the windows up omg who fkn cares.
To the car manufacturers, I’ll leave you with this little bit of S3 wisdom.
If you want to build cool cars again (I know you don’t but just in case)… here’s whatcha do.
1) Get everybody in the boardroom.
Pass around a couple bottles of whiskey & some egg rolls to loosen the mood. Put on some ZZ Top or something like that. Then – boys, girls, nonbinary… all of you reach down & grab your chickens. Riiight? Feel that surge?? It’s electric baby but it ain’t no EV. That’s the adrenaline & confidence that comes from remembering who the f*ck you are.
2) Now go back to the drawing board…
And show us what a kick-ass car could actually look like in the future… which is right now dum-dums! Go! A) Don’t use control groups. B) Don’t ask the internet. C) Don’t dumbass market analysis.
In short – don’t ask idiots who don’t like cars… how you should build a car? You’re the damn professionals; you TELL them.
3) Once the car is a reality & you know it’s tits, you rekindle that lustful desire using… wait for it… marketing!
A real ad campaign centered around a real sports car. Make it sizzle. Wake people up from their crossover coma. Remind people what cool is. Use Joe Jonas or Jason Statham, everybody loves those guys. F*ck even Nick Cannon. And for your own sake, it’s imperative that you do something WITHOUT a comments-section for dweebs attached to it. We’re not engaging the dweebs on this one, we’re going over their head. Oh and 2 more things:
4) You don’t deserve immediate gratification on this one.
I know in this day & age, immediate gratification is expected. You finally do something cool & you can’t wait to hype hype hype it up on social media prematurely. You want the grand slam on the first swing… you wanna slay right out the gate. But as with a garden, you plant the seed, you water & fertilize it, then you let it grow. It doesn’t happen immediately. And since most of y’all haaaave basically left the car-culture garden dry as fuck for the last 15 years, you’re gonna have to have to start from square-1 with a lot of the young seedlings. These kids have never been in a cool car outside of a video game.
5) Finally the last key piece of the puzzle: Car companies… get your dealerships in check.
Because every so often, y’all really doooo get it right & make something we really want… like the Bronco, Type-R, and Focus RS for example. We get excited! But then what happens? Dealerships get a weird dealer-stiffy & put arrogant premiums on ‘em.
So instead of jazzed-up customers coming in to buy these cars & put them on the damn streets… they sit at a dealer collecting dust like a failure. In the case of the Focus RS, Ford dealers held onto those RS premiums even past the RS’s infamous headgasket recall. So then you had RSs littering the lot with blown headgaskets waiting for service, while salesmen were still slapping the roof of a new one trying to pull 10k over sticker. C’mon man. It never should have gone down like that. These ain’t Ferrari F40s here. These are just… cool cars that regular people really want to own. LET THEM! I think they’ve made over 40,000 FK8 Type-Rs now?! And they’re still playing with premiums at some dealerships?! Are we serious?! You’re gonna make a special little number plate for 40+ thousand cars?!
You really shouldn’t gouge enthusiasts for finally (and I do mean fiiiiinally) making a cool car we actually want. That’s just like… how it should work. You should make cars that people want.
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