When I installed my brake rotors last month I briefly considered painting the calipers red as an ironic touch, but figured it was more trouble than it was worth, and some people may not get the joke. This guy, however, doesn’t have the same inner voice of reason. As a matter of fact, this guy has no reason at all.
Almost all owners of 240s have to figure out a plan to have a wet beverage in their car. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who have the rare armrest-mounted cup slings, you either put in some crappy aftermarket mini-bucket, or you shove your latte into the door pocket. Or you go thirsty and speed past all highway rest stops.
Cup holders seem as neccessary to modern vehicles as windshield wipers and cruise control (which I don’t have either). But it wasn’t always that way.
A few years ago Slate posted a short overview of the growth of the cupholder in the US auto industry. In the early part of the 20th century you’d have a tough time keeping a drink from spilling while driving on rough roads with your cars bone-jarring suspension. With the advent of eating in parked cars, auto makers added indented circles to the inside door of car gloveboxes. The 240s have them, but you’d have to put your tray back in the upright position if you encounter turbulence.
While American manufacturers developed holders in the armrests and between the seats of cars in the 80s, European car makers had no interest in giving up precious real estate for drinking, an activity that was meant to be enjoyed while stationary, preferably in front of a chic cafe.
Things have changed. According to this 2005 article about the eating and drinking habits of mobile Americans in the NY Times, Volvo has now accepted their multi-cup-holder fate:
Cup-holder ubiquity has reached the extreme in the Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicle, which has 18 beverage holders – nine for standard cups and nine to hold large bottles. The vehicle seats seven passengers.
Back in 2004 Malcolm Gladwell interviewed cultural anthropologist G. Clotaire Rapaille about the seemingly irrational, reptilian responses people have to products, and the psychological basis for them. Speaking about cupholders, Rapaille asks and answers his own question:
What was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid.  That’s why cupholders are absolutely crucial for safety.  If there is a car that has no cupholder, it is not safe.  If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, if everything is round, if it’s soft, and if I’m high, then I feel safe.  It’s amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cupholders it has.
So much for the heavy steel cage and collapsable front end of my 240; without cup-holders, I’m screwed.
Back in 2004, thirty two people in the town of Dalaro, Sweden (population 1015) bought a new Volvo S40. On the exact same day. What caused the entire town to buy the same car, separately, on the same day? Viral marketing, of course.
The “Mystery of Dalaro” was directed by Spike Jonze for Volvo’s European ad agency. It “documents” the phenomenon of coincidental consumption in a cute way. I especially like the Carl Jung reference. Don’t know if it ended up selling more than 32 cars though.
Via the book OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder
There is now yet another bulletin board for brick owners. FCP Groton just launched Volvolution, although it looks like it’s coming out of the UK, so I’m curious what the connection to FCP is. I seeded it with a few questions about tires and suspension.
It’s nice to see a new bb interface. While the Brockboard has great membership and advice for RWD owners, the UI hasn’t been updated in 5 or 6 years and it’s really cludgy. I’m curious to see which car owners will frequent the Volvolution board.
The British car magazine “What Car?” has crowned the Volvo S40 diesel the Green Car of the Year. It beat Japanese hybrids with its low emissions and 72.4 mpg fuel economy.
But, according to James Howard Kunstler, a fuel efficient Volvo ain’t gonna be much of a help for our future:
…no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel,
tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart,
Disney World and the interstate highway system — or even a fraction of
these things — in the future. We have to make other arrangements.The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the
“peak oil” story. It’s not about running out of oil. It’s about the
instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon
as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply.
New York’s Daily News site enticed me with a teaser for “The NY Mobs Biggest ‘Hits‘” and, after looking at 9 photos of murdered mobsters, BINGO, I found Volvo’s ubiquitous 240 in the background of a bloody crime scene photo.
WARNING: this link is not for the squeamish.
The late Anthony DiLapi was found in
the garage of his apartment building outside Los Angeles on February 4,
1990. The Lucchese family soldier had moved out to the West Coast to
get away from the mob, but was found and murdered on the orders of
Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso.Mob cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa obtained information of DiLapi’s whereabouts from California police.
I wonder if the brick was his. It’d probably make good cover if he was starting a new life in California. Theoretically.
If I ever launch my brick 20 feet into the air off a flaming pile of cheap import cars, like this Oldsmobuick does, I’ll know who to call if I get a scratch.
Via Videogum
Great quote from P.J. O’Rourke regarding the difference in working on a muscle car from the 70’s with trying to work on a car today:
A modern car, you flip the hood open, you might as well pry the back off an iPod. What’s in there? I don’t know.
I gotta get his new book, Driving Like Crazy
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| P.J. O’Rourke | ||||
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Robert Lutz, vice chair of GM, tosses off this nugget of revisionist history in a quote from Monday’s NY Times article about the bankruptcy of GM:
“…for the first time in our history, the American auto industry has the ear of the administration.”
Is he saying that in the entire history of the American auto industry, this is the first time they’ve had a hearing with the president and congress? That’s preposterous on its face. A little over 50 years ago the auto industry worked hand-in-hand with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to have the Interstate Highway System built with federal funds. Not to mention numerous times the auto industry successfully blocked safety regulations and fuel efficiency requirements.
Even if we limit his statement just to GM and the Obama administration it’s still ridiculous. According to Bloomberg News, General Motors spent $2.8 million lobbying congress in just the first three months of 2009. According in the Center for Media and Democracy GM spent $8.8 million lobbying congress in 2006. Are we supposed to believe they didn’t have the ear of the administration until this week? What they didn’t have until this week was a taxpayer injection of $50 billion.
GM got our money despite taxpayer sentiment in the US:
The disconnect between how the auto industry is perceived in Detroit and in the rest of the country was underscored in an April survey by CNN; it showed 76 percent of Americans favored allowing GM to fall into bankruptcy rather than extending further government aid.
Allison Kilkenny has a great post comparing GM to an abusive spouse:
Only in this country would a corporation’s executives have the nerve to close factories and relocate them to Mexico to exploit cheap labor, systematically work to suppress public mass transit and fuel-efficient vehicles, shelter its revenues from taxation in multiple offshore havens, and still crawl to the government weeping and crying when it needs money.
Not only that, but the government will hand GM another bailout check with taxpayer money without asking for anything in return, effectively socializing the investment’s risk whilst privatizing the profit…again.
Perhaps I just need to start saving $8 million a year so I can get the ear of this administration.
Image from Idiocracy
In case you missed the Ghost Riding fad from a couple years ago, consider yourself lucky. Based on a video from Mista FAB, Ghost Riding involves every parent’s nightmare of kids jump out of the slowly cruising family truckster and dancing next to and on top of the vehicle, instead of sitting safely buckled into the front seat.
I was originally going to embed this video of two dudes ghost riding a Volvo 940 (?) for this post. Instead I had to go with this classic of a guy standing of the roof of his Ford Ranger as it slowly makes its way up the curb and into a telephone pole.
