Thursday, March 10, 2011

Car Games

Last summer when Nate came home from Scout Camp, he brought home more than just a week's worth of dirt and unused shampoo. He also brought home a game called Yellow Car. The premise is simple enough. During a car ride every time you see a yellow car, you shout "YELLOW CAR" and earn one point. The person with the most points upon arriving home is declared the winner. At first play it's a charming little game, one where the kids are playing together, looking out the window, and finding joy in simple entertainment. But soon, points are being disputed, the term car is being loosely interpreted (School buses are not cars!) and someone's crying. Usually me.

The game works because there aren't that many yellow cars on the road. In my many months of looking out for yellow cars, mainly so I can veer onto a different road, I've noticed most yellow cars are sporty, convertibles and driven by people with serious emotional needs. I mean really, a yellow convertible? And yes, I can tell all of this from 50 yards away.

The other car game I love to play involves sneaking up on cars in pre-production, always at high speeds. It is not uncommon on the streets of metro Detroit to see cars that aren't available to the public yet, their highly secret curves and lines camouflaged by bizarre patterns of tape or vinyl. The first one I saw almost made me laugh out loud, but before I could turn to Jon to point out the silly looking car ahead, he was already maneuvering our car into optimal viewing position. Which, as it turns out, is either dangerously too close on the left, or dangerously too close on the right. Apparently the recommended distance of two car lengths doesn't get you close enough to measure the gap between the trunk and the body panel. Duh.

Jon is currently designing the trunk for the 2013 Chevy Malibu. We saw the first one on the road just the other day. Well, he did. You see unless it's yellow, all cars look the same to me. No one's playing a game called TAN HONDA CIVIC or GREEN FORD TAURUS. That would be boring and you'd have to be able to tell the difference between the two. In college I worked for a company that did employee surveys. Our biggest client was General Motors. It was then I learned there was even a difference between make and model. Also it's ironic that Jon works for a company where so many of its unclassified employees told me so many of its secrets. The car game they played then was called BLAME.

In 2007 a nationally distributed magazine held a contest where the goal was to identify 45 different cars by their exhaust pipes. Their exhaust pipes. Jon won, earning the honor of being called a Bona Fide Car Guy. He also won a t-shirt. I'd be hard pressed to even find the exhaust pipe on a car. Also, shouldn't you win something more for that kind of talent, like maybe a car maybe.

 That day we saw Jon's car it was too late to change lanes and get a closer look. A large truck obscured our view and by the time we were moving again it was too far ahead. I'm sure we'll get another chance. Its big reveal is next month at the New York Auto Show and it's going to need to do a few laps around town to get ready for its close-up. Maybe next time it'll be yellow and I'll notice it too.