SCENARIO ONE: The Combination Platter
You’re on a road trip, and getting a bit hungry, when you see a Red Lobster by the side of the road. Enthralled, you yank the handbrake and cross three lanes of traffic sideways, skittering over the median like a skipped stone, and come to rest, noisily, in the Red Lobster parking lot, diagonally across two spots and one tipped-over motorcycle. You exit the car and sprint into the restaurant, where your attention is immediately grabbed by one of the lobsters in the lobster tank, which is very clearly looking right at you. You drop to your knees and press your face against the glass as the lobster meets you on the other side. Into your mind you hear his command: FREE ME, AND BE REWARDED. Knowing a good deal when you hear it, you grab the lobster and bolt from the restaurant, knocking over tables and chairs and at least one child on a high chair. Once in your car, speeding away from the restaurant, the lobster speaks to you again: YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR PART OF THE BARGAIN, FRIEND, you hear, broadcast into your mind’s ear. I AM THE LOBSTER EMPEROR, GRANTED INCREDIBLE POWERS BY THE ONE AND ONLY LOBSTERIAN LORD, AND YOUR ACT OF BRAVERY HAS GIVEN ME THE FREEDOM TO ONCE AGAIN LEAD THE LOBSTER COMMUNITY TO GREATNESS. TAKE ME TO A NEARBY CREEK OR RAVINE AND RECEIVE YOUR REWARD. You speed to the nearest ravine, using your handy RavineFindr app, and screech to a halt. Carefully, you carry the lobster to the edge and place him down. Suddenly, a large silver platter materializes between you. THIS IS THE MAGIC COMBINATION PLATTER. YOU CAN PARK ANY TWO CARS OVER IT, AND THOSE CARS WILL BE COMBINED INTO ONE THAT POSSESSES THE ABSOLUTE BEST QUALITIES OF BOTH. Your mind reels upon hearing this – a Porsche 911 and a Prius could mean a fast, exciting car that gets 50 MPG! A Ford F-150 and an original Fiat 500 could mean a truck that’s tiny on the outside but can somehow haul huge loads! Think of the possibilities! A Citroën DS and a Unimog! A Bugatti Chiron and a Tata Nano! The mind reels! THERE IS A CATCH, the lobster says. Of course there is. IN ADDITION TO THE IDEAL COMBINATION CAR, ANOTHER CAR, REPRESENTING THE WORST QUALITIES OF THE TWO CARS WILL BE YOURS AS WELL. BOTH MUST BE DRIVEN EQUALLY FOR BOTH TO EXIST! The lobster, satisfied, waves his claws at you and plops into the water, leaving you with the platter and a lot of strange ideas in your head.
SCENARIO TWO: The Solution To Both The Fuel And Omelette Crisis
You love your cars, you love driving, and you show this over your social media accounts in witty, informative, and visually stunning ways. You soon become something of an influencer, gathering a huge and dedicated following. Eventually, you start to get noticed by various brands, offering to sponsor some of your car adventures, but you find that you’re still getting killed paying for all that gas.
Then, an opportunity presents itself: the American Egg Council reaches out to you with a proposal. They want to pay for all of your fuel needs, no limit whatsoever, but on one condition: for every gallon of free gas you use, you must eat two eggs.
So, if you’re filling up an average car, you’ll have to consume between 20 and 30 eggs. That’s a lot of eggs. And they’ll be checking your stools (dammit, I couldn’t get through this without any scatology, sorry) to confirm that the eggs-to-fuel ratio is what it should be.
So, what’s it going to be? Combining cars to make ideal and miserable versions, or two-eggs-per-gallon?
QuizMaker
No-one, writes like Jason Loves taillights like Jason And whose Changli is dead out of spite like Jason “I used Tracy for all of my DE-cor-A-ting!”
Say it again! Who’s a Torch among men? And who plays the fool? And whose brain is aircooled? With his Beetle that came back from theft?
There’s just one Autopian Who’s got all of it down And his name’s J-A-S – uh T-O-R – C – er – Y? aw JASONNNNNNNNN
THAT’s the part of the story that doesn’t make sense to me.
I call that a WIN-WIN
Im going to go with the Eggs. I can eat a bunch of hardboiled eggs for fun…
The cars?
Car 1: 1961 Ferrari 250 California Spyder
Car 2: janky hand and foot cranked pedal car
Good car: Classic Ferrari awesomeness with perfect reliability, no fuel costs and yields it’s driver the uber fit body of an ultra iron man athlete.
Bad car: Driver has to do all the sisyphean work of pedaling the unreliable, smelly POS for someone elses benefit.
I keep the good car and rent it out among the 0.001% for top dollar (the mere 0.01% can’t afford it) and ship the POS off to some backwater shithole where it’s in constant use by the unwashed masses as the slightly more attractive option to walking.
Buaahhhaaaaa!!!!
The lobster scenario is even more appealing. I never wanted my commuter car to do much more than simply get me there and back, and having an absurdly capable and economical GT for long trips and/or track use is even more appealing because I usually prefer hotels to RVs, and could pull a microlite or pop-up RV and be satisfied with that.
I’m taking the lobster. I’m not sure what two vehicles get combined, but one has tow 3500-5000 lbs without difficulty while getting decent gas mileage, and the other has to be balls-out crazy fun.
A Toyota Highlander Hybrid or Sienna Hybrid is the best commoner that contributes economy, utility and towing ability. The other would be a reasonably efficient and reliable sports car like a 911, C8 Corvette or even a Koenigsegg Gemera.
