You know what’s fun but we haven’t done in a long, long time? Played Automotive Would You Rather! I used to do this every now and then um, somewhere else, but there’s no reason we can’t do it here, right? It’s summer and I’m feeling frivolous, anyway. If you want something rich and meaty, you can read David’s Bronco Raptor review/suspension primer or Tycho’s Chinese hydrogen deep dive. But if you just want a snack, a handful of only slightly palm-sweaty M&Ms, then I got you covered, because we’re about to indulge in one of those glorious thought-experiments that is a good Automotive Would You Rather, so lube up that brain and get ready.
Okay, here’s the premise: you accidentally summon a Magic Horse when you had an erotic thought while eating a Starburst Fruit Chew and holding a lithium battery (maybe the one in your phone?) which is the most common way magic horses tend to be summoned from the Great Galloping Fields that exist in a dimension parallel and to the left of ours.
The horse appears, and, as thanks for granting him access to our dimension (they like to go to Trader Joe’s while they’re here, as those don’t exist in Magic Horse Dimension) he offers you the chance to have, for free, and in absolutely perfect running condition, the car of your choice. It can be literally any car that’s ever been built, and the horse will materialize it right now, in your driveway, and drop the keys in your hand from his big horse-mouth.
Want a Tatra T87? I sure do! You can have it. A perfect Ford GT40? No problem! A McLaren 720s? Jaguar E-Type? Lotus Esprit? Spyker C8? Stout Scarab? Whatever you want! It’s yours!
Oh, there is one catch, though. Well, two, because you can pick, and they’re both tape-related. You see, as part of the deal, due to complex negotiations with the 3M corporation and the Interscope record label, your car of choice must either be extensively covered with DOT-approved 3M reflective red-and-white high visibility tape or, if you can’t stomach doing that to your Lamborghini Miura, then you can agree to have a tape deck installed with a cassingle of the Black Eyed Peas song My Humps playing in it, and that tape can never be removed or turned off. You can adjust the volume a bit, but it’ll never be silent; figure the lowest volume you can turn it down to is right about where you’re comfortably able to talk over it, but you can definitely still hear it with no trouble.
Of course, you can crank it as loud as you’d like, if you want.
So, here’s your choice: you can have any car you want, and it’ll run beautifully and be in pristine condition as long as you have it– the oil changes and other scheduled maintenance will even occur via magic horse teams coming to do it every 1500 miles via the power of astral projection – but it’ll either have to be absolutely slathered in that reflective red-and-white tape, or it’ll be playing My Humps nonstop, forever.
So which tape-tradeoff do you choose?
My blue Viper ACR would have white reflective racing stripes….
I’ll take the My Humps option. Everyone knows that after about a fortnight it will become “Best of Queen” which I can absolutely live with.
I reckon tape, 1. I don’t have to look at it from the inside and 2. I reckon it would look kinda fun.
I choose the Black Eyed Peas tape because at least there’s a chance that I can bring some sort of wireless, rechargeable audio playback device into the car and attempt some phase inversion to try and cancel out the audio frequencies. Syncing will be tricky though but worst case scenario one can just use that same portable device to blast music loud enough that ‘My Humps’ gets drowned out in the lowest volume setting.
I’d go with dot tape. I already put up with it on my truck, so I can attest, after a while, you don’t even notice it. Ya know what magic horses, bring me a Pete 389, and now I can make money off of you! Free maintenance on a work truck, and the tape is required. Then I buy a cool car with the maintenance savings. Take that magic horses!
Someone start taping my AWD Ferrari FF wagon, now made of envincium!
Lifetime free maintenance, you say? Then it’s 3M tape on my “new” 1986 Audi Quattro Sport S1. That magic horse will rue their agreement after a rally weekend…and there will be many, many rally weekends. Can you say astral re-prep?
I guess I will be listening to My Humps in my Duesenberg SJ Dual cowl Phaeton.
Reflective tape on my Jaguar XKSS. I intend to drive that car into the ground (and take every advantage of that free equine maintenance). That means I’m in the car looking out, not outside looking in. And even though I think the XKSS is the most beautiful automobile ever (fight me), I’m all about that sweet straight six sound.
Cassette all the way. They make noise canceling earphones for a reason.
So far 22% of the respondents are deaf? Nothing against the Black Eyed Peas, but playing the same thing over and over would drive me crazy. With the reflective tape, I would just appear eccentric.