It occurs to me that I didn’t really have to do a specific “scary car week.” Most of the time, this column is like an automotive version of Fear Factor anyway. These cars weren’t all that much scarier than the stuff I usually show you. But maybe they’ll inspire a little creativity: Your assignment today is to choose a car, then give me your best horror movie pitch that somehow involves that car.
Yesterday we delved into the fear of the unknown by looking at a couple of cars with practically no description and really bad photos. The Buick Rendezvous won, but it sounds like many of you who voted for it would rather have had a Pontiac Grand Prix – just not that Pontiac Grand Prix. The strange “no test drives” rule scared you off, as it probably should. Something is hinky there.
I actually did buy a car without test driving it once, a 1979 Plymouth Volare that I bought for $175. It had been sitting for a couple of years. I jump-started it, confirmed that it went into both Drive and Reverse, handed over the cash, put $10 of fresh gas in it, and drove it 20 miles home. It ran perfectly for six months until it died right in the middle of Larpenteur Avenue in St. Paul, completely electrically dead. The culprit? A dead ammeter in the dash, through which all the car’s electrical current passed. I bypassed the ammeter, and it ran fine again. And then – here’s the funny part – I sold the car for $400.
I guess you could say cars are scary. Certainly the way some people drive them is scary. But just the very idea of an object, a device, into which we invest so much emotion is frightening. If there’s a ghost in the machine, we put it there. As such, cars have been well represented in the horror genre. Sometimes they’re the star of the show, sometimes they’re one of the good guys, and sometimes they’re a plot point. Your mission, on this day before Halloween, is to pick one of these cars, and come up with a scary scenario involving it. It doesn’t need to be a whole story; just a quick lunch-meeting pitch. If these cars aren’t really any scarier than our normal fare, make them so. Here’s a quick recap so you know what you’re working with.
1976 Chevrolet Camaro LT – $10,500
Camaros always seem to be the bad-guy cars in horror. Buddy Repperton, the ill-fated bully in Christine, drove one. So did that lifeguard dude in Stranger Things. But I can’t see this Camaro as a bad guy’s car. It’s an LT, pretty, but slow. It’s kind of the himbo of Camaros. Neither is it imposing enough to be an evil character on its own. Poor thing can’t even spin its own tires.
Where it could be used, however, is as a hero’s car, especially in a period piece set in the ’70s. Imagine a young paranormal investigator driving this thing around the Pacific Northwest chasing down leads on Bigfoot or something. The Camaro gets dirty, gets involved in a few chases, maybe even banged up a little, but it’s always fine at the start of the next episode.
1981 Porsche 928 – $2,500
A fully-depreciated German GT coupe is scary enough in its own right, especially one that doesn’t run. Your knuckles, sanity, and bank account are all going to suffer greatly putting this heap back on the road. But as a derelict object, a whole bunch of other supernatural possibilities exist. Maybe it’s haunted. But maybe it’s not looking for someone to love it, like Christine; maybe it’s actively trying to die, and doesn’t want to be disturbed.
That’s not bad, actually. How many shadetree mechanics has this old dead Porsche claimed over the years? How many jackstands have slipped, how many fires have started? And yet, somehow, the car survives. The current owner of this one is only alive because he never tried to fix it up; he just let it sit in the garage for twenty years. But what about the next owner?
2001 BMW 540i – $5,800
At first glance, this car actually looks like a good deal. And it may be; it’s well-maintained, more or less stock, and the seller seems to really care about it. But is it too good to be true, like that house in The Amityville Horror? Could there be some demons lurking in its past that only surface once it’s in the hands of a new owner?
That’s one way to go, but looking at this car, I can totally see it as a villain’s car in a horror movie. Some polite, well-dressed, dapper demon here to just ruin your day. Maybe Satan’s attorney, the enforcer who shows up in case of breach of contract. Lawyers drive BMWs, right?
2006 Buick Rendezvous CXL – $1,900
The car in the book and movie Christine is a 1958 Plymouth. The story is set in 1978, meaning that car is only twenty years old. If Stephen King had written that story today, it would be about a 2006 model car. Would it have been a Buick Rendezvous? Probably not. This is just about the least-scary car I can think of. The scariest thing about it is how many times I’ve mis-typed the word “Rendezvous” while writing about it.
Instead, I see this as the car that our doomed protagonists drive to the lake, or the lodge in the mountains, or whatever. The car that mysteriously won’t start when the monster is chasing them, even though it ran fine for the first two-thirds of the movie. Maybe the monster jumps on the roof, or smashes a clawed hand through the windshield. Maybe the final girl traps the monster in the car, and pushes it into the lake. Yeah, that’s not a bad use for this thing.
I guess I just did what I asked you all to do. Whoops. But I bet some of you can come up with better horror scenarios involving these cars. You’ve got all weekend to work on it. Have a happy and safe Halloween, and I’ll see you back here on Monday!
The post Which One Is The Scariest? Chevy Camaro vs Porsche 928 vs BMW 540i vs Buick Rendezvous appeared first on The Autopian.
