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http://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/c_d_staff/john_phillips/john_phillips_recent_deaths_of_note_columnJohn Phillips: Recent Deaths of Note - Column
Their passing apparently went unnoticed.
BY JOHN PHILLIPS
June 2009
In Memoriam
TURN SIGNALS, AGE 84
The use of turn signals by American drivers died last Wednesday. Their passing was not unexpected. Turn signals had been steadily derided since the late ’80s, when Americans had come to a consensus that lifting a finger several times a day was an imposition on their busy lives.
Turn signals were born in 1925. At the time, they seemed like a clever method of indicating a driver’s intentions, but as the years wore on, U.S. drivers increasingly became unaware of their own intentions.
Turn signals had earlier gone into a coma when BMW eliminated the up-and-down detents for the signal stalk, but the proximate cause of death was full gridlock in L.A. last Wednesday, a day on which it became impossible for any car to turn anyway.
Rest in Peace
HUMAN MEMORY
After a famously long career spanning more than 200,000 years, human memory died this month. For millennia, memory had been considered an invaluable evolutionary tool, preventing, as it did, Homo sapiens from committing the same stupid mistakes eight to 10 times in a row in front of their spouses. Memory’s slow and sad decline was first noticed when U.S. drivers could no longer remember when to use fog lights and thus left them on always. In the summer of 2008, memory suffered a second—and fatal—blow when North Americans, in the space of 120 days, could no longer recall $4-per-gallon fuel and went back to buying pickup trucks for style’s sake.
Human memory is survived by knee-jerk reactionaries and blowhard radio talk-show hosts, who have promised to fill in.
To the Great Beyond
THE REPUTATION OF WALTER PERCY CHRYSLER, 134
With the announcement that Chrysler would team with Italian automaker Fiat, the 134-year-old reputation of Walter P. Chrysler suffered a seizure last week, followed by internal bleeding, ulcers, humiliation, abnormally elevated levels of besmirchment, and subsequent death by massive dishonor.
Mr. Chrysler’s reputation had been in intensive care since Robert Eaton, at approximately 2 a.m. in a suite at the Ramada Inn, sold the company to a team of tall Germans, later referring to the deal as a “merger of equals.” Soon after, Mr. Chrysler’s reputation took on do-not-resuscitate status when the company was sold to Cerberus, whose CEO boasted, “I’m not that strong on cars.”
“We didn’t mean to kill his reputation,” said a tearful Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Caliber, both speaking off the record in Auburn Hills. “It’s just that we forgot that GM paid Fiat $2 billion to go away just four years ago. What were we thinking?”
In the eulogy for Mr. Chrysler’s reputation, the Reverend Jürgen E. Schrempp noted with pride that the word “Chrysler” had entered street vernacular as a verb—as in, “Dude, did you see Shaq totally Chrysler that free-throw?”
A Dodge Durango and a Jeep Commander served as pallbearers.
In Passing
RENTAL-CAR ABUSE
A national survey conducted by Hertz, National, Alamo, Dollar, and other rental agencies revealed the heretofore unannounced death of gratuitous rental-car abuse by white males under the age of 30.
“We were shocked when we analyzed the data,” said a Hertz spokesman. “But it’s increasingly clear that young men just aren’t putting the transmission into reverse at 50 mph, aren’t redlining engines for very much longer than five minutes at a time, and aren’t using the headliner as a napkin anymore.”
The rental community had previously assumed that abuse could be kept moderately healthy by automotive journalists. In lieu of flowers, friends of rental-car abuse are asked to make donations to the Aamco family.
Lest We Forget
ERGONOMICS, 65, LOSES LIFE
Following a courageous battle with youthful designers, ergonomics finally succumbed last month and will be interred next model year. Cause of death was the appearance of a Honda Pilot center stack featuring—by actual count—50 buttons, switches, toggles, LCD screens, flashing digits, and many chrome twirly things apparently connected to nothing at all.
“We had teams of engineers trying to nurse ergonomics through this difficult spell,” said a Honda spokesman who was cursing at his BlackBerry while simultaneously downloading an iPhone app that displays a photo of wood that he could later knock on. “It’s just that, well, we really love shiny stuff that lights up or beeps and can’t be explained in the owner’s manual.”
Ergonomics had not felt well since the mid-1980s, when Alfa Romeo placed the Milano’s power-window switches on the headliner. Ergonomics’s twin brother, Exterior Styling, was saddened by his sibling’s demise but added that he has felt fairly vigorous since the disappearance of the Pontiac Aztek.
Gone But Not Forgotten
GOOD DRIVING, 73, MURDERED
Driving with care, smoothness, competency, and skill was found DOA in a gutter on Detroit’s Woodward Avenue last Saturday night by two instructors from the Skip Barber school. Good driving appeared to be the victim of a “senseless act,” said an officer at the scene. Detectives declined to speculate on the cause of death but did cite roving gangs of unusually active cell-phone and texting suspects who frequent not only Woodward Avenue but also every single goddamn inch of paved road in America. Good driving had been in decline for years and was preceded in death by Common Courtesy.
