While driving back from Taco Bell the other day (tangent: we both wanted Thai food but the particular Thai restaurant at which I wanted to eat was closed for the next week, so we ended up going to the obvious alternative of Taco Bell–mm, gorditas), Jon and I got into a discussion about which of us has the jankier car. It’s times like this that I wish I had a polling system on 3till7 so that I might get a decisive vote on this hot issue. Here are the facts:
- His car is 3 years older than mine (’91 versus ’88)… +1 janky point for Jon
- My car has a big, splotchy primer spot where paint should be… +1 for me
- His car’s muffler shakes and rattles like a busted washing machine… +1 for Jon
- My passenger-side speaker was recently receding into the door and you had to physically pull it outward in order to roll down the window… +1 for me
- His car is covered in a permanent layer of dog hair… +1 for Jon
- My car’s antenna is a welding rod… +1 for me
- His CD player just sits in an open area and occasionally skips when driving because it jumps up and down… +1 for Jon
- I have to run my heater often times in the summer to keep my car from overheating… +1 for me
- His interior light does not work at any setting… +1 for Jon
- While his odometer reads over 100,000 miles, mine broke at over 185,000 two years ago… +1 for me
- If you brush against his car’s exterior, you get dusty white paint on you… +1 for Jon
- My driver-side seat heater doesn’t work… +1 for me
- He carries around a box of quart oil bottles because such quantities were necessary when his car leaked like crazy… +1 for Jon
- One of my rear windows can’t be controlled by the driver’s buttons, so you have to snake your hand back to roll it up again… +1 for me
- The face of his CD player is held on with putty… +1 for Jon
- On a recent repair, the mechanic informed me that instead of having an air box/preheat thermostat, there was actually only a wad of duct tape in its place… +1 for me
- His car is so old it doesn’t have a passenger-side mirror… +1 for Jon
And now for the credits, i.e. bringing our cars back to the land of new automobiles:
- His air conditioner works great and doesn’t overheat the car… -1 for Jon
- I have automatic locks and windows… -1 for me
- My CD player is properly installed and doesn’t skip… -1 for me
Aaaand the outcome: 8 janky points for Jon’s car, and 6 for mine. That leaves Jon the winner by a smidgen, but I wonder if perhaps it wasn’t fair to assign each detail 1 point. Perhaps some, ah, features should really count for more points on the jankometer. For example, he contests that my having to run the heater in 90-degree F weather somehow should count for more than 1 janky point. What do you think? And how does your car rank?
We had to push our mercedes benz (which is friggin heavy as all-getout!) down a steep hill just to get it home, after spending four hours “traveling” back to the house. It was ten miles away. That’s pretty janky. It’s deisel and he let the gas run out :( And the transmission makes it hard to go past 15 mph at weird intervals…weird, and frequent. Uh….none of the -odometers work. There’s places where the paint is just about to rust out. Over 10, on the whole car. The windows don’t work. The only air that comes out is hot as hell. The glovebox won’t shut. If you got in a car accident, no doubt your kneecaps will feel muchos pain. It’s never ran well for more than a few weeks, it always has something wrong with it…now it’s the transmission (We think). You have to jiggle the key in the ignition and hope it starts. You look like a crazy person doing this, too. Sometimes it won’t turn.
It’s one janky almost-rusting heil-hitler mess of a car!
You should listen to “Cars & Shoes” by The Coup, I think you’d like the lyrics.