The Alleged Car: Difference between revisions

: He also mentioned "never [having] driven a car that's aqua."

* [[German Humour|Trabi jokes]]. See the [[Real Life]] section.

* Scott Faulconbridge had a routine where he talked about his car. It was worth about twenty bucks. After he filled it with gas.

* A stock [[Borscht Belt]] joke (included in Waak's brief stand-up routine in the film ''[[Explorers]]'') is about a car called a "Rolls-Canardly" -- "It rolls down one hill and can 'ardly get up the next."

* The Doctor from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' apparently has a particular affection for this trope. In the [[Eighth Doctor Adventures]] novels, he has a Trabant, as featured in the [[Real Life]] section of this trope page. Even better: he drives it during his stint as a single father and wealthy business consultant, working with the kind of people who drive "Porsches and BMWs", next to which the Trabant looks like "an old drunk uncle at a wedding". He keeps a ton of books in it and it often stalls (in one scene, his would-be-love interest is foiled by his [[Oblivious to Love|generally oblivious personality]] and the fact he's preoccupied by trying to get the car to start), but at the end it has its own little [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] when the Doctor needs to go rescue {{spoiler|his daughter from being whisked off the planet}}:

{{quote|The Doctor smiled, and slammed his foot on the Trabant’s accelerator, astonishing the owners of the Audi he cruised past.}}

* In the early ''[[Spenser]]'' detective novels, Spenser drives several of these. The first was a 1968 Chevy convertible in such awful condition that everyone he meets remarks on it. He justifies keeping it by saying that if it gets damaged in the line of duty, he doesn't care all that much. He later wrecks a Subaru somewhere near the Charles River locks. By the 1990s, he's switched to something better, but he still loses cars with some frequency after that, and implies he's never too attached to them.

** Carried over to the TV series; in one instance, Spenser complains that his car was nearly totaled, and Hawke [[Deadpan Snarker|quips]], "that would be redundant."

** Mumbly, a clone of ''[[Wacky Races]]'''s Muttley, is a parody of ''Columbo'' right down to the car which literally fell apart into a pile whenever he parked it.

* ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' has Henchman #24's powder blue Nissan Stanza.

* In ''[[Dan Vs.]]'', nine times out of ten, the reason for Dan seeking revenge is due to something happening to his car, which is probably how it got to be in the condition it's in. People tend to assume it's been abandoned, and when it was accidentally donated to the Salvation Armed Forces, the volunteer responsible told him, "In my defense, no one would want to keep a vehicle like that."

{{quote|'''Salvation Armed Forces Employee:''' We only received one car donation today, and it was not in drivable condition.

== Real Life ==

* Many of the above are based on the Yugo, also known as [[wikipedia:Zastava Koral|the Zastava Koral]], or one of the many Eastern European Cold War era cars that were exported to the West to raise foreign currency; the Yugo was merely the one that was actually sold the most (in the USA), and the first since [[The Sixties]] to make it to the United States, and was thus the best known (in the USA). For Europe the most likely candidate would be the Trabbi, the Skoda or possibly the Wartburg. As a side note, the Yugo, based on its reputation, was voted Worst Car Of The Millennium by [[Car Talk]]. (Truthfully, there have been worse cars. Not many, but they exist. While hardly a stellar machine, the Yugo wasn't a genuine disaster. Its poor reputation is often explained by it being uncaringly treated as a disposable car and ''never'' given even the most basic maintenance, like, say, an oil change.) Jason Vuic, who wrote a book chronicling the history of the Yugo, noted that the Yugo at least passed U.S. safety and emissions tests, meaning it's at least better than the cars that don't get to be imported to the US. Jason Vuic puts down the next entry as being worse...

* The [[wikipedia:Citroen 2CV|Citroen 2CV]] - the vehicle which inspired this trope - fits this trope very well in some aspects, though others were averted; mainly, the 2CV was easy and cheap to repair and somewhat more reliable than its competitors, and with all the broken-down and abandoned ones, combined with minimal changes to its design over its production life, made it a good purchase for anyone with a low budget. Still, it did have extreme flaws; early models used a small engine and had doors without locks, so anyone could steal the car simply by ''opening the door and pulling the ignition cord''. It is also remembered for inspiring the term "lemon" ("citron" being the French word for "lemon" and obviously resembling the brand's name).<ref>Though said term apparently dates back to at least 1906.</ref>

** There was a parody of the famous Citroen "Dancing [[Transformers Generation 1|Transformer]]" ad that featured a 2CV—it held up surprisingly well until the end...

* [http://mongolrally.theadventurists.com/index.php The Mongol Rally] challenges its participants to drive from London to Ulanbataar in The Alleged Car. Cars can be disqualified for having too powerful an engine (though exceptions are made for cars of [[Rule of Funny|"significant comedy value"]], e.g., ice cream trucks).

* And who could forget the [[wikipedia:Trabant|Trabant]], vehicle of "[[But Thou Must!|choice]]" for [[East Germany|East Germans]] before the country collapsed. Affectionately called "Trabbi", it would seem like this car was designed as a Communist backlash against Western cars—which then embodied the capitalist principles of freedom and prestige—by creating a car whose sole and only purpose was moving people from A to B (noisily, and with an exhaust plume trailing all the way back from B to A). There are a number of reasons it qualifies:

** The engine was so weak, they had to resort to plastic instead of metal for the hull. And forget about modern polymers, mind you—we're talking about whatever was available in the sixties, including ''wool and wood pulp''. Later models were made with molds that had expired their lifetime two times, making the results extremely flawed and unreliable. On the flipside, you didn't have to wash it, just wait for the next patch of rain.

*** This was also due to a shortage of metal, since East Germany lacked any sources of suitable metals for car bodies or engines, and had to import it. That cost real money, since nobody is as hard-nosed as a Communist when it comes to trade deals.

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

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