Here Are Five Great Car-Related Conversation Starters You Can Use To Avoid Talking Politics This Thanksgiving

If the hands on my calendar are accurate, there’s going to be a Thanksgiving tomorrow! And, with this Thanksgiving coming off the heels of a very divisive national election (I want to say we picked a new Chief Alderperson or Comptroller or something?) I realize that many of you may be pretty damn sick of politics and all of the associated heightened emotions and feelings and threats and recriminations – so why put yourself or anyone else through that? The good news is you don’t have to, thanks, as always, to cars.

Yes, cars! Thanks to the near-universal appeal of automobiles of all sorts, and the inherent joy nearly any functional human feels upon encountering someone talking about cars, at length, with unfocused eyes and a fierce intensity, I think we can safely rescue you from your weird uncle or aunt or cousin’s neo-monarchist or anti-third-amendment rants.

The way we’re going to do this is with these five sure-fire, car-related conversation – carversation, if you will (I hope you won’t), starters. Actually these starters are so potent, I’m going to say they’re conversation igniters. Whip these babies out and before you know it, everyone will be animatedly engaged discussing cars with delight and glee, any urges to wrap hands around yielding necks because of political disagreements long forgotten!

So, here you go; just print out this page, fold it up, and keep it in a readily accessible pocket – you’re now ready to make your Thanksgiving joyful and homicide-free!

Carversation Starter 1: Did You Know There’s Lots Of Cars Named For Food?

This is a good one to ease into everything with because there’s already lots of food around, and it allows you, the carversation leader, to carefully shepherd and guide the conversation via your knowledge of some fascinating facts about cars named for foods.

Here’s a quick starter list: the amazing Alldays & Onions, Nissan Cherry, MG Hot Dog, Suzuki Cappucino, Mitsubishis Pistachio and Minica Lettuce, as seen above. Oh, and I wrote all about a carmaker called American Chocolate a bit ago, too.

That’s a good list to get you going, and once people are suitably enthralled, you can encourage them into coming up with their own food-based car names, as you all enjoy a good chuckle imaging what a GMC Ribeye might look like, or how you’d never be caught dead behind the wheel of an Oldsmobile Haggis.

Carversation Starter 2: First Cars!

You know what’s a powerful way to keep people talking happily? Nostalgia! Nostalgia is a potent drug, and if you ask people about their first cars, I can all but guarantee they’ll have stories, fond stories of long-expired youth spent in vinyl-upholstered deathtraps that will have even the hardest-core Fox News watcher and NPR tote-bag-haver laughing together over shared memories of what shitboxes their first cars were.

For the younger people, you can ask them what they want their first car to be, and that should spark all sorts of good discussion. You’ll just have to figure out how to navigate around Tesla. That’ll be tricky, but if it starts to get strained, just tell them about how you remember your grandma’s amazing 1973 Tesla.

Carversation Starter 3: Weird Connections

See that car up there? That’s a Jutta, and strange microcar-like versions of it were actually built. I show it to you because the dude that invented Whac-a-Mole built it! Or how about how Brooks Stevens, the man who designed the famous Jeep Wagoneer, also designed the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile? Or how about how one of the programmers of GM’s car-computer systems went on to design the iconic video game Centipede?

Any of these should wow even the crankiest of relatives into a reverie of marveling at the strange and beautiful interconnectedness of the universe.

Carversation Starter 4: Car-Noise Making Contest

Okay, this one is in case things get desperate and you need to really derail a conversation that is edging far too close to becoming dangerously political: Declare a car noise-making contest!

You’ll want to have a few of your own ready to go. Thinking about this made me remember this book I had as a kid, called MouthSounds, which made the bold promise that one could “whistle, pop, click, and honk your way to social success.”

This was a lie.

But, what it did deliver on was a really great passing racecar sound, a sort of combined buzz and tounge-rolled “r” noise along with a Doppler Effect start-low-GET-LOUD-go-back-low sort of thing. It had a little flexi-disc record, too, one side of which seems to be online:

Man, look how ’80s that cover is! This sort of design/topography was very common in the ’80s for fun coffee table books. Anyway, you can make that sound and maybe a good car-starting sound? Look, this guy is amazing at it:

So, just give that a try and get everyone to try, the more embarrassing the better! But be aware that spittle will be flying around, so take precautions.

Carversation Starter 5: Talk Shit About The Lancia Gamma

Oh, this is one everyone will appreciate: Lancia once made a car that could destroy its own engine if you started it with the steering wheel turned all the way in one direction, like if you were, say, parked on a hill and didn’t entirely trust your parking brake, which was probably a good call.

It’s true! The power steering pump was driven off the left-side camshaft, via a belt. So, if you started the engine when cold, with your steering wheel at full lock, the load from the power steering pump would cause the cam belt to break or jump, at the very least bending valves, or at worst lunching the whole damn thing.

If that’s not enough, you can tell them about how rear visibility was accomplished by looking through a window in the car above the rear seat, and then through the trunk and then through another window in the trunk lid. It’s gleefully absurd, and everyone should have a great time pondering the madness of it all.

I hope these help! And remember, these are just starters – used properly, you should have everyone talking cars with unbridled glee, and everyone will forget all of their stupid ideas, no matter what they are, and just gorge on turkey and fistfuls of ham, as the good whomever intended.

Happy Turkey Day! Here’s A Car You Know That’s Secretly From Turkey

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Let’s Talk Car Names You Couldn’t Use Today And Food Names And Ones You Think Suck But Don’t