Most of the cars on the road are pretty forgettable. Can you even remember the last modern Chevy Malibu you’ve seen in the wild? Most of these cars are still memorable enough that you can recall that they’re forgettable. Then there’s the car so forgettable it’s like your brain deletes all memory of it.
Today, Matt wrote about how the Vauxhall Grandland is the fastest-selling used car in the UK right now, but what the heck even is that car? TMD ended with a request for readers to note the cars they’ve forgotten and I’m not sure Matt expected these responses.
Mike Harrell:
Name some cars you always forget exist.
None come to mind.
One More Last Chance:
There’s that one car….. but I forget what’s it called.
Hoonicus:
So you’re saying Everyone wants to acquire Grandland.
This morning, Jason wrote about a bizarre Honda ad with what looks like moldy meatballs. Fineheresyourdamn70dollars:
That’s not a moldy meatball, that’s silica lifeform you ugly bag of mostly water! (Facepalm)
Here’s the reference:
Finally, Thomas wrote about how there’s a Ford exec out there collecting the mixed metaphors said by employees. You delivered.
Jeffrey Antman:
We’re gonna save money……no matter how much it costs.
Howie:
Have your star. I always said at my last employer (contract now) “We are far too busy to get more efficient.”
Grnzlvrk:
In a rather tense meeting, our manager announced “The line is on their butt” when he meant to say “Their butt is on the line”. Hilarity did not ensue until we were out of earshot.
Rod Millington:
I do love a good malaphor/malaprop. The most used example for me is “Whatever floats your goat”.
I’m also fond of “it’s not rocket surgery”.
Bram Oude Elberink:
In the Netherlands, at a lot of the offices, English is the main language. It is perfectly possible that the complete room is filled with Dutch people speaking English to each other. This gets funny when they translate Dutch sayings into English. A famous example, in Dutch we have the saying “daar komt de aap uit de mouw”, which was translated to “now there comes the monkey out of the sleeve”. It means that someone shows their true colors, releaving the real reasoning behind something. There are many more and I have seen Bullshit bingo cards with them.
I’m an Evil Banana:
My favorite is “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”
Oh yeah, I’ve said that one several times! Have a great weekend, everyone.
Also, see if you can picture a Mercury Tracer in your head…of a generation that was NOT a rebadged Ford Escort.
You’re diabolical!
You mean the first gen?… which was a rebadged Ford Laser?
I’m in my mid-30s, and my parents say that I could identify every car on the road when I was two or three years old. Despite that, I wasn’t consciously aware that the K-Car Dodge Daytona existed until I was almost 20. It was still in production for a couple of years after I was born, so I have no idea how this happened.
Grandland sounds like it comes from one of the new Chinese brands.
Does anyone remember the Taurus minivan?
You mean the Taurus X?
Probably.
Also known as the Freestyle too, I understand.
I am only aware of ever seeing one, and that was when a friend got one of the loaded models.
It seems to have been mostly a Mercedes, with AWD and every type of traction control on earth.
Also, unfortunately, a cvt.
My friend is a very experienced 4WDer, and he was very impressed with the traction control.
He tested it on ice and it could easily start and drive on surfaces it wouldn’t move on with traction control switched off.
It would even drive on surfaces he couldn’t stand up on.
He ended up shuttling people stranded in bad weather.
The CVT turned out to have a ZERO weight tow rating, a replacement cost double what he paid for the van, and a lifespan shorter than a hummingbird.
And it failed.
The base model was front wheel drive only and a traditional transmission, I understand.
So maybe they really are rare?
They’re not rare, they’re simply invisible. No relationship to anything M-B whatsoever. The Freestyle had the CVT & 3.0L V6, Taurus X had the 6spd slushbox and 3.5L V6.
My parents owned a FWD Taurus X…it wasn’t a bad car, tons of room inside, quiet and comfortable, decent features, but just boring. I sold it to my best friend when I was tasked with disposing of their three vehicles, I had zero desire to keep it.
All I know is when I looked it up, info was that the trans came from Mercedes and it cost $8000!!!
Could have been wrong.
I always thought Volvo sourced transmissions from others.
The traction control and AWD was truly impressive.
My friend had plans to replace the transmission with something reliable after it failed, but when he had to go overseas, he scrapped it.
Same vehicle the DMV recently came after him claiming it was so valuable, and he didn’t pay enough taxes on it.
Seems a vehicle with a broken CVT has negative resale value.
They are a Volvo underneath, not a Mercedes.
Possible.
When I looked it up, that’s what I found as CVT source.
I didn’t research past that.
I got one of these things as a rental once. I think. It was utterly forgettable. It was certainly a middling Vauxhall crossover thing. The only thing that stuck with me was the light control switch, which very sensibly didn’t have an off position. Just auto, sidelight, and on. Given how many morons you see driving around with no lights at night… I think every car should have this setup.
My Suburban has a variant on this that I think works even better. Auto is the default position and if you want to turn the lights off you twist to off and then it springs back to auto for the next time you start the car. This allows the capability to turn the lights off when needed but maintains the safety component you advocate.
That’s a great idea too
GM deleted that switch with their new generations/platforms, now the default is Auto on the screen. The switch allowed me to quickly turn parking lights on when I was on a red light behind a small car.
Yes, that’s the best solution.
If you don’t live in Sweden or Kamloops you don’t need marker lights running no one can even see here on the surface of the sun.
Worse, it lessens the contrast when actual brake lights come on, and now you have idiots driving in total darkness without headlamps because they forgot only their parking lights are on.
Such a common problem that in my state it is a crime to drive with your parking lights on, but no headlamps!
Then you have the similarly dumbass idea of daytime running lights, again useful in Kamloops but not here, especially when the tail lights are off.
This results in people blithely cruising at night or in the rain with the rear of the car blacked out, as if they’re on a secret mission.
The Chevy Uplander (whose name I had to search with the keywords “chevrolet minivan long”) and its even more forgettable Buick counterpart whose name I can’t bother to look up come to the edges of my mind, though I know it’s a bit late for this addition.
Terraza! Which I thought was a kind of tile.
Terrazo I think is more closely related to concrete, but a great flooring material nonetheless.
It also had a Saturn counterpart. The Saturn Relay. Oh and the Pontiac Montana. There were four of these!
I would say the ‘88 Pontiac LeMans and just yesterday I bought a Daewoo Leganza from a client. I completely forgot about both of those. And for good reason.
Years ago I worked at a dysfunctional company and my boss would constantly describe our organizational choices as “snatching defeat from the jaws of success”.
Between the time I traded it in on a 2007 Passat wagon and the only picture I ever took of it came up on a social media feed years later, I completely forgot that at one time I owned a 2006 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab with the high output 4.7.
It was the most unsatisfying vehicle I’ve ever driven, let alone owned (and that’s saying something, because I’ve had my share of clunkers over the years). The brakes kept warping and it rode like a motorboat through a chop. The H.O. 4.7 demanded Premium, but didn’t feel any less gutless than a friend’s similar – but non H.O. – Dakota. Got rid of it within a year and put it out of my mind until it popped up on Facebook.
Modern VW Jettas and Passats. Kinda forgot about those turds until a buddy bought a Tennessee made Passat for CHEAP. Boy did he ever regret that one, there was a reason it was half the price of a 5 year old Camry
I could’ve sworn the Chrysler Grandland is sold in the US and I just never registered actually seeing one. And which Buick was the previous generation?
I once had a several year period where I completely forgot that the 95+ Chevy Lumina existed.
But I do specifically remember the last modern Chevrolet Malibu I saw! I was walking through a parking lot about a week ago when I saw it, and did a double-take! Those final-generation ones are simply not that common, and the irony of “Chevy Malibu’s have traditionally been super common, and now they’re not” made it stick out to me among all the crossovers
Heck, I was given one as a rental in November. Driving from the airport, it made a gurgling water sound from under the hood. Parked it for a few hours, and there was liquid underneath and a CEL. Got it back to the airport, and I checked the parking spot I took it from: it look like it had rained power steering fluid everywhere.
That’s just about all I remember about the car.
A neighbor bought one new a few months ago. I see it all the time.
My coworker has owned four (two of those were distributed to other coworkers), and our boss had one as well. They’ve all been good cars, reliable and comfortable with decent fuel economy. One of the mid-aught versions made it to 340k miles with very little maintenance.
Well, It’s getting late. I’m gonna make like a tree and bark.
Oddly enough, you know what floats a goat?
A boat!
Here I thought it was “Whatever bloats your goat”.
If you’d like both, the Hartford Yard Goats (Minor League Baseball team) recently posted on social media about a hot dog called the “Float Your Goat”… “submerged in a glass of 100% whole goat milk.”
I don’t want one, but I hope it isn’t just an early April Fool’s joke.
https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/sports/yard-goats/hot-dog-goat-milk-hartford-yard-goats/3530592/
But can you pahk ya caah at Hartford Yard?
If it’s forgettable enough, yes.